Lose track of time?

I was ready to head home. The night was almost over and I was already plotting out the order of the closing chores to get our butts out the door in the shortest amount of time. I really should have known better than to extend what amounts to a hand-embossed, engraved invitation to the universe at large.

However, I did and fortune gave me a cheeky grin walking in the front door.

The chosen proxy for the infamous Mr. Murphy was a chunky young man sporting that ever-stylish “my laundry hamper exploded leaving me festooned in twenty layers of clothing five sizes too large for my build” look. He was smiling widely so perhaps he was in on the joke.

My concern was that he had sauntered to the counter and then requested change for the arcade. I gave the clock hung conspicuously on the wall a quick glance, my brain rapidly translating the booth time if this last customer fed all the change into the bill acceptor and balancing it against the remaining minutes of operation. His time should burn out about two minutes to closing.

Many times, a last minute customer will dive into the arcades stuffing a modest stack of bills into the machinery and sitting back to leisurely take in a porn flick. It’s immediately obvious where the conflict in this situation lies. At times, it leads to upset patrons and demands for refunds for lost credits. Some are a bit more philosophical about the situation. Regardless, the vast majority of the time we won’t be able to convey them out the doors for several minutes past closing. They wouldn’t move with a sense of urgency if you stuffed a lit rocket in their ass.

It shouldn’t happen tonight however. It would be flirting heavily with the edge, but if we were on our game, we could shuffle him out by the appointed hour of close. Just to hedge my bets a bit more, I inform him he’s only got a little less than fifteen minutes before everything shut down for the night.

He repeats back what I just told him in what seems to be confirmation before shambling into the arcade.

We devote ourselves to those chores we can check off with people still in the store, mostly cleaning, the last of the restocking, and general straightening. I have all my reports queued up and ready to generate as soon as “Skippy” clears out. I send someone down to deliver the two-minute warning just in case he’s lost track of a little time.

My chances for going homeward on time go straight down the kazi. Our final patron responded to the notice with questions about whether things would shut down and how much time was remaining. In addition, his booth was still active so he’d obviously fed more money into the arcade than I’d given him change for. The bastard had sucker-punched me.

A couple minutes later, I killed the power to the arcade system. His yelp that his movie just shut off was dead on cue. I announced loudly that we were closed for the night and we hoped he’d enjoy the rest of his night.

Five minutes later, he had not yet cracked his door. I send someone down to knock on his door to inquire as to why. The answer comes back to me; he’s still getting dressed.

Sure, that makes perfect sense. Go into an arcade booth minutes prior to closing and just strip naked, they won’t mind waiting for you get all your shit together. We popped his door for him to encourage him not to waste time.

Twenty bloody minutes later, he emerged. I hoped he’d just continue right on out the front door. No such luck. Instead, we spent another five minutes or so where he wanted to know if he could get his money back for the time he had remaining when I turned his booth off and I let him know that money was forfeit as soon as the store closed.

He did leave without causing a greater fuss though, at least that was a minor relief.