Closing Early

We had to close the department early again today.
Three hours earlier than the rest of the store.
Because once again we only had two people scheduled to close the store.
And it's hard to be able to run the entire store with just two people.
Especially considering we have to answer the phones, watch register, run curbside pick ups out to the cars and of course help customers find things in the store.
adding in trying to catch animals and fill out paperwork to that...and yah...it makes sense to shut down the most time consuming part of helping customers earlier. 

Today was different from yesterday though in that I was the one to close down the department...when eight hours earlier I had opened the department.
So it was kinda surreal to do both opening and closing tasks.  *shakes head* 

What's funny though was that my manager wanted me to start closing down the department at like 3pm.

Which I was like "Why?"
Mostly because I was literally still working on doing the opening tasks at 3pm.
And like it doesn't take as long to close down the department as it does to open it.
Because closing the department is making sure that the animals all have food and water, turning off the lights, and then pulling ornaments from the fish tanks to be cleaned overnight. 

In all honesty it doesn't take too long. Like maybe 30 minutes?? 
Especially right now when we're low on animals and half our cages are empty. It doesn't take that long to close.

But for some reason my manager thinks it takes like an hour?? *shakes head*
idk. Maybe it's taking them longer because they're doing opening style instead of closing style? 
No idea.

But yah.
My manager wanted me to close at 3 because they couldn't get the entire department closed yesterday in just half an hour and so wanted to give me more time to close.

I didn't need it. I told the manager my plan and started closing an hour later as I'd originally planned too...

And finished it easily. 
I even had time to spare to do some extra cleaning of some cages in the back that hadn't yet been cleaned.

So yah.
Not sure why my manager thought it would take forever to close....
But we got it closed in the end and I managed to avoid having to deal with any disappointed customers that come in to get animals and get told we can't sell them right now. 

-Sarnic Dirchi