Random Thoughts From A Video Store Clerk, Part 2

Click here for Part 1.

Part 2: Distractions and Not-so-Friendly Reminders

There are a lot of monotonous things that are starting to get to me.

First off, we have a promo video that we play all day long while working. It shows promos for movies coming out in that period… and it shows them over and over again. I pretty much have the promos for The Eye, Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins, Witless Protection, Semi-Pro, and Jumper memorized word-for-word. The sad part is none of those are even good movies. The even sadder part is that I have been catching myself watch them when they come on the screen. I’ve seen them a thousand times now. But I just have to watch them when they come on for some reason. I think I’m losing my soul maybe. They also play these music videos between the promos. My favorite one features a bunch of cartoon characters dancing around to some song called “Let’s Save the World.” I think it’s about being green and picking up trash or something. All I know is that it’s catchy, has cartoon characters dancing, and it makes me happy. There’s also this Justin Timberlake song that plays between promos that’s starting to get ingrained in my mind. Like I said before, I think that I’m losing my soul.

When the promos started to get to me on Monday night, I begin to start to focus on other things, like putting more DVDs up on the wall, checking my legs for ants, and emptying out the drop box.

My co-worker is taking some module tests that we are all required to take in order to complete our training and, thus, keep our jobs. I never took them last summer because it was just a summer job. Sure, I started on them, but after a while, my boss just told me to not worry about it. My new manager seems to have the same idea this summer. Let’s just say I’m not planning on completing the tests. That may change, but for right now, that’s the state of mind that I’m in. Anyways, my co-worker was taking them and was having a hell of a time with them. From what I remember, they’re pretty hard and she was letting me know every chance she got. I really like this particular co-worker (I even helped train her last summer as she was my replacement when I left to go back to school) but man… she likes to talk. And when things are not going good for her, she likes to let you know. I swear to God her mouth did not stop for the four hours we worked together. She told me every question she had. She asked me if I knew what it was asking her. No, I didn’t. I never did. But, she would always ask. She even called the manager up for the answer to one of the questions that she just couldn’t figure out.

Between her constant talking, the promos, and the ants, I was starting to feel a little funny in the head. I decided to go and put up some of the gallery rentals (which is the older films that we put in the rows in the middle of the store). As I go through the gallery rentals section, I keep running into films that Stan Winston was involved in, whether it was his directorial debut Pumpkinhead or special effects fare like Batman Returns and Jurassic Park III. Every time I go past one of these films, I find myself stopping and looking at them for some time. I’m pretty surprised at how upset I am that Stan Winston died the other day. He was just one of those people that you wouldn’t think of leaving this world and it still doesn’t seem real. Unlike most people in the realm of Hollywood, he was one of those people that were so special, unique, and creative and that’s just horribly painful to admit that he’s gone. This guy was an icon. He literally made movie magic with his make-up and special effects. But the most painful part is that, despite all his wonderful, influential creations, the average joe off the street wouldn’t know his name. Yet they know all about Lindsay Lohan and all those other tabloid celebrities. It just makes me all sick inside.

These aren’t the only items in the store that are making me upset.

Flash forward a few hours and I’m standing in the office in the back of the store. We were late closing due to customers coming in at the last minute and giving my fretful co-worker one of those infamous transactions that just won’t go through. She’s now counting her money and putting together the deposit for the night. As she does so, she narrates everything she does, much like earlier when she was narrating her testing status with the modules. I just mute it out, looking forward at a framed certificate on the wall of the tiny, cramped office.

It’s a certificate for my last manager completing her training to become a manager.

I’m not sure how much of this story I want to put out on the Internet because its kind of personal and it’s about someone who I consider my friend. However, since I’m not giving her name or our store number / location, I figure it’s okay to talk about some of it. I haven’t been able to talk to anyone about this yet and I just feel like putting it down in some manner or fashion. I guess you could call it venting.

Earlier this year, I came into the store to find out that my last manager had left, accepting a job at a higher paying facility. I wasn’t very happy about this because not only was my guaranteed job for the next summer now in jeopardy but I wouldn’t get to work under some one that I considered my friend anymore. Well, things ended up working out for me and I got my job back. When I started work again, I asked one of my co-workers if they had heard anything from the old manager. The update was not a good one. Apparently, she had left her higher paying job and was off on drugs somewhere. There was also a rumor that she may or may not have gotten pregnant.

Being a manager for the Gallery doesn’t seem like it’s an easy job. These people work long hours, opening for most of the week. When they’re off duty, they have to take constant calls from those working to help with that difficult computer system I keep talking about. My old manager always seemed to be exhausted but, despite this, she always had a smile on her face and was as jovial as possible. No matter how bad things got at the store or how stressful the shift was, she always tended to look on the bright side of things and cracked a joke.

She took a chance with me. When I came into the store for my interview the summer before, I had never even had a job before. I didn’t know what I was doing at all. My first week was awful. I couldn’t do anything right. If I were her, I would have probably let me go. Despite all this, she was encouraging. No matter what, she always told me I was doing a good job. Eventually, I got the hang of things and it all worked out. As we continued to work together, we became friends. She made work fun to come to. She let me do crazy things like putting a note on my chest that said, “If you don’t buy all these candy suckers from me I will be fired tomorrow,” because she saw the humor in it. She got me to bring my Scene It DVD game up to play with the customers, giving them a free Coke or rental if they got the question right. She was the best boss I could have for my first job… if any job at that.

After I left the Gallery in August, I would come back to visit with the co-workers that I considered my friends. One of the last times I saw my old manager was back in October. I came into the store and we started to catch up. It was during this visit that she admitted to me that she had been diagnosed with depression and was now on medication. Despite all that she went through day in and day out, I would have never guessed the toll that everything was having on her. She just seemed so… happy and content. When I left, she was having trouble finding a replacement. It meant that she was going to have to work more hours herself. Despite all this, she convinced me that it would be all right, to go ahead and go. She even threw me a goodbye party. So when she told me that she was suffering from depression, you can imagine that I felt like shit for leaving her like that, even if she knew when I started that I was going to go in August due to school. However, before I left the store that day of my visit, she once again convinced me that the medication they had put her on had made her happier than she had ever been before. She said that everything was fine now.

When I came in to work yesterday, my new manager informed me that my old manager had come by for a little bit earlier that day. With the knowledge of her problems fresh in my mind, I somewhat reluctantly asked how she was and what she said. My new manager said that she had told my old manager that she had re-hired me. To this, my old manager had replied, “He’s the best.”

I tried to not show my devastation.

Hours before I start to think about all of this again, I’m standing back behind the counter with my co-worker who is still narrating her module taking difficulty. The promos are still going on in the background. The ants are still on my legs my mind says. The store is empty. I’m restless. I’m losing my mind.

Finally, I ask if we can change the promo DVD out for a Kid’s movie for the last hour of work. It was something that my last manager would do, even though we’re not really supposed to do it. My co-worker says that that is fine and I go off to look through the very out of order Kid’s section for something new to listen to (note: it doesn’t matter how much you fix this section up, the kids will always mess it up again). Finally, I settle on D2: The Mighty Ducks, which was a childhood favorite of mine. We don’t really watch the movie. Mostly, it’s just to have something new to listen to. Every now and then, I’ll glance up and watch it when the store’s dead. For the most part, it helps me just relax a little for the last hour of work.

With nostalgic sounds and lines of dialogue bouncing around in my eardrums, I ring the last few customers up. They usually only get one or two movies this time of night. They don’t know how much these kinds of transactions hurt our units per transactions. They don’t know how much our jobs depend on those. But I’ve reached my new understanding by this point; so I try and not let it bother me as much as it usually does.

It’s Monday night, so we have to put the new releases up before we leave for Tuesday morning. My co-worker and I start to do this about twenty minutes before we close. As I put the movies up, I forget about my reoccurring obsession with the possibility of ants still on my legs. I forget about my co-worker’s constant gripping about the modules. Emilio Estevez is on the TV talking, but I don’t hear him either.

No, my mind is with a certain transaction that occurred earlier that night. After all, that’s the point of this whole story to begin with.

Stay tuned for the climatic Part 3 and 4 where I discuss food, females, and some existential moments at work.