Working at a video store

[Marcus]

How many people here have worked (or do work) at a video store?

I spent last summer at a Rogers video and it was fantastic. Free rentals are an obvious perk, but what else have people here enjoyed about working in a movie heavy environment?

I find the job tends to attract people who love to discuss movies, so there's always an intresting discussion or game going on behind the counter. (Everything from Six Degrees to scavanger hunts around the store with clues hidden inside DVD cases - each clue sending you to a different movie around the store.)

Or what about bad experiances? A friend of mine had to deal with half eaten chicken wings inside the night return box. Someone else I know had a VHS tape filled with peanut butter. (obviously a while ago.)

[j7wild]

I own several electronics stores with a general titles video rental section and an Adult titles video rental section;

I cannot even start on what we find inside those adult video movie rental cases and on the tapes and the dvds itself.

We started handling all adult video returns with latex gloves about 7 years ago!!

[Marcus]

I own several electronics stores with a general titles video rental section and an Adult titles video rental section;

I cannot even start on what we find inside those adult video movie rental cases and on the tapes and the dvds itself.

We started handling all adult video returns with latex gloves about 7 years ago!!

Wonderful

You'd think if people were going to BORROW adult material they'd be a little considerate. (but that would assume everyone is sane.)

[wirm]

I own several electronics stores with a general titles video rental section and an Adult titles video rental section;

I cannot even start on what we find inside those adult video movie rental cases and on the tapes and the dvds itself.

We started handling all adult video returns with latex gloves about 7 years ago!!

What? how do you find time to surf the web all day?

I spent one summer working at Hollywood Videos and nearly 9 months working at Blockbuster video (about 4 years apart). I've actually found that many of my coworkers weren't that into the movies. It's not like they didn't like them. They used their free rentals. It's just that they didn't discuss the movies at all.

I've moved on, so no more free rentals

[j7wild]

What? how do you find time to surf the web all day?

Been in the business for 16 years;

I have managers and assistant managers that mind the stores for me along with an excellent staff of customer service associates and cashiers and clerks and accountants.

I pretty much just go in every other day to check on things.

[Jake]

I actually applied for jobs at my local Hollywood Video and Blockbuster, ironically I got calls from both one day after my current employer recruited me to securities research.

[Stormwalker]

i worked at a video ezy store (largest rental chain in australia)

was pretty much the manager there for about the last three months... lots of perks.. free movies..

the downside.. bad customers, you wouldnt believe how many didnt pay fines, or would get cranky because as a employee it was required to ask them if they were even aware they had a fine in the first place...

since then i have moved into radio. (thank christ)... and i still work closely with my ex video stores... i doubled their revenue in a week a couple of months ago by creating a amnesty campaign... needless to say i prefer being in management and marketing as opposed to working behind the counter

[Marcus]

ahhh LATE FEES. People would come in and whine "BLOCKBUSTER doesn't have any late fees anymore, you know" (not totally true, they have LESS late fees but it's a tricky system.)

Every time I wanted to say "Yeah we have a no late fees program too - it's called bring you damn movies back on time!!"

We had a few promotions for selling coupon books (basically, guarentee another $20 of business from them by paying it up front for some free movie coupons and such. it was a good deal if you rented maybe 3 times a month.) We were aloud to "make late fees disappear" if they bought a book (within reason)

Other customer pet peeves:

"DO YOU HAVE THIS NEW RELEASE IN VCR?!"
"VHS? no. it's a new release, we don't get vhs tapes anymore."
"WHY NOT?!?!?!?"
"...it's been obsolete for years? DVD players almost come free in the mail, it's not that hard."


"Do you have this in full screen?"
"yeah at the bottom of the shelf somewhere"
"oh, good! I hate it when the top and bottom are all cut off."

we had a poster for explaining that one...but most of the time people wouldn't listen. Made me so mad, I was always so happy when a release had no fullscreen disc.

[DVDRick]

When I was young, my dreamjob was to work in a video store. But I never had the chance to work there (if your parents have a hotel, you help out there instead of doing the low payed videostore stuff).

But I went thousands of times to a video-store in my town.
We had one store, where the owner was a real movie lover. He always discussed with the customers if they liked the movies and all that. He knew everything, every release date, EVERYTHING. It was a dream to talk about movies with him. But ~10 years ago, a bigger store opened and he had to close his "little" store, because he couldnt compete with the larger store at all (prize & amount of movies).
Now, we have a large store where the owner has absolutely no heart for movies (he is gay, really (no offense to gay people)). All the people that work there, just do their job. No little talk, no discussion, no extra time for movies... its sad.
I rarely go their anymore, maybe one time a year.


Also for the "adult" rental stuff, I think that is really disgusting. I mean, as a employee, you know exactly what kind of preferences the customer has. I wouldnt want to take the disc/tape back...

[wirm]

That Widescreen/Fullscreen thing was kind of annoying after a while. I tried to explain what the black bars are for, but they just don't get it.

Actually, my DVD player only plays stuff in fullscreen for some reason. Even the widescreen movies. Maybe there's a button I need to hit.

[j7wild]

check your settings under setup...



Yup people still don't understand WS and FS; I had a lady the other day arguing that WS is robbing her of the entire picture and why is WS DVD priced lower than FS when it's not showing the entire picture?

She was a real Beeyach!! Argued for 30 minutes as IF I made the movie and didn't buy or rent anything!!

[Marcus]

oh - another fun thing. account notes.

this is probably true for most video stores, when you have an account, they have your phone number, name, credit card incase you never return the movies...stuff like that. There's also a place for notes we can add. stuff like "give them a free rental next time, because [reason]" or "brother cannot rent on the account, check ID."

You can imagine the kind of stuff that might show up if you're rude to the employees. Or sometimes we'd just leave funny messages and quotes to each other on the accounts of regulars.

[j7wild]

It gets hot here in the Summer and people leave their movies in the car and some customers have actually returned the video tapes with the cases all melted;

then they tried to pull a fast one by saying that the tapes were like that when they checked them out.

Yeah right!!

[Marcus]

It gets hot here in the Summer and people leave their movies in the car and some customers have actually returned the video tapes with the cases all melted;

then they tried to pull a fast one by saying that the tapes were like that when they checked them out.

Yeah right!!

"yeah it was broken when I rented it."

"...it's 2 days late."

"I uhh..."

We had a few customers who would NEVER return tapes on time. We called every second day when tapes were late, as a friendly reminder and this one lady would always keep them, she knew they were late.

after 30 days, we forward accounts to a collections agency. they can't rent, and their credit rating is all messed up until they pay for our lost DVDs. The lady understood the system and always paid for the DVDs and cleared her name....

It would be much less expensive to just buy them straight out

Worst late list call I had to make, I got an answer (usually we get a machine)

"Hello, Video store calling just to remind you that you have a couple of XBox games that are 8 days overdue."

"oh sh*t which ones are they?"

"Halo 2 and GTA San Andres"

"This isn't Bill - it's his friend Ted."

"oh, sorry - I thought I was talking to Bill. Could you maybe pass the message along to him?"

"He was in an accident and he's in the hospital. I'm just at his house to grab some of his things."

"ohh....well tell you what - you wanna maybe bring his Xbox games back? I'll see what I can do about the late fees once he's out of the hospital but if they keep piling up it's gonna be harder."

games were back that afternoon but I dunno if we never heard from the guy after that. It's very likely he moved or stopped renting or I just never was around when he rented, but it's still pretty bad.