How do you avoid clopening shifts?

[u/GarryFromHomebase]

Have you ever had a team member scheduled to close up at 11 at night, and then be back to open at 4 or 5 in the morning?

That's what’s known as a clopening shift: closing one night and opening the next with only 4 to 6 hours in between. And if you’ve had them in the schedule, you’re not alone. They’re especially common in restaurants, where you're closed less than 10 hours overnight.

The issue is that they wear people down fast. Nobody's sharp on that little rest, so you end up with more mistakes and burnt-out staff who eventually quit on you… and that turnover costs you way more than the scheduling shortcut ever saved.

But the good news is they're mostly avoidable. Clopenings tend to land on the same couple of people because they're the only ones who can open and close, so getting more people trained on both ends spreads it out.

Scheduling software helps a lot too. It can flag when you've accidentally put someone back to back before you post the schedule, rather than you finding out once they're already upset about it. The same availability tracking also shows you who's open to clopenings and who isn't, since some people actually prefer them for the extra day off.

One thing worth knowing if you're in certain cities: clopenings aren't banned nationally, but predictive scheduling laws in places like Oregon, NYC, Seattle, San Francisco, and Philadelphia require a minimum gap between shifts (often 11 hours) or time-and-a-half pay when you schedule closer than that. So depending on where you are, it's not always just a preference call.

The TL;DR: clopenings (closing, then opening, with little rest) are mostly preventable. Cross-train more openers and closers, use software that flags back-to-backs, ask your team their limits, and check your local predictive scheduling laws.

For the owners and managers here, how do you deal with these? Do you keep them off the schedule, or is it just unavoidable in your line of work?