The anatomy of a Close
This is a very important topic. If you want to manage your pub well, then you must understand this topic. I use the term "close" to refer to the sequence of events leading to the pub being closed for the night. It is a common term; for example, some employee might ask the other "are you doing the Close tonight?"
Let's consider some of the reasons that the Close matters. If the Close is not performed properly, then it is difficult for employees opening the pub in the morning, the next day.
If the Close is performed inefficiently, then employees can be very late getting home. They might miss transport connections, for example.
If the Close does not consist of the right actions,
then issues can arise in the pub. For example, if a routine cleaning task is left out of the close, then pests will eventually infest the premises.
Getting everything sorted, for when the pub finally closes, is actually a rather complex task, and is certainly capable of being messed up.
What time does the pub close?
Well, the pub stops serving drinks before everybody must exit.
In other words, we close the bar before we close the pub.
Someone in the pub will announce that it is your opportunity to order your last drinks.
We refer to this announcement as the practice of "calling last orders".
And this period of time, after last orders has been called, while guests are still capable of ordering drinks, is actually called Last Orders.
A person might ask "Is this last orders?", meaning Are we in the period of time when I'm capable of ordering drinks?
(Typically, someone calls Last Orders thirty minutes before we start attempting to have the pub empty.)
A bell will be rung once to indicate that last orders has been called.
For fifteen minutes, the bar is open-but-about-to-close.
A bell will then be rung twice.
This indicates that the bar is now closed.
You cannot order any more drinks.
After this point in time, we are no longer in Last Orders. We have entered what I call Drinking Up Time.
Traditionally, barmen shouted "time".
But this may have meant different things.
According to Ian Hornsey in the Oxford Companion to Beer, if the landlord said "Time, gentlemen, please", then this signified the beginning of Last Orders.
But perhaps someone may shout "Time" so as to mean "drink up and leave". Consider Eliot's The Wasteland.
There is a period of time between the point when the bar closes and the point when the pub closes.
We let guests actually drink their last orders.
I will refer to the final portion of Drinking up Time as Leaving Time.
This is a stronger term, to indicate that it is time to leave the premises.
This is the period of time when guests need to finish their drinks ("drink up") and leave the premises.
You know it has begun because staff have explicitly signalled "You need to go now".
For example, DUT will begin with an employee walking around the pub and offering plastic cups to guests.
This is all part of the effort to persuade guests to leave, since guests will be able to leave immediately with their drink if it is not in a glass belonging to the pub.
Note that some people refer to this period, when guests really must leave, as Drinking Up Time (DUT).
But this would be misleading.
It is too narrow - the period when guests are permitted to stay, and drink up, is much longer than the period when guests really must leave.
There is a period of time when staff are not actively trying to get guests to leave. But they are not serving drinks to them either.
This broad period of time is DUT.
There may be a period when it is Drinking Up Time, simply in virtue of the fact that the bar has closed, but not necessarily Leaving Time yet.
After all, Leaving Time (LT) begins when employees are trying to get guests to leave. Employees may not have begun this effort yet.
There is no name for this magical period of time, when most employees are engrossed in cleaning tasks,
the lovers engrossed with each other, and most guests quite drunk.
In practice, Leaving Time usually begins fifteen minutes after the bar has been closed.
It's fair for there to be some gap. If you bought a pint of ale just before the bar closed, you have fifteen minutes to drink it without being asked to leave.
The Leaving Time (LT) period is long when guests refuse to leave. When drunk individuals form groups, they do not care for what employees have to say.
So, they say "yes, thank you mate" when you ask them if they would kindly leave--and then remain in place for ten minutes.
With groups, no individual takes any responsibility for leaving.
The LT period can be as long as 20 minutes if the pub is extremely busy.
On Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday (the Four Boring Days) we ask guests to leave at 23:00.
There are three exciting nights. This continuous stretch is Thur, Fri and Saturday nights.
On exciting nights, we close the pub at midnight, with Last Orders starting at 23:45.
So, the Last Orders period of time usually lasts 15 minutes.
Then, the Bar Closed period usually lasts 15 minutes.
That is a total of 30 minutes.
