handfuls of tags and then just stick them back under any old movie, or they'll wander around with boxes in their hands, deep in Porn Trance. As a new box catches their eyes, they'll pick it up and put the old box in its place, leaving us with a daisy chain of misplaced boxes to untangle. We catch and fix stuff as best we can, but we're only human. Mr. Hazy doesn't check the title on the tag against the title on the box because he can't, so sometimes what he has is just a random collection of movies for us to pull.
Porn hits a childlike, needy place in many (if not most) of our renters. They were promised a treat and they want it now and if it's already been given away to one of the other kids or not quite the right flavor, some of the guys look like they're going to burst right into tears. Mr. Hazy doesn't look like he's going to cry, but he gets really, really pissed if one of his six(!) rentals for the evening turns out to be the wrong one, and he can really make a stink.
Complicating the problem is the fact that we have several regulars who try to take dirtbag advantage of the fact that we don't make customers pay for incorrect videos. Suddenly we'll see a sudden upswing in a customer getting the "wrong" videos and it's time to put a note on the guy's account and double-check every single frigging thing he checks out every single time so he knows we're on to him.
Mr. Hazy was the first customer I blew my cool with -- the only one who's really gotten me angry enough to show it, actually. He'd already come in several times on my watch and turned in the "wrong" movies and this time he said that something like four of the six were wrong and he shouldn't have to pay for them and on top of that he started yelling at me for whoever had so screwed up his rental.
I pointed out that he had a suspiciously high incident of "clerk mistakes" and he slipped and said he hadn't done that in weeks and it ended with me putting each new tape in his face and saying "Is this the correct tape?" before slamming it onto the counter. My fellow clerk Jonathan, who knew that I don't drink or smoke, suggested I take a break and have a beer and a cigarette.
Casey later theorized that Mr. Hazy simply couldn't read, which made me go easier on him and try to feel more charitable, though by then we were sworn enemies.
Actually, as I said, he's simply visually impaired and too vain -- or something -- to wear his eyeglasses. Which is an interesting lesson in vanity, I think. He didn't want us to know he needs glasses, so one of us assumed he was a lying cheating dirtbag and another assumed he was illiterate. If he'd just said he had sight problems in the first place, we'd have put a note on his file and given him all the extra help he needed. Now we know, and we do.
Store Meeting
We had a staff meeting this Monday night. Meetings start, of course, after we close, which is 11 p.m. This one went until 1:30 (we get time and a half and pizza. Whee!) and of course I was Tuesday morning's opener.
The meeting actually went very well. It's a good, fun crew right now so everyone was pretty cheerful about it, and it looks like we might actually get a workable DVD storage system.
I just thought I'd mention it because we spent a good 15 minutes discussing how publicly a guy has to be masturbating before we can bust him. Obviously, if he whips it out we call the police. Hands down the front of his sweatpants is at least a visit from the Voice of God mic, and a call to the police if we feel like it. (Almost all whackers wear sweatpants. Some of the clerks argue that it's a symptom of having given up on the rules of society, but I think it's simply the easy access.)
Then we got into grayer areas. Specifically, guys who masturbate through their pockets. The evening shift is being plagued by a regular who gropes himself through his khakis. We actually had a discussion on how actively a guy's hand has to be in his pocket
Porn hits a childlike, needy place in many (if not most) of our renters. They were promised a treat and they want it now and if it's already been given away to one of the other kids or not quite the right flavor, some of the guys look like they're going to burst right into tears. Mr. Hazy doesn't look like he's going to cry, but he gets really, really pissed if one of his six(!) rentals for the evening turns out to be the wrong one, and he can really make a stink.
Complicating the problem is the fact that we have several regulars who try to take dirtbag advantage of the fact that we don't make customers pay for incorrect videos. Suddenly we'll see a sudden upswing in a customer getting the "wrong" videos and it's time to put a note on the guy's account and double-check every single frigging thing he checks out every single time so he knows we're on to him.
Mr. Hazy was the first customer I blew my cool with -- the only one who's really gotten me angry enough to show it, actually. He'd already come in several times on my watch and turned in the "wrong" movies and this time he said that something like four of the six were wrong and he shouldn't have to pay for them and on top of that he started yelling at me for whoever had so screwed up his rental.
I pointed out that he had a suspiciously high incident of "clerk mistakes" and he slipped and said he hadn't done that in weeks and it ended with me putting each new tape in his face and saying "Is this the correct tape?" before slamming it onto the counter. My fellow clerk Jonathan, who knew that I don't drink or smoke, suggested I take a break and have a beer and a cigarette.
Casey later theorized that Mr. Hazy simply couldn't read, which made me go easier on him and try to feel more charitable, though by then we were sworn enemies.
Actually, as I said, he's simply visually impaired and too vain -- or something -- to wear his eyeglasses. Which is an interesting lesson in vanity, I think. He didn't want us to know he needs glasses, so one of us assumed he was a lying cheating dirtbag and another assumed he was illiterate. If he'd just said he had sight problems in the first place, we'd have put a note on his file and given him all the extra help he needed. Now we know, and we do.
Store Meeting
We had a staff meeting this Monday night. Meetings start, of course, after we close, which is 11 p.m. This one went until 1:30 (we get time and a half and pizza. Whee!) and of course I was Tuesday morning's opener.
The meeting actually went very well. It's a good, fun crew right now so everyone was pretty cheerful about it, and it looks like we might actually get a workable DVD storage system.
I just thought I'd mention it because we spent a good 15 minutes discussing how publicly a guy has to be masturbating before we can bust him. Obviously, if he whips it out we call the police. Hands down the front of his sweatpants is at least a visit from the Voice of God mic, and a call to the police if we feel like it. (Almost all whackers wear sweatpants. Some of the clerks argue that it's a symptom of having given up on the rules of society, but I think it's simply the easy access.)
Then we got into grayer areas. Specifically, guys who masturbate through their pockets. The evening shift is being plagued by a regular who gropes himself through his khakis. We actually had a discussion on how actively a guy's hand has to be in his pocket
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