The Friday hours

On a Friday I check a small restaurant's listed hours before I check anything else about it.

They are wrong more often than any other thing the place publishes.

Friday runs differently here from every other day, and it runs differently from one place to the next. Some open after the prayer and stay open late. Some do not open until the evening at all. Some run the kitchen straight through and put a note on the door about the prayer times. A place that has thought about its Friday has a second line on the listing that says so, and the line is usually specific.

The listing still showing the weekday hours belongs to a place where the listing is nobody's job. It was filled in once, by whoever set the account up, in the week the doors opened, and nothing since has been anyone's task.

Somebody searched that restaurant on a Friday. They were hungry, they were choosing between two places, and they gave it a minute of a day they do not get back. What they got in return was a line of text that was wrong. A few of them drove over and found the shutter down at three in the afternoon.

The listing is the most-read thing that restaurant publishes. It is also the only part of its marketing that nobody in the building has ever called marketing.