No one here lives in an area with early closing days then?
Llanelli used to have early closing on a Tuesday. Even though the practice stopped before I moved here, many older residents still seem to think that it is a half day, and what is elft of the town is noticeably quieter on a Tuesday PM than it is in the morning, or on any other afternoon.
Except of course, our adjectival local sub post office which closes on Wednesday afternoons, which I onlyb discovered after struggling up a steep hill to get there the other day. Wish I could take half a day off, just because I felt like it...
It is the Post Office that decides opening hours, and the sub postmaste rmust adhere to those times. As one found out some years ago when they refused not to close for lunch and were relieved of their duties after several warnings.
That doesn't mean that hours can't change, but it is not something that the person running the post office has a lot of say in, and this is made clear when you apply for the role.
To broaden the subject slightly, I high street shops really need to reconsider their opening hours, and that the Sunday Trading laws should be relaxed. We now live in a world where it is not uncommon for all adults in a household to be in full-time employment. It makes no sense for a shop to be open 9-5 Monday to Saturday, as a large population is unable to visit these shops in those hours on a weekday anyway.
Surely it would make more sense for shops to open late into the evening, and longer on weekends, even it came at the expense of closing for mornings etc to be able to afford the staffing. Even doing this one or two days a week (and co-ordinating with other local shops) could make a huge difference, e.g. "Open noon - 10pm every Wednesday and Friday". As it stands at the moment, the majority of time that I am not at work my local shops are closed so I can't support the local economy even if I want to, so I buy online or visit big out of town shopping centres that are open.[/
I agree, in general. Although I know many people here who work four days on and four days off, so have plenty of opportunity to use the shops betwen 9 and 5. There are also those who are out on the road for one reason or another, who would buy snacks and drinks during the day.
My personal view is that it would make sense for some shops to open up later and close later. I think that having variable hours might only cause confusion.
Having said that, we do have a Lifestyle Express and a Spar within easy walking distance that both open from 0700 to 2000 or 2200 already. There is also a small shop that opens in the afternoon and early evening only, though he seems to pick and choose what time he will actually close.
I understand your plight completely. I don't have any local shops so its the supermarket or nothing but I look forward to the day that the Sunday trading laws are relaxed...providing the stores open on a volunteer basis where staff is concerned.
The trouble is that the supermarkets have killed off a lot of local shops. Ironically, Tesco and Sainsbury's have then moved in with their small supermarkets and replaced what used to be family businesses with their own.
In my old village, the local shops, with one exception, didn't open after 1800. The ones that closed were those that would not move with the times and amend their trading hours and practices. One of them still retained an old counter and bacon slicer right up to its last day, when customers clearly preferred being able to serve themselves and being able to pick what they wanted, rather than wait to be served.
