I have worked retail also before and we would stay there until 12 or 1 am sometimes; until the store was completely fixed up or atleast 90 % fixed. If it was really bad like the Thanksgiving weekend or the weekend before Christmas we would sometimes be there until 2am.
There are closing shifts that can last until 1am assuming nothing goes wrong when closing registers have been on hold with tech support for 1 hour or more at 12am because a regsiter is not working.
Shipments for the store I was it came in the early morning 4am and it could be anywhere from 10,000-40,000 items of clothing that would have to be put away by the time the place opened. You might have about 5 employees there working on it.
This did not occur everyday and they werent full time but it happen atleast 3 times a week
I never said everyone had the same shift I just said people would be there! Some could be coming in at 12am and others could be leaving at 1am and others coming in at 3am, 4am etc. It changed on a daily basis.
You could have people coming in for 4, 5 or 6 hour shift at different times of the night with maybe a little overlap. There also had to be atleast 2 people there
Metro does have service at 3am btw; the LAST trains leave Metro Center at 3:06 am on Fridays and Saturdays. Some Metrobuses are running at the time or close enough such as the 30's and X2 depending on where you are going it is possible to take the last train to or from work
The difference between the last bus of the night and the first bus of the morning can be 40 minutes to 1 1/2 hour and have known employees that wait for it.
The last trains get to there end station around 3:40 am on weekends so there is service sometimes and that also does not include days of marathons where service opens at 5am on weekends.
So you do not know what you are talking about.
@Scoot
Most of the employees I'am speaking of are those who do prep whether resturant of retail. In retail it would mainly consist of changing clothes on manaquins, unpacking new clothes, lowering prices on some items, moving old products out of the store, waiting on Fedex. In resturants it was mostly food prep or accepting incoming food from suppliers which happen early morning.