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.
Transcript of “Clopen Shift”
Somehow I missed a portmanteau word that we were sent by Jennifer Batchelder from Chicago.
It’s the word clopin. Do you know this word?
Yeah, it’s a close open.
Yes.
A close open for businesses.
Yes.
A clopin. If you work the clopin or you work the clopin ship or you’re clopining, then your manager has asked you to work until closing time at 11:30 and then maybe come back in at 4:30 and get the coffee shop or the restaurant or whatever, the retail store ready.
Clopening.
Those split shifts are terrible.
Yes.
They are really hard on a person, but they’re good for the business.
Indeed, indeed.
But some businesses are banning them.
I think Starbucks just started banning them.
Yeah, split shifts are hard because they are kind of speaking for all the time in between the first half of the shift and the last half of the shift.
You bet.
It’s not really fair to the employee.
Oh, it’s awful.
Well, the lines are open, not clopin, 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org or talk to us on Twitter under the handle W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.
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.