I closed the store four minutes early and I feel bad but I also don’t think I care.
It’s Friday night. I work at a gas station and this weekend, they're doing a big festival. Around 9:50, I was almost done with cleaning our store bathroom but customers were coming in so I kept bouncing back and forth between register and the bathroom. I put a post in the door in order to keep the bathroom door open. As I’m ringing out a customer, a girl walks in and heads towards the bathroom, she stops, sees the post, and asks if she can use it. By this time, the bathroom is usually already clean and locked for the night but I figured it was only one person so I let her use it. Shortly after, one by one, that same girl’s friend group starts coming in the store, there were about nine of them, and they’re taking their sweet time looking at beer. It’s 9:52 at this point, the store closes at 10. I have to be punched out by 10:10, but now I also have to clean the bathroom again because I just let someone use it. 9:54 rolls around and now another girl in her friend group has to use the bathroom, but the other girl is still in there. The rest of the group is looking at beer and no one has brought anything to the counter. 9:55 and I’m finally ringing people out. The other girl comes out of the bathroom finally and the other girl goes in. At this point, people in this friend group are just coming in and out of the store. It’s 9:56. Tired of waiting for them to leave, I get frustrated and I tell the one’s who are still in the store that I’m closing and I walk over and turn off the lights. One of the girls says, “Oh, are you closing?” And the guy, presumably her boyfriend, looks at his watch and says, “Yeah, in four minutes.” I look into the parking lot and see multiple cars swarming in now. Then I say, “Well as you can see, everyone‘s about to start trying to come in at the last minute. And I still have to reclean the bathroom,” I ring out about three other people before the second girl finally comes out the bathroom and sees that the lights are off. The guy goes “Yeah, he’s closing.” 9:58 and now the store’s empty, only because I basically had to kick everyone out. Outside, the friend group that was in the store has now expanded to about fifteen people total. They’re outside talking and laughing. I lock the door and start breaking the register down. By the time I was done recleaning the bathroom and with everything else I have to do, it was 10:38. I‘m usually out by 10:05. Even minutes after I closed, I still had people coming to the door and banging on the glass trying to get my attention. After everything, I left the store reflecting about what I could have done better and how I could make tomorrow night better. As someone with crippling anxiety, I hate how jittery and unhinged it makes me feel sometimes.