Get out! GET OUT!

Working in the video store was always a challenge at both ends of the day. If you came in three hours early to get work done, you had to hide so no one could see you were in the store because even hours before opening, people would be dropping by thinking they could get inside and rent films. The other end of the day involved getting people to leave the store. I don't know why people who likely leave their own jobs as soon as humanly possible think that at ten pm am entire staff of video workers doesn't want to get home at least as badly as they do. 

To get rid of hangers in who thought they had a god given right to keep us work as long as they wanted for a 1.99$ rental, we came up with some techniques to not so subtly get them the hell out.     

We did the typical retail tricks like vacuuming the floors and shutting down the lights but those things don't deter many. Finally we decided to use the thing they came for against them. Videos. 

We would put selected videos on and time them to be at a certain point ten minutes before the store closed. "The miracle of plastic surgery" would be at the clip where the woman's face is lifted off like an orange peel, "reanimator" has a scene at the where a body puts its decapitated head between the legs of a college girl for oral sex purposes. The customers would look at the multiple screens not believing it would happen, but when it did, they ran out screaming. 

But the one thing no one was immune to and cleared out everyone without exception was 70s ABBA videos. 

Fuzzy Mandingos

Many years ago, I used to work at a large video rental store on Newbury Street, Boston (USA). The clientele was challenging at times to say the least. This was the start of video renting and films costs anywhere from 40 – 200$ depending on how much the studios wanted to stick it to the stores. You actually dealt directly with the studios to get videos and they would even let you special order some films they had lying around and not officially released. A blessing... and a curse as one member of the video store decided she absolutely wanted to copy a new copy of a “classic” film. Her plan? Make the store buy a new copy for her, then return it and get her money back after copying it. I made her keep it of course... how many copies of certain films can one store carry?

The resulting conversation as she made her attempt, to the best of my memory:

“HEY! YOU! Manager! I need to talk to you!”
“Yes... what seems to be the problem?”
“My Mandingo is FUZZY!”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me! My Mandingo is FUZZY!”
“Maybe you would like to rephrase that...”
“My Mandingo is FUZZY!”
“Maybe you should trim it then.”
“You don't think it's Fuzzy do you? Let me show you...” and she reached into her pants and I expected the worse. Luckily, it was just the video she wanted to return.

Of course, during this exchange, a former friend of mine was not so discreetly rolling on the floor, slamming himself against the wall and pointing at her.

She never tried the same thing with “Mandinga”, the “female Mandingo” as the advertisement called it. maybe only the males get fuzzy.