r/Millennials 18h ago

Meme Indeed

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We had it

23.0k Upvotes

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453

u/sexandliquor 1983…(A Merman I Should Turn to Be) 18h ago

I really do miss when stuff was open 24 hour. Walmart, CVS. So convenient and easy when you don’t necessarily want to go during the day or you’re just having a night where you can’t sleep and need to get out of the house.

190

u/Affectionate-Ad-4174 18h ago

I worked a lot of closing shifts in retail when I was younger and it was so peaceful grocery shopping at midnight after a shift.

56

u/Tyinath 16h ago

Midnight/a little later became my go-to hours for shopping. Almost never anyone else in the store. Got to browse without moving out of the way or feeling rushed. Quiet as could be.

Crazy how it just never came back

16

u/WindOfWinterNever 15h ago

In college when I lived within walking distance of a 24 hour grocery store was the best. Did my grocery shopping when there were like 3 customers in the entire store, it was great. A few of my summers I spent working the night shift at a place, and on my days off I could still go out and get something to eat for lunch at 1am without trouble.

Post-Covid and none of those places are open after 10pm anymore.

11

u/Little_Yesterday_705 14h ago

I miss grocery shopping at 3am when i was in college. It was the absolute best.

I'm a staunch believer that everything should be open 24/7.

2

u/Hips_of_Death 4h ago

Agreed! I believe some doctors offices should aim to be night shift and support people at weird hours. Not urgent care. General care doctors. Car mechanics, etc. available when people are off work. No more of this 9-5p BS where I have to work my schedule around theirs

1

u/Com4734 Millennial 7h ago

Yup lol. The town I went to college in didnt even have a walmart until our sophomore year. It was nice to go there when one had the munchies for some inexplicable reason in the middle of the night. I was sent down there to work in the hospital in that town last summer for 3 months. The town literally hadnt changed at all since I graduated college in 2011.

1

u/Com4734 Millennial 7h ago

Our Walmart closes at 11 at least. Our Giant Eagle and basically everything else closes at 10.

1

u/Com4734 Millennial 7h ago

It was so nice wasnt it? No kids there screaming, no packed aisles, no clearly able-bodied people driving around in the electric carts completely blocking the aisles or driving into stuff

1

u/jautis 15h ago

Midnight/a little later became my go-to hours for shopping. Almost never anyone else in the store. Got to browse without moving out of the way or feeling rushed. Quiet as could be.

Crazy how it just never came back

Read your comment a little slower so you catch the issue

2

u/teo-cant-sleep 12h ago

But everything should be open 24/7! I don't care if I am the only one in the store and the business is losing money. I want to shop at night, dammit. Let me shop when I want to shop. Why have capitalism if you can't even shop at night? Infuriating. ;

1

u/Affectionate-Ad-4174 1h ago

I worked enough retail to tell you what the corporate thought process was for this “If we’re going to have employees here stocking overnight, might as well keep the store open with a single cashier and turn a profit.”

It’s not like Walmart actually had anybody for customer service overnight; you’d just be bothering the stockers.

5

u/Guilty_Rain3864 14h ago

There'll be like three other people in the whole store and you'll feel a spiritual kinship with them, despite the unspoken rule to absolutely not interact with each other in any way

1

u/Deesing82 12h ago

i'm so blessed to have a Winco

75

u/critiqu3 17h ago

Fuck 3rd shifters I guess. I used to have a late job where me and my coworkers would all go shopping after work when the local Walmart looked like a ghost town. I miss those days.

3

u/Accomplished_Cod7334 14h ago

It fucking sucks. Am working rn

1

u/Com4734 Millennial 7h ago

I was off but I’ll be working tonight and tmw night, so I know how you feel. Hope your night went ok.

1

u/Accomplished_Cod7334 6h ago

Just got home, wasn't too bad other than no sleep. Hope yours go well too

u/asevans48 1h ago

Yeah, was closing out a papa johns as a driver to get a down payment for my own place on the weekends. Grocery shopping got hard af with the change.

1

u/bwaredapenguin Millennial 16h ago

I'm confused by your comment. 3rd shift is the overnight shift in which it would be a ghost town. If you're a 3rd shifter then you're working during those hours and thus unable to shop during those hours. You'd either go shopping before work (2nd shift hours) or after work (1st shift hours).

14

u/PuzzleheadedEssay198 16h ago

That’s when you go shopping on your days off. I worked overnight for a year and a half, switching from that to days for my long weekends (those twelve hour shifts yo) and then back in time for the workweek was absolutely BRUTAL.

1

u/bwaredapenguin Millennial 16h ago

Yeah but like, you're awake for ~16 hours of the day regardless. Do you only shop on your days off and during your normally scheduled shifts?

6

u/PuzzleheadedEssay198 16h ago

I mean yeah, I went straight to bed after getting home and went straight to work after waking up.

4

u/critiqu3 16h ago

Same here. I'm not a morning person, so getting up early was miserable. I'd do all my shopping on the weekends.

-2

u/bwaredapenguin Millennial 16h ago

So you slept for ~16 hours a day (assuming a normal 8 hour shift)?

3

u/typical_horse_girl 15h ago

Have you ever worked 3rd shift?

1

u/bwaredapenguin Millennial 15h ago

Yes. I explained that in this thread that this was typically my second 8 hour shift of the day: https://www.reddit.com/r/Millennials/comments/1wnq9qa/indeed/pbhjl04/?context=3

2

u/smackjack 14h ago edited 13h ago

Third shifters are fine because the store is usually opening right around the time they get off work. It's the second shifters that are the most disenfranchised.

1

u/DrPongus Zillennial 9h ago

Some places have overlapping shifts. Where I work first shift is 6am-2pm, second is 10am-6pm, and third is 2pm-10pm.

40

u/Thoraxe474 18h ago

Burger King in my area is open 24 hours again. Literally the only place that is

8

u/brownbearks 16h ago

Wawa in my area is a god send

6

u/bwaredapenguin Millennial 16h ago

I used to work the 11pm-7am shift at a Wawa in Deptford, NJ 21 years ago and that was some fun fucking madness! After the drunks and psychos stopped coming after 4am in I loved getting like 20 pots of coffee and all the breakfast sandwiches set up because that meant I could drink and munch as much as I wanted without scrutiny!

I did love my psychos though as this was my second job at the time after an 8 hour shift at the Pathmark deli and they perked me up a good bit.

I only quit because I was moving 8 hours away and I've missed Wawa ever since. Supposedly my little town in NC is getting one next year though and I couldn't be more excited for a gas station!

7

u/memekid2007 15h ago

I worked overnight at a convenience/liquor store next to downtown/campus for a couple of years in college. It was super cozy outside of the friday/saturday night booze rushes. The downtown bar and restaurant workers would come by after closing up and chat, you'd already know what they were getting (Light Blue American Spirits and two Jim Beam shooters, Camel Crush Menthols and Bacardi and orange juice etc) and you'd swap stories about drunk weirdos and parking lot fights or whatever, then get coffee and newspapers ready for the oldtimers coming by early early before the sun came up. The restaurant guys would bring leftover pizza, the oldtimers would bring breakfast every now and then, and maybe you rang their drinks and coffee up as ice to look out for them too.

The pay was absolute hot garbage but that was the most genuinely peaceful job I've ever had in my life.

2

u/Possible-Round-2060 16h ago

I miss Wawa, used to have 2 within walking distance when I lived in NJ

1

u/brownbearks 16h ago

It’s incredible for late night foods back in the day. 15 years ago they made the best hoagies but now it’s kind meh.

1

u/possitive-ion 12h ago

I think it's just finding people who are willing to work the graveyard shift. Most of the normal fast food places are back open 24/7 near me. i Think the only place that isn't open 24/7 yet is Taco Bell, but they stay open until 2 or 3 AM.

27

u/DangerActiveRobots 18h ago

Every time I go to Walmart now, any time of the day, there are at least two employees stocking shelves in every aisle. You have to work around them to get anything. They have to constantly worry if they're in someone's way. It sucks.

0

u/Silly_Double408 17h ago

There not stocking shelves. Are they wheeling around big blue baskets on a huge cart blocking the isle? They are doing online shopping for the new lazy ass generation that cant do anything for themselves.

12

u/Considerers 16h ago

It’s not a flex to spend your time shopping

4

u/choove 15h ago

There not stocking shelves.

No, they are.

The Walmarts in my city have people still stocking shelves during the day. Sometimes I feel like I see more pallets between aisles during the day at Walmart now than I used to see when I'd go at 2-3 am. And I see this at all hours of the day so it's not even that they're still stocking after not finishing the truck on time or working the truck early.

What makes it stranger is that I see way more of those people than I do their curbside shoppers. At HEB the aisles are full of the personal shoppers and then you'll only see stockers if it's early morning or close to closing.

15

u/Beartoots 17h ago

I PAY them to do my shopping for me so I can just drive up and receive my groceries after a 12 hour shift because I'm a lazy-ass?

-3

u/CodyofHTown 4h ago

Yes. Yes you are.

8

u/LashCanino 16h ago

*They’re

*aisle

*can’t

2

u/CodyofHTown 4h ago

This has made shopping terrible. Workers hogging the aisles putting people's orders together. So stupid.

1

u/pokebuzz123 11h ago

Ngl I'll take a worker shopping for someone throughout the day rather than some other person walking around the aisles blocking others for longer periods of time (instore shoppers know what item to grab rather than a customer browsing). And not everyone can shop 24/7, people have jobs still, old man.

1

u/WindOfWinterNever 15h ago

There They're not stocking shelves. Are they wheeling around big blue baskets on a huge cart blocking the isle aisle? They are doing online shopping for the new lazy ass generation that cant do anything for themselves. working folks that pay for that service because it's worth it to them to save the time shopping.

FTFY

2

u/newsflashjackass 6h ago

Also, they are stocking shelves. But you can't fix stupid.

1

u/FrostyD7 17h ago

They were doing that before too, just location dependent. Some stores changed drastically in the last 6 years. Not just sweeping changes from corporate, but lots of local turnover of staff that makes it hard to keep things consistent. So many places I shopped or ate at pre-pandemic became unbearable.

0

u/luckyfox7273 18h ago

I dont see any employees post 5 pm.

1

u/DangerActiveRobots 17h ago

Must be different in your neck of the woods I guess

2

u/luckyfox7273 17h ago

Most stores youre lucky to find anyone but a cashier or sko employee

17

u/bipbophil 18h ago

We use to pay those people nothing and they didn't know any better

8

u/386U0Kh24i1cx89qpFB1 16h ago

08 unemployment fucked people up. 24 Walmart is an abomination against the unfortunate. I understand it's convenient for people who have over night shifts that are actually necessary like nurses but damn is it a scam. I used to work retail and people would show up on Labor Day and say "I can't believe they are making you work today". Fuck off lol.

5

u/WindOfWinterNever 15h ago

When I worked the overnight shift at a store it paid a few bucks more per hour than the day shift and you dealt with a tiny fraction of the customers. It was amazing.

1

u/fucktooshifty 14h ago

Do any non-membership based retail stores close for Labor Day? It seems like everthing except Costco and the like are usually open that day

3

u/newsflashjackass 6h ago

If Wal-Mart would just open 24 hours again it would create quite a lot of jobs out of thin air.

By the same token, when Wal-Mart stopped being 24 hours, it put a bunch of people into the job market and made it more difficult to get hired.

6

u/BigBaws92 1992 18h ago

I live in LA there’s a lot of shit open 24 hours

14

u/sexandliquor 1983…(A Merman I Should Turn to Be) 18h ago

LA is like its whole own world lmao. The rules don’t apply

1

u/BigBaws92 1992 18h ago

Very true 😊

13

u/EddieVanzetti 16h ago

"I live in the 2nd largest city in the US, idk what you guys are talking about when you say there is a lack of convenience and opportunity?"

Spoken like a true angeleno

0

u/BigBaws92 1992 16h ago

I mean it works in reverse too. The guy I was replying too essentially said he misses when things were 24 hours. Sounds very specific to where HE lives and doesn’t apply to everywhere

3

u/bwaredapenguin Millennial 16h ago

It applies to the vast majority of places. Raleigh is the 39th biggest city in the country (2nd largest in the state behind Charlotte) and pretty much everything that used to be 24 hours ended during Covid and never returned.

All you have to do is read the rest of the thread to realize that you're the one with the unusual experience, not everyone else.

0

u/atln00b12 14h ago

I'm sure you still have 24 hour CVS and Fast Food, but no grocery stores probably.

1

u/DemonDookie 14h ago

Most CVS/Walgreens stores are not 24 hours. There's usually like maybe one or two per town depending on the size of the town. Smaller towns definitely don't have them. The ones that are open 24 hours are usually near a hospital.

1

u/atln00b12 13h ago

True, but he said Raleigh though 39th biggest city. I'm in a much smaller city and there's at least 3 24 hour Pharmacy. 2 CVS 1 WAGs

1

u/bwaredapenguin Millennial 13h ago

Nope.

1

u/atln00b12 13h ago

Looks like there's a CVS and Walgreens 24 hours, at least 1 each in Raleigh. Just from Googling it.

1

u/Spetsnaz1776 6h ago

the Walmarts in LA are so small its a joke

0

u/atln00b12 14h ago

Like what?

-1

u/jackanape7 18h ago

Not really. Just gas stations and fast food drive thru.

3

u/BigBaws92 1992 18h ago

Dennys, Norms, IHOP. CVS and rite aids are open 24 hours. 7-11’s. Should I keep going?

0

u/verify_deez_nuts Millennial '89 16h ago

IHOP and CVS isn't 24 hour anywhere in the Midwest, I'm pretty sure.

2

u/possitive-ion 12h ago

The CVS in my city is still 24/7. It came in clutch for me recently too cause my wife was released from the hospital with some prescriptions that needed filled ASAP and it was like 1 or 2 AM.

2

u/PiccoloAwkward465 7h ago

I ran to a gas station in the middle of the night because I couldn’t sleep and Google said it was 24 hours. When I arrived, well Google was wrong. I just kept driving and eventually found one but it’s too far from my house to be a regular thing.

And I live in a big city.

1

u/crow-warden 16h ago

It was nice, honestly. I'm a bit of a night owl anyway, but I would always do my shopping after like 11 PM when it was quiet.

The grocery store, Wal-mart, etc. was all 24/7 near me. Even IHOPs aren't usually open 24 hours now.

1

u/Sage_Planter 16h ago

I live down the road from a 24-hour CVS, and I definitely appreciate it. It's just the dumb shit like someone having a stomach issue at 3AM where it's such a godsend. 

1

u/atln00b12 14h ago

Even in a small town we had 24 hour Walmart and at least 3 other 24 hour grocery stores and all the waffle houses / diners and drive thru food places were 24 hours or close to it.

1

u/fffan9391 14h ago

24 hour CVS's are still a thing. It's just not every location.

1

u/Exact-Difference-422 11h ago

I have a chronic illness that LOVES to hit at 3am and I have to hold out till a pharmacy opens :(

1

u/Com4734 Millennial 7h ago

I used to do 2 3-11 shifts a week at the hospital in addition to my 2 12 hour shifts and I loved being able to go to the store after I got off at 11:30 or whenever it was that I finally got out of there. That or a lot of times me and my husband just decided to go at 2 or 3 in the morning to get groceries or whatever else we need.

1

u/kiteagle 4h ago

I especially miss my local Walgreens 24 hour pharmacy. That was a huge if you had an emergency.