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Forgive the bloviation. This will probably bore most of you, but I figure I can use the catharsis. And I know there are kindred souls out there who will nod along, if they can get past my "poor me, poor me, pour me a drink" stage.
I just feel the need to spew venom over the four soul-leeching years I spent as a movie minion. It just all came back to me, and it leaves me feeling mystified as to how so draconian an industry manages to remain extant.
The shit was neverending... An eternal scatological experience that must resemble what hell would look like if you could lift its bedrock and look underneath... So, now, I've a few bits of guano to fling back at the puke pies that cluttered my days and nights as if I were as much a part of their entertainment as the movies and games they jonesed after. The games people played...
1. "So-and-so said I should get a credit for that late fee because _________ (insert fable here-- e.g., "funeral for eleven family members in fire"; "I was told the wrong day of return by clerk-- I forget her name"; "the DVD skipped and by the time I recovered from laryngitis and called you about it, it was two weeks late," etc.)".
Well, Roget spilled the beans and those excuses are now filed under bupkus, underneath Paris Hilton's membership card in Mensa. If you were to be given a break, a note would have been entered into the computer-- the one with the screen strategically placed so the employee, for the best of reasons, can see it but the customer can't. For instance-- if you, SC, could see it-- you'd notice that someone has put the word "Bubba" in your notes. In employee parlance, that means we know you're Mr. or Ms. Sumpin'-fer-Nuttin'; a chazzer. You want us to handle your habitual late fees in Enron style. Eventually, you'll run out of sympathetic ears, and will be informed that the late fees stand. Ahh, and here they come-- those six little words that you, SC, feel confident to guarantee that our subservient asses will shiver as if they'd had an encounter with a Yukon outhouse: "I'll take my business somewhere else." Gee, do you think someone else is worthy? I'd better make certain to Fed Ex a Xanax to everyone who owns a seat on the Exchange.
2. "When a copy of (insert name of current, hot demand movie here) is returned, will you please call me so I can come down and pick it up?"
Why, sure! It is totally fair to let you go home and swill on your weasel-piss beer while regally awaiting a call to let you know that the movie has arrived-- and never mind the horde encircling the registers while wringing their hands, wailing and declaring that their lives will be meaningless without getting to see the hot ticket movie. Why, they'll probably have to immigrate to Sierra Leone and start life anew while you, buttcheese, will hang on to your unyielding sense of self-entitlement that is so symptomatic of your adult onset narcissism.
And you're the same bloke who will curse me, via telephone, with the scourge of having only poison oak as toilet paper because I will not let your errant DNA check out a "Mature" rated game when he is not accompanied by a parent or guardian. It will so piss you off to have to peel your sweat pasted hide from your Naugahyde reclining bed/crumb catcher/slop jar and schlep down to the movie palace just so that the genes you allowed to escape from a bottle-- Thunderbird, that is-- can play a game and simulate what he'd like to do to his classmates, if given the chance. Permitting a "Mature" game to be made available to some sebaceous swollen juvenile merely on the say-so of a groin bubo such as yourself is totally illogical, but, hey...
3. "I don't have my account card, but here's my driver's license."
That's lovely...now here's the problem. When the account owner applied, they didn't put your name on the account. If you're not in possession of a card they entrusted to you or your ID name is not on that account, the only thing you're leaving with is a bad attitude and a tendency to refer to me by a name that in no way resembles anything found on my birth certificate. If you're eighteen, you can start an account of your own-- but five will get you ten that you've already gone that route, left it with sky high late fees, leading you to this point of mooching off someone else's good name.
------------------------------------
And thanks for the memories!
*There was a jackass who would come in every week and ask to borrow a pencil. Know what I figured out? He was copying the game cheats from our magazines.
*And there were the many who needed an ass-kicking due to their complete and abject stupidity. Oh, yes-- they returned the movie... Laid it right on the countertop, just inside the door. Why, that would be a mere four inches away from the DROP slot, see? Leaving it in there wouldn't make much sense, though, because there's no way anyone working behind the counter could miss seeing the counter drop. Nobody would be tempted to cadge a free movie, then race out the door, hey? And what else could command our attention?
Placing a sign with an arrow pointing downward couldn't fail to direct people to use the drop box, right? Yeah? Wound up looking as if we were the home office for the square Frisbee league.
*How I loved the man who called to inform me that I was closing up the store seven minutes early every night. I calmly explained that I was duly bound to abide by the time on the registers (home office uses that as a guideline as to time utilization), and, yes, there might be a discrepancy. He went into this tirade about his watch being set by the nuclear clock in Colorado, blah, blah, blah... Nothing came of it, but I wish I could have told him that everyone shopping the store seven minutes earlier each morning didn't seem to mind.
*And, finally-- returning only the extra features disc is no different than turning in an empty case. All the dumb asses who couldn't understand that returning the movie disc past the due date would still result in the accrual of late fees... It accounted for nothing to have the special effects DVD sans movie! All those who couldn't grasp that no-brainer should be pursuing a new pastime. Self-trephination is all the rage; lots of folks film themselves while performing the procedure. And ain't that show business?
Now found only in the closing credits...
Wine
I just feel the need to spew venom over the four soul-leeching years I spent as a movie minion. It just all came back to me, and it leaves me feeling mystified as to how so draconian an industry manages to remain extant.
The shit was neverending... An eternal scatological experience that must resemble what hell would look like if you could lift its bedrock and look underneath... So, now, I've a few bits of guano to fling back at the puke pies that cluttered my days and nights as if I were as much a part of their entertainment as the movies and games they jonesed after. The games people played...
1. "So-and-so said I should get a credit for that late fee because _________ (insert fable here-- e.g., "funeral for eleven family members in fire"; "I was told the wrong day of return by clerk-- I forget her name"; "the DVD skipped and by the time I recovered from laryngitis and called you about it, it was two weeks late," etc.)".
Well, Roget spilled the beans and those excuses are now filed under bupkus, underneath Paris Hilton's membership card in Mensa. If you were to be given a break, a note would have been entered into the computer-- the one with the screen strategically placed so the employee, for the best of reasons, can see it but the customer can't. For instance-- if you, SC, could see it-- you'd notice that someone has put the word "Bubba" in your notes. In employee parlance, that means we know you're Mr. or Ms. Sumpin'-fer-Nuttin'; a chazzer. You want us to handle your habitual late fees in Enron style. Eventually, you'll run out of sympathetic ears, and will be informed that the late fees stand. Ahh, and here they come-- those six little words that you, SC, feel confident to guarantee that our subservient asses will shiver as if they'd had an encounter with a Yukon outhouse: "I'll take my business somewhere else." Gee, do you think someone else is worthy? I'd better make certain to Fed Ex a Xanax to everyone who owns a seat on the Exchange.
2. "When a copy of (insert name of current, hot demand movie here) is returned, will you please call me so I can come down and pick it up?"
Why, sure! It is totally fair to let you go home and swill on your weasel-piss beer while regally awaiting a call to let you know that the movie has arrived-- and never mind the horde encircling the registers while wringing their hands, wailing and declaring that their lives will be meaningless without getting to see the hot ticket movie. Why, they'll probably have to immigrate to Sierra Leone and start life anew while you, buttcheese, will hang on to your unyielding sense of self-entitlement that is so symptomatic of your adult onset narcissism.
And you're the same bloke who will curse me, via telephone, with the scourge of having only poison oak as toilet paper because I will not let your errant DNA check out a "Mature" rated game when he is not accompanied by a parent or guardian. It will so piss you off to have to peel your sweat pasted hide from your Naugahyde reclining bed/crumb catcher/slop jar and schlep down to the movie palace just so that the genes you allowed to escape from a bottle-- Thunderbird, that is-- can play a game and simulate what he'd like to do to his classmates, if given the chance. Permitting a "Mature" game to be made available to some sebaceous swollen juvenile merely on the say-so of a groin bubo such as yourself is totally illogical, but, hey...
3. "I don't have my account card, but here's my driver's license."
That's lovely...now here's the problem. When the account owner applied, they didn't put your name on the account. If you're not in possession of a card they entrusted to you or your ID name is not on that account, the only thing you're leaving with is a bad attitude and a tendency to refer to me by a name that in no way resembles anything found on my birth certificate. If you're eighteen, you can start an account of your own-- but five will get you ten that you've already gone that route, left it with sky high late fees, leading you to this point of mooching off someone else's good name.
------------------------------------
And thanks for the memories!
*There was a jackass who would come in every week and ask to borrow a pencil. Know what I figured out? He was copying the game cheats from our magazines.
*And there were the many who needed an ass-kicking due to their complete and abject stupidity. Oh, yes-- they returned the movie... Laid it right on the countertop, just inside the door. Why, that would be a mere four inches away from the DROP slot, see? Leaving it in there wouldn't make much sense, though, because there's no way anyone working behind the counter could miss seeing the counter drop. Nobody would be tempted to cadge a free movie, then race out the door, hey? And what else could command our attention?
Placing a sign with an arrow pointing downward couldn't fail to direct people to use the drop box, right? Yeah? Wound up looking as if we were the home office for the square Frisbee league.
*How I loved the man who called to inform me that I was closing up the store seven minutes early every night. I calmly explained that I was duly bound to abide by the time on the registers (home office uses that as a guideline as to time utilization), and, yes, there might be a discrepancy. He went into this tirade about his watch being set by the nuclear clock in Colorado, blah, blah, blah... Nothing came of it, but I wish I could have told him that everyone shopping the store seven minutes earlier each morning didn't seem to mind.
*And, finally-- returning only the extra features disc is no different than turning in an empty case. All the dumb asses who couldn't understand that returning the movie disc past the due date would still result in the accrual of late fees... It accounted for nothing to have the special effects DVD sans movie! All those who couldn't grasp that no-brainer should be pursuing a new pastime. Self-trephination is all the rage; lots of folks film themselves while performing the procedure. And ain't that show business?
Now found only in the closing credits...
Wine
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