Cycling UK Forum

Not a new event for Rio - I'm just interested to hear views on the experimental extended Sunday opening for larger shops, using the Olympics as a flimsy excuse. Did anybody notice a difference? I'd forgotten it was happening till I saw a sign in a shop this morning. (Perhaps we discussed this when it was announced. If so. I've forgotten. )

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On a Sunday during the olympics, I had to do my mother's shopping, take it to her house & do her gardening (about 2 hours).
With the supermarket opening earlier at 9 instead of the usual 10, I was able to get my jobs done 1 hour earlier than usual, I didn't spend any more but the earlier shop opening for me was a good thing.

I'd rather they changed the opening hours for the whole week!

IMO shops should open at lunchtime and close at 10pm in summer/8pm in winter.

It'd mean less traffic as the retail workers would come in later and go home later. It'd give people the opportunity that work 9-5 the opportunity to shop on weekday evenings in town centres, rather than going to out-of-town shopping/retail parks.

Until the traditional market-town high street wakes up to that, it will continue to wither and die. Major urban conurbations, buck the trend by having extended/evening hours as mentioned above.

Lots of foreign nationals get caught out in MK at Tesco as their Sunday hours are 10am-4pm, far too early. 12pm-6pm is far more logical.

I didn't actually know that there was to be extended Sunday openings. I did notice that one of the cycle shops in town was open last Sunday I think. I didn't actually go in because it was late and they were closing the shutters.

I don't think this is a good idea, and I didn't think the changes they brought in the the early 90's were any good either. This has nothing to do with religious convictions. Working as a shop assistant wouldn't be my first choice of a job and adding unsocial hours to the mix just makes it worse. In the context of a cycle shop, Sunday is bike riding day.

thirdcrank wrote:Not a new event for Rio - I'm just interested to hear views on the experimental extended Sunday opening for larger shops, using the Olympics as a flimsy excuse. Did anybody notice a difference? I'd forgotten it was happening till I saw a sign in a shop this morning. (Perhaps we discussed this when it was announced. If so. I've forgotten. )

I also did not know until I read this.

It does go a long way to explain something I heard an Aldi till operator saying yesterday. I had to drive MrsE to the shops and heard the woman working there saying some thing along the line of. "They claim to hold family values and that the family comes first, yet some of us are told to work longer hours on Sunday so we do not see our families".

Families come first provided it is not inconvenient to us, would seem to be the general message.

Edwards wrote:Families come first provided it is not inconvenient to us, would seem to be the general message.

Precisely! A lot of shop workers are young(ish) mums, and in less than 20 years people will be moaning about how badly dragged up the new generation is.
Will they be able to work out why? - Its not rocket science. . .

The effect on working hours of shop assistants - "colleagues" in some places - doesn't seem straightforward to me.

Once upon a time, it was much more usual for somebody employed in a shop to have a full-time job. My mother was the manageress of a series of paint and wallpaper shops (she went back to work as soon as my younger brother started school in 1952) and it was six days 9am to 5-45pm early closing usually Wednesday at 1pm an hour for lunch on the other five days. We were "latchkey kids" until we went to live in the flat over one of the shops. Money was short for a lot of people then and the same applies now. Part-time working now seems to be much more usual which must suit some more than others.

I see the chief colleague at Sainsbury's is against longer Sunday opening hours.

Being a lark, rather than an owl I find it very irritating shops do not open until at least 10 on a Sunday - I've been up for hours by then! I'd rather they opened 7-1 (like the local tip) than their current hours.

I realise of course I will never get my way on this, as I'm sure I'm in the minority here

A friend of mine worked for Homebase a few years ago. She only worked Sundays or Bank Holidays, as it meant she didn't pay for any childcare as her husband was at home to look after the two boys. He didn't earn very much, and they couldn't afford childcare. They still had Saturday as a "family day" .She said Homebase had queues of students and women with young families wanting to work Sundays and Bank Holidays - it certainly wasn't a case of people being "made" to work on a Sunday. Once her husband's business (he was self-employed) started to grow, she stopped working but for a few years that Sunday wage made a huge difference to them.

Jan

Did it used to be standard practice in the UK for shops to shut on a Saturday afternoon? Say, in the 1970s? I seem to have a vague recollection of this, but may be mistaken. Certainly Wednesday afternoon closing was normal at that time.

I thought about this because a couple of weeks ago I was in Germany, and the shops in the Rhine town we were in virtually all closed at 1400 on the Saturday. The place became deserted! Very weird and a total contrast to the out and out consumerism in Britain.

IIRC post offices were closed on Saturday afternoon and so were many fresh food shops like butchers.

It's not so long ago that "the" Asda was closed on Sunday and Monday.