Nope, you never engage. Never ever engage. That flaming asshole who’s too self centered and ignorant to read the hours posed on the door they’re banging on and refuses to accept that the store is closed for EVERYONE including them, isn’t going to be polite, honest, or responsible. If you engage, they will immediately punish you for it. Don’t ever make that mistake.
You don’t work for the customer, you work for the store. It’s not always a crime to go along with a customer, but it’s always a negative when they want to push you to violate policy, change prices, complain about Mike in sporting goods for having a mustache, or ‘‘I’ll be real quick I sware’’ shopping when the store is closed. They will always punish you.
I eventually figured out that when a customer gets shitty, more than half the time if I say ''I work for the store and I’m responsible for [the dumbass shit you want me to do], if I violate store policy I’ll be fired" they suddenly realize this isn’t a game, and stop acting like a can of smashed assholes.
Actually in that specific situation, the store is closed and you have to come back when they’re opened. It’s not closed for fun. It’s closed because the store closes, and there’s 45mins of tasks that have to be done and many of them require the registers to be closed and the doors to be locked and if you unlock the door you have to reset the timer and start over. It’s not a game, your bullshit isn’t worth 10-15 people working an extra 45min at a time when the store isn’t making money. I gotta tell you when your a specialist or manager and you have to close and open, getting to bed in time to sleep enough to not die is a bigger problem than your lost item. Literally everyone else knows you don’t get special treatment for losing something, Come back in the morning you spoiled little shit.