Baristas and retail workers are all too familiar with the dreaded clopen shift. You’re assigned to close the shop one night, then turn around and work the opening shift early the next morning. This is part of a complete episode.
Leave a comment
1 comment
More from this show
When a British tabloid reporter writing about a crocodile attack needed a synonym for crocodile, he went with knobbly monster, now a joking term for similarly creative ways of avoiding repetition. Juliet and Matthew Maguire, described by The...
Sara in Camden, New Jersey, wants a word for those people who are more than acquaintances, but not quite friends. She calls them friendlies, but wonders if there’s a better term. Fracquaintance, maybe? The Danish band Mew has an album called...
It is perhaps worth noting that “clopen” is also a term used in mathematics (specifically, in topology). While the abstract definitions are probably not that interesting, there are notions of “closed sets” and “open sets” in topology. Somewhat confusingly, these concepts are not mutually exclusive, leading to the possibility that a set can be both open and closed at the same time, i.e. clopen.
There is an YouTube video that helps to explain the situation.