Also, places being open later might mean kids would have places they could go, and it's more important to curfew them out of sight instead.

also! when a restaurant/bar/coffeeshop's posted hours say they close at 10pm, but then the employees start cleaning up, including shutting down the espresso machine and putting chairs on top of tables as early as 9:40!

not cool. i understand wanting to get a jump on things, but it seems like these employees feel their work hours are the posted open-for-business hours. and they shouldn't be.

as a service industry veteran, the norm is that most people who come in late, in parties of 6 or more, are really needy and tip pretty terribly (unless auto grat, see a weeks ago).

There are some nice people who work there, and some downright rude as hell people who work there.

That place isn't worth rolling the dice... I don't want to pay 7 bucks for a barely decent a la carte sandwich AND have to deal with attitude.

How surprising - another les queen in the Clinton/Division neighborhood. Talk about bad luck trying to pick up women! Try picking up a straight woman in the area - I bet you won't find one!

How surprising - another les queen in the Clinton/Division neighborhood. Talk about bad luck trying to pick up women! Try picking up a straight woman in the area - I bet you won't find one!

Mike: Did you really just say what I think you said?

More or less... Yeah.

I should follow up with this: I having nothing against lesbian woman or gay men for that manner...and I enjoy the work Amy does.

Also, back on topic, I have often wondered about Caffe Pallino who serve gelato being closed so early. I wanted a little gelato a few weeks ago at about 9pm, when the weather was in the 80's - closed.

"he should be thrilled that the place he works at is doing well. And I’d argue that he should be eager to help the place do even better, even if that means putting off his social plans by another hour"

I don't understand this statement. If the owner hasn't given him any incentive to be thrilled, why should he be? Because of the inherent joy of making customers happy? Well, OK...but what if that doesn't make him happy?

Unless the owner has given him incentive to participate in the profits, he is only being rational about his time. To him, an extra pittance in wages is not worth the free time he has to sacrifice. What is the value of his free time? Isn't it worth more to make HIMSELF happy, rather than make Amy happy?

A little more empathy and economic logic, please, rather than greediness and selfishness. (yes, you can argue that the guy should get another job if he hates serving gelato so much, but that doesn't sound like a very Portland-ish thing to say - it sounds like a snobby Lake Oswego thing to say)

Isn't the potential for extra wages (and tips!), plus the continued existance of your job, incentive enough? If it's not, I bet there's another person willing to take that job.

By all means, manage your employees through a combination of threats that they may be fired at anytime and guilt that they're not grateful enough to appreciate how lucky they are. See how great your customer service is then!

I didn't mean the threat of firing—I meant the continued existance of your job via the small business you work at surviving. Plenty of them don't.

Staccato Gelato (on NE 28th) is now open 'til 11 most nights during the summer. (I don't have any connection to them; I just live nearby and visit often when it's hot out.)

Why the resistance to trying the coffee shop (Fireside) that is actually open 24 hours and mere blocks from LeGare's?

Ugh. Powell. It's a street for driving fast, not slowing down to hang at a cafe.

I went to the Fireside once a few months back. The coffee wasn't very good, the decor was pretty lame, and there was a dude who was very obviously fucked up on something (due to the fact that he kept walking in and out of the place talking rapid-fire nonsense). I would give the Fireside another try, if all these things never happened again.

A lot of the time, employees start doing their closing duties early because the owner/manager makes it a point to tell them they need to be off the clock soon after they close.

Then again, sometimes you just wanna go home/bar.

Putting chairs up is the worst, but realize the only reason people do it, is so you don't sit at the clean tables they want to keep clean. Though they should always leave a section for you to sit at.

Wah Wah Wah, all of you.. BORING!

regarding comment #5, mike? judging by your charming comment it is clear that an over abundance of gay women is your only barrier to finding someone to sleep with.

and to the also charming "cock n' roll" you read 18 comments and then decided this thread was boring? you couldn't figure out what the theme of the comments were around comment #3?

i'd really rather be boring than kind of an idiot.

I know what you mean about shutting down the espresso machine early, but when I closed the coffeehouse where I worked, you could always count on a group of people coming in 5 minutes to close and asking for a number of high-maintenence espresso drinks, and then, as someone else mentioned, not tipping. So F that.

Dave! If you haven't closed yet, they've got every right to come in and order! Because you AREN'T CLOSED.

sounds to me like Morgan always closes early, doesn't get tips, and probably gets fired / laid off a lot. how about a work ethic, pal? it's a job because it's work. it's work because it's a job. this is not hard to figure out. people have been staying open late for a bazillion years. It's called making money! I'm so tired of all these career servers in this town whining and crying about having to work for a living. your band is not good enough to get signed to a major. you had better get your ass back in class, and stop taking your failures out on your customers.

WELL SAID, SIR.

It's a matter of economics. For late-night coffeehouses, most people are sitting around at a table nursing a single cup of coffee, talking with friends. Fine, that's great, but keeping an espresso machine powered up for the last hour--when really nobody is ordering drinks--just to serve the last group of stragglers at five minutes to close--makes no sense. For one thing, you're running the machine for an extra hour, for another thing you are keeping your employee an extra half hour.

I don't agree with putting up chairs while still open, as that is flat out disrespectful to your clientele, but to me it makes perfect sense to stop serving espresso drinks past a certain time.

If you're worried about those last 5-minute stragglers, set the clock 15 minutes fast and display it right behind the counter.

"It makes perfect sense to stop serving espresso drinks past a certain time."

Then kindly put a sign in the window explaining your "we're saving a few cents worth of power by closing down our espresso machine half an hour before we actually close" policy.

me thinks amy is way too lazy. buy your own damn espresso machine if you have such a problem with poor service workers who make $8/hr shutting down the place 10 minutes early. just how far is that stick up your ass anyway?

Are these stupid people on salary? Why is there an argument here? The collective "we" are trying to make you more money and the collective "you" are making excuses as to why you don't want it? Shutting down a machine early? Putting chairs up? If you hate your job, quit it. You are not the only person qualified to press coffee in this town.

Amy has her own espresso machine, actually. Needing a beverage isn't the point. Living in a dense city, and needing "third places" to interact with people, socialize, get out of the house—even after 8 pm!—is the point. Finding most places unamenable to their customers' needs (and things they're willing to pay for via purchasing a damn cup of coffee) is the frustration.

methinks - we own an epresso machine. come over to our place and we'll make you a latte sometime.

and how is expecting to be served coffee from a coffee shop during their posted hours lazy?

This is clearly an issue that people who haven't worked in the service industry will seemingly never understand. Despite being extremely nocturnal I refuse to ever go into a business of any kind in the half hour before the posted closing time. And if it's within the last hour I tip extremely well and leave as soon as possible. But that's just what I personally perceive as fair.

The servers don't hate their jobs any more than you do. They just want to get out of there at a reasonable time. And unless you tip extremely well, the server has absolutely no incentive for doing anything but wishing you go away. If there was something or somebody that routinely showed up at your place of work right as you were ready to finish causing you to stay up to an hour later than you might otherwise, I don't think you'd be extremely happy about that either.

It seems reasonable to me that everyone who gets in the door before the posted closing time gets served. However it also seems reasonable that if you do so you will not be made to feel welcome, because you aren't.

"sounds to me like Morgan always closes early, doesn't get tips, and probably gets fired / laid off a lot. how about a work ethic, pal?"

I don't work in food service, I work at a job that pays more per hour than those people make in a day - so my work ethic is fine.

I'm saying, the servers are not your slaves - they have a choice not to serve you well, you have a choice to take your business elsewhere. To each their own.

Using the Mercury blog to whine about customer service betrays a certain amount of narcissism. But it is quite entertaining...

Oh, I hear you morgan. I make more money than God and YOU combined. I don't even frequent these places. I staff a chef at my estate that will bring me pork chops at 2am if I so desire. I just get annoyed when he complains because he's doing exactly what I AM PAYING HIM TO DO. ...and of course I've never had a service job. I've never had to work for a dollar. I just expect that everyone else should have to.

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