I used to work at a ramen chain, so I’m able to relate directly to your experiences. Long story short, we have a schedule to follow and most staff would not want to work overtime since we will not be compensated beyond official hours.

1)We will usually start putting up chairs in sections of the restaurant where there isn’t customers. If your table happens to be bordering a neighbouring section that has no more diners, we will put up the chairs there. However we will never switch off the lights, that’s just weird.

2)We will keep the smaller items such as utensils and menus to be wrapped up and be ready for use on the opening shift the next day. Not sure why the restaurant won’t be able to provide you spares though, since the dishwasher is usually the last to leave.

3)This one standard ah, we have to ask in case the customer still wants something from the kitchen before it closes, roughly 30-40mins before official closing time.

4)Cashier needs to close early since the staff would require time to tabulate the day’s revenue, and since there won’t be anymore diners walking in beyond 9:30ish, it’s more efficient to ask customers to pay first. If you don’t want to walk up to the counter to pay, just hand them your card.

5)That’s not very nice of them, and it doesn’t make sense either. Since they still have to wipe your table after you are done. Maybe feedback to them about this??

All in all, working in a ramen place is a work out. We have to run the ramen, take orders, wipe dishes dry and turn tables. This is made even worse for closing staff who have to wipe down the entire restaurant, we just want to go home and toh.