A random (and typical) night at my old job

For those of you who personally know me, you know that I worked at an unnameable video rental store for a couple years. Well, for everyone who hasn't worked at a video store, let me tell you, it attracts some weirdos, and I mean that as a weirdo myself. But seriously, I had a (male) stalker before I left, it's actually one of the reasons I quit working there in the first place. That, you know, and the really crappy pay.

I was afraid I'd get off work and he'd be in the parking lot, leaning against my car and hoping he'd get the chance to wear my face as a mask.

So anyway, the highlights of work tonight:

It was a regular kind of Monday night. Mondays are usually pretty quiet, and tonight was no exception. I like the quiet nights because it gives me time to organize movies and talk about movies with customers. On the whole, the citizens are pretty predictable when it comes to their taste in movies. Nonetheless, I do sometimes run into some characters.

Around 8:00, this guy walks in and wants to make sure his account is clear so he can rent movies. He's pretty young, and as I'm checking his account I see that he's 18. He's got some white crusty stuff on his upper lip, and as bad as this sounds I think it was actually toothpaste. Anyway, his account is clear so I let him loose on the store. He looks around for a while and then comes to the front counter with Terminator 2 and Terminator 3. These are both older movies, and since most people come into the store looking for the new movies, I assume that he had purposefully sought these movies out. Imagine, someone intentionally rented Terminator 3! Sorry.

My theory proved correct when he started up a 10 minute monologue about time travel and how much he loves Terminator. I say monologue because I didn't contribute to the conversation, and I found that if I didn't talk he would just keep talking.

He said he couldn't understand why Arnold was bad in the first movie and good in the second one, and I tried my damndest to give him a look that said, "I don't give a crap about John Connor." And he went on.

He told me he had just watched the Back to the Future movies as if that counted for something, as if watching Back to the Future could unlock the secrets of the Terminator films. It was actually painful, you know, watching this kid unleash his verbal diarrhea and stumble over his words. Finally, though, I got the guy out of the store.

A few minutes later, a middle-aged woman comes to the counter holding the box for Lost Highway and asks me to explain what the film is about. I felt like George W. at a spelling bee. I stumbled over my words and picked phrases at random, hoping they would inspire her to rent the movie. For whatever reason, either my comments or some other external factor, she ended up renting it.