Confessions of a Video Store Clerk

MY FIRST DAY AS A CLERK




‘This is the designated serving zone,’ the Manager said pointing to a small area between the cash register and the Coke fridge. ‘Never stray from the designated serving zone when you have customers in the store.’

The Manager handed me a piece of paper and said: ‘These are the rules! Read them. Digest them. I have to run over to the bank, but Craig will teach you the right way to serve customers.’

Craig, an overweight 33 year old, introduced himself.

As the Manager left the store I looked at the list of rules and began to wonder whether he meant ‘digest’ in the sense that I should learn and understand the rules or ‘digest’ in the sense that I should actually eat the list of rules Mission Impossible style before it self destructs. I liked the intrigue and excitement attached with the later choice but instead chose to do neither and placed the list of rules in my pocket.

My already high excitement levels soon piqued when an actual real life video store customer came to the counter carrying a collection of actual honest-to-God videos.
‘I’m a clerk,’ I told myself - can it get any better than this?

Craig stepped forward to show me the ropes and I fell in behind watching eagerly.

The customer, who looked to be aged in his late sixties, threw the movies onto the counter with a grunt and flung his membership card at Craig so that it actually skidded across the counter and fell to the floor.

Craig did not look happy.
‘That will be seven dollars fifty,’ Craig said.
‘Surly Man’ reached in to his pocket and dropped a handful of coins on the counter, many of which also fell to the floor.
After picking up the coins and counting them, Craig announced to Surly Man, ‘You are thirty cents short.’ Surly man shrugged and went to grab the videos. ‘Not so fast,’ Craig warned. ‘You are thirty cents short.’ Surly Man finally became vocal and started swearing at Craig.

‘Oh this is good,’ I thought to myself – it really can get better!

After a fun exchange climaxing with Surly Man attempting to snatch the videos from Craig, it looked like the excitement was over as Surly Man stormed from the store empty handed. My momentary sadness soon subsided when, seconds later, Surly Man returned from the car park clutching a handful of fifty-dollar notes. ‘Is that what you want – eh fat boy?’ he said waving the money in Craig’s face.

I got the distinct impression that Craig didn’t take kindly to being called fat. His face began to redden as he told Surly Man to ‘get the hell out of the store.’ Surly Man fired a few more insults Craig’s way before leaving the store. To my great surprise, Craig followed him out to the car park. Still standing in the designated serving zone, I had a great view of their car park altercation through the open door. Surly Man finally crossed the line with his third and final ‘fat boy’ comment and Craig knocked the old person onto his ass.

He might not have gotten his movies, but Surly Man did leave with a broken nose – all for the sake of thirty cents.

So that’s the correct way to serve a customer. I made a mental note.

Soon after, the Manager returned from the bank. After briefly showing me how to lock up the store, he and Craig left. I was on my own for the remainder of the night.

After a solid five minutes of obeying the rules, I got sick of standing behind the register in the designated serving zone. I decided to throw caution to the wind, and went to sit on the stool by the returns counter. I felt like such a rebel.

For some reason, Craig had tuned the radio in to an easy listening channel and the radio presenter announced that a Celine Dion song marathon was about to begin. I began to panic when I realised that no one had taken the time to show me where the radio was located. I turned the store upside down but could not seem to find it. After an hour of searching, I began to think that perhaps the radio existed in an alternate reality or was equipped with some form of top-secret Government cloaking device. Because You Loved Me blasted through the speakers and I swear to God that Celine Dion had just started the song with the lyric ‘For all the times you stirred my meat.’ Actually, come to think of it, a few minutes earlier when I was attempting to unscrew a speaker from the wall in order to try and track the cords through the wall cavity, the Titanic song was on and Celine had sang, ‘I believe that the hot dogs go on’. I started concocting extravagant conspiracy theories in my head where Celine Dion was actually in a secret partnership with the Meat Federation and that she was trying to subliminally extol the virtues of a carnivorous diet through her painfully irritating music.

Mid-way through my meat scandal musings a middle-aged woman strolled up to the returns counter. Didn’t she realise it wasn’t the designated serving zone?
This woman sported a rather nasty looking she-mullet - her hair was short and spiky on the top and sides yet she had a long ponytail at the back.

I focused my attention on the wall behind her so I didn’t end up staring at the hideous she-mullet. ‘Can I help you?’ I asked, trying ever so hard to sound as though I could indeed ‘help’ someone when in fact I had only received ten minutes of interrupted training earlier that day. At this point, I still wasn’t even sure if I understood how to properly set the security alarm and I briefly entertained the thought of sleeping there overnight.

I was soon broken from my thoughts when ‘Mullet Woman’ actually answered. ‘Yes’.
Oh, Crap!

‘I’m looking for a movie of girls in prison,’ she said.
‘Oh, like the TV show Prisoner?’ I asked.
Mullet Woman leaned in towards me and looked around the store conspiratorially to ensure no one else was looking and then she whispered, ‘No, I want an adult movie with girls-in-prison.’ She nodded her head and raised the two blue pencil lines that, I can only assume, used to be eyebrows as she mouthed the final three words.
‘Oh, okay, I’m not sure if we have anything like that,’ I said before sending her off to the rather flimsily constructed Adult section which, ironically, butted up against the Children’s section.

As Mullet Woman entertained herself, I sat back down on my momentarily vacated stool and, being the intellectual thinker that I am, began to ponder the more important issues of the world. ‘I wonder who really was the boss?’ I asked myself. ‘Clearly it wasn’t Jonathan or Sam, but was it really Tony?’

Looking up I noticed that Mullet Woman was heading my way with an armload of porno-pickings and I realised that I must reach a decision…fast.
I decided that it had to be Mona, Angela’s free spirited mother. Ah Mona, you and your shameless sex crazed antics.

Mullet Woman placed her movies on the counter and said, ‘I’m not a lesbian ya know.’
I just stood there and looked at her for a second, not blinking.
‘I just really like seeing young girls in prison, ya know. They got no one there to comfort them ya know, so they turn to each other for comfort and understanding…ya know?’

‘Not really,’ I replied. ‘I’m new.’
I carefully placed Lesbo Island, Girl on Girl Gangbang IV and Vagina Valley into a plastic bag and bid Mullet Woman a good night.

I don’t care what you say, that Mullet Woman definitely isn’t a lesbian…ya know?

An hour later, I realised that the night was really beginning to drag. I decided to watch a video in order to pass the time. Watching videos on shift is a flagrant disregard of rule number three on the ‘what not to do list’ the Manager had given me earlier that day.
Having already broken rule number one – ‘Don’t stray from the designated serving zone’, and rule number two – ‘No sitting down on the job’, I crossed of number three with glee and began to make silent plans to work on number four. Unfortunately, I didn’t know any satanic rituals off the top of my head and decided to earmark that for another day.

I trawled the shelves for a movie to watch and settled on one called Shooting Fish but I soon get bored of it when I realised the film didn’t involve shooting or fish, let alone the shooting of fish as was promised in the misleading title. Choosing a movie is hard enough without all the misleading titles that exist. For example, the movies Snatch, Shaft and Dick are in fact NOT about male and female genitalia. And as for The Cider House Rules, well, I have seen it and I can assure you that it really does NOT.

A couple of films that do live up to their titles are Face/Off in which the characters do indeed take their faces off and Eight Heads in a Duffel Bag which, you guessed it, is really about a set of eight severed heads being housed in a bag of the variety, duffel.

The next customer through the door was one who was to afford me years upon years of cheap laughs.

A man of about 30 approached the counter and said, ‘I don’t have my membership card, can I still rent?’
‘Sure,’ I replied. ‘I can look your membership up by your name.’ See, I had remembered something from my training.
‘It’s Roger Appiness,’ he said.
It sounded like he was saying the word ‘happiness’ but without the ‘h’.
I typed it into the computer but nothing came up so I asked him how it was spelled.
‘How is that spelled,’ I said to the man.
‘A-P-E-N-I-S,’ he replied.
‘I’m sorry, a what now?’
‘A-pen-ess,’ he repeated mouthing each syllable slowly as though I was either hard of hearing or ‘special needs’.
I looked at the computer screen and there was his name ‘Roger Apenis’.
He says ‘a-pen-ess’ but in reality this guy has a dick for a surname, and, coupled with his first name, I couldn’t help but find that to be the funniest thing I had heard all night.

I remember being taught in school that surnames originated as labels to tell what job each family held, for instance, the Bakers’ where indeed a family of bakers and the Smiths’ were actually smiths.

I wondered what Mr Apenis’s ancestors used to do for a living. I decided that they were probably in some form of partnership with the Hancock’s.

After Mr Apenis left the store, I did a few random searches on the computer to see if any other humorous names existed on our member database.
I found a Ronald McDonald, a Felicity Beaver and a Jack Bone before I gave up and began to chase a moth around the store with a rolled up poster.

I wondered what Mullet Woman was doing at that moment. Probably committing a crime somewhere in the hopes of being sent to an all girl prison I decided.