Introduction
I was earning a flat $3.00 an hour at my Funland Video part-time job, storing up paychecks hoping to buy a car one day. This was back when empty VHS tape boxes were displayed behind a counter. Beta had recently been discontinued, but we still had some in a small, shameful section.
I was embarrassed to tell people where I worked, partly because of the name of the store, and partly because they ran a TV advertisement with an annoying jingle followed by an ecstatic announcer shouting “Funland Video! The best selection of VHS rentals for the dynamic person on the go!”
Customers would have to ask to examine the empty box, as the actual tapes themselves were stored under the counter to prevent presumed theft. After all, these tapes cost a lot of money. If an unlucky customer were to lose or, gasp, steal one, they would have to pay a ridiculous sum of money, something like $80-$100 plus any late fees which were incurred on a daily basis if they were irresponsible enough to also return it past the 1-day rental period (3 days if they had paid a higher rate).
My Job Duties
I would attend to the customers by standing behind the long counter while they pointed out the box they wanted. Then I would hand it to them. If they decided against that selection, they would wait until I had finished with whatever customers were waiting and then ask for an alternate box, which I would cheerfully retrieve. If they decided against that one, most of them became highly apologetic and seemingly embarrassed when asking for a third.
There was a perception that if the customer looked at the first two boxes and still couldn’t decide, they were either troublemakers or idiots. After all, to locate a box, if we didn’t readily know which shelf it was on, we would have to refer to a thick black three ring binder and look down the handwritten alphabetical list for the number the box corresponded with it.
If the box was on the top shelf, we would have to move the step ladder over to reach it. If they were bold enough to ask for a third and didn’t want that one, they were done. No more browsing. Not because of any policy on our part, but because of a sort of implicit understanding, enforced by self-policing.
Treatment of Customers
There might be some people willing to ask for four movie boxes, but almost everyone recognized that it was unreasonable, greedy and rude to be so demanding. From a customer standpoint, browsing was an exercise in tedium and a series of decisions about how inherently worthy they were as people, or how demanding they were willing to be.
As far as I remember, Blockbuster Video, in the form where the boxes were out on easy-access floor display, allowing for endless browsing, did not yet exist. We, or other video stores like us, were the only game in town and customers didn’t know any better. They didn’t revolt against the infantile way they were being treated.
Another one of my duties was to ring them up. I would place the VHS in a grey plastic container, as no one was allowed to take home the actual box. “Thank you for renting at Funland Video! Have a great day!” I would chirp, as required.
I got so sick of saying it that sometimes I would loudly deadpan it, complete with monotone and dead eyes, but always a smile, albeit a plaster one. If I were sharing the floor with another worker, I was less likely to do this, lest they deem me passive-aggressive or not a team player. I was always worried I would do something that would get me fired, so I had to be sneaky about it.
Failure at the Cash Register
Unfortunately, we had an old-timey cash register; the kind where the buttons were a cross between and manual and semi-electric typewriter. This wasn’t uncommon back then, although I think there were some higher end stores that had ones that were more functional.
I was, and am still, lousy with math. So much so that in school, my teacher took my mother aside and questioned whether I had a learning disability, which seemed to please her.
I would pray, literally, that the customer would give me exact change when they were checking out. If they didn’t, I would have to somehow calculate how much more they would owe in sales tax, add that to the rental price, take that sum and subtract it from the amount they paid and give them back correct change. Even with a calculator, this was a risky and sometimes impossible task. It was highly anxiety-provoking and I dreaded it each time.
I could not get it right. I was constantly embarrassed when customers told me I had shorted them. When this happened, I could rarely figure out how much I should have given them. If I was able to do that, I would have given them the right change in the first place. The cash register did not display how much change was to be returned, only how much they paid and whatever amount I had manually calculated for the charge.
Overcharging/Undercharging Customers
I would always apologize sincerely and ask how much I owed them back. Sometimes they knew, for which I was thankful, and sometimes, if they were in a hurry, or weren’t great at math themselves, they didn’t. In these cases, I would do my best to figure out what would be an amount above the change that I gave them vs. the amount they paid, and I would return them some amount in between, making sure to throw in some random coins to make it look like I knew what I was doing.
Almost invariably, I would return more money to them than I should have, and almost no one complained or was honest enough to tell me so. I was glad for that. If they had been honest, it might have put me back in the same confusing situation I had been in before, having to calculate exact change.
IfI was on duty alone that day, the owners trusted me enough to reconcile the books, which was yet another blow. If the handwritten intake from the cash register didn’t reconcile with the amount on the forms, I feared I would be accused of stealing, get jailed, fired, blackballed and humiliated (being “canceled” was not yet a term).
Resentment
Unsurprisingly, it was always short. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. I desperately didn’t want to lose my job, so I made sure I had cash on me, and I would add the difference to the pile of money from my own wallet. At first, it seemed a small price to pay, figuratively and literally, but over time, it really added up. At some point the amount I was using for this purpose nearly exceeded what I was earning.
When this happened, I became more resentful toward the co-owners, although it wasn’t their fault. I was envious of Sally, who was behind the counter with me during the busy weekend days, because she was always able to give exact change and save her paychecks or blow them or whatever she did. It was her money. She got to keep it.
Getting Caught
I don’t know why it took them so long, but eventually one of the co-owners questioned me about why I was making deposits that were more than what the cash register records reflected. I finally admitted that the books were coming up short and that I was making up the difference myself. She looked at me confused, but seemed to accept it, as she said nothing and told me what a good job I was doing.
She didn’t tell me to stop. She didn’t ask why I was doing it. She just moved on to another topic. I thought she should have been on my side and at the very least tried to problem-solve the issue with me. This was the last straw, and I decided I was going to quit, something I had been considering for a long time.
Conclusion
I had initially loved the job because I was able to make customer recommendations and show my considerable knowledge of, and passion for, movies. Customers would rent titles based on my recommendations, and they praised me when they came back to the store to return them. That made me feel good about myself, something that rarely happened. But I think a part of me knew from the beginning, during training when the co-owner showed me how to work the dreaded cash register, that I was doomed.
I did a lot of should-and-shouldn’t-haves afterward. I should have been up-front and honest about my abilities. If I was too proud to do that, which apparently I was, I should have quit the job sooner, barring some other solution. I didn’t believe in myself enough to have faith that I could or would find another job.
Now, in my fifties, I can reflect back on it and put it all into a better perspective and, more importantly, forgive myself for the way I treated myself. I have always been kinder to others than to myself. My next job was at an offset printing shop, cutting paper all day, away from the public and cash registers, where I belonged.