(I work at a convenience store that also offers movie rentals. Note: all of the newest movies are two-day rentals, though some people still believe it’s only one-day. Late fees are the cost of rental compounded by every day it’s late. So the $1.99 new releases cost $1.99 every day they’re late. If someone has a defective disc, they hand it back in person, we fill out a tag for it, and they receive credit for a movie of the same type. A new release for a new release, or an older stock title for a stock title. If a movie is turned in late and the person claims it defective, we can’t give them credit. At most, we can waive the late fee, depending on how late it is.

This particular night is both the one night a week our movies are all very cheap, and it is also the day the truck for the store arrives. So I’ve been running between stocking merchandise for an entire department and renting movies to nearly every regular we have. It’s toward the end of the night, and I am frazzled. A lady hands me a movie to rent, and I notice there’s a late fee in her account.)

Me: Alright, you have a $2.78 late fee from Fifty Shades of Grey.

Customer: *Goes from pleasant to condescendingly sour in a heartbeat* Didn’t you guys GET our NOTE?

Me: *Checks the memo box for their account* I don’t see a note, what happened?

Customer: WELL, it was DEFECTIVE. We couldn’t even see the ENDING.

Me: I see… unfortunately, since it was late, I can’t give you credit for it. The best I can do is wave the late fee.

Customer: Fine, whatever. We didn’t have enough time to watch it and get it back the next day, whatever.

Me: Oh, all of our brand new movies are two days! You have two days to watch it and get it back.

Customer: Yeah well, some of us have LIVES.

(I’m literally stunned by this. She’s fighting me over this late fee on the grounds that ‘people have lives.’ If her life was too busy to watch a movie and return it on time, she probably shouldn’t have rented to begin with. I go to swap for the actual disc while she rants on, now talking about Fifty Shades of Grey itself.)

Customer: I can’t believe I didn’t even get to see the ENDING. Do YOU know how it ends?

Me: *at this point, I’m fed up and really annoyed* God no, I have no desire to watch two hours of emotional abuse.

Customer: *Surprisingly shuts up, pays for her movie (which was a promotional $.79 instead of the usual $1.99) and leaves*

(It’s a quiet evening and I am the only staff member on the shop floor. I am a 19-year-old female. Two middle-aged male customers walk into the store. They browse for a bit and then bring a DVD and some snacks to the counter.)

Me: “Good evening. How are you both?”

Customer: “Hi. Just these, please.”

(The customer places the items on the desk, and I ring them through while making general conversation. The transaction goes normally, until this…)

Customer: “So, did it hurt when you got your nipples pierced?”

Me: “Um…”

(I have my nose, ears, and navel pierced, but no other piercings, so I am not sure how to reply to this.)

Customer: “Oh, my God… Nose! I meant, did it hurt when you got your nose pierced?!”

Me: *relieved and trying not to laugh* “Oh! Yes, it did a little, but it wasn’t too bad.”

(I finish the transaction, somehow managing not to dissolve into laughter, and the customers leave the store. At this point, I can no longer keep it in, and burst into laughter, just as my supervisor walks onto the shop floor. I explain to him what just took place.)

Supervisor: “He was probably just trying his hardest not to stare at your chest, and that ended up being a Freudian slip!”

(It’s the first week of my first job: a closing shift on a Friday.)

Supervisor: “Grab the vacuum from the back and clean the store while I close one of the registers.”

(You know how you vacuum your house? You methodically clean the entire floor, making sure to overlap so you get everything. Well, after about ten minutes of me cleaning and getting about ten feet, a coworker comes over to show me how you vacuum in retail.)

Coworker: “Only clean the big stuff. If it looks clean, it is clean. This should only take you ten minutes for the whole store.”

Me: *embarrassed* “Oh, I gotcha.”

(None of us realized how naive I was until that moment. They made sure to explain the tasks for me if I hadn’t done them before from then on.)

(I work at a relatively well-known movie rental store — yes, some are still open. I’m out running returns back when I hear this conversation between a customer and my manager. My manager has been here for years and honestly knows pretty much every movie we have, but she has a tendency to be a bit abrupt with customers.)

Customer: “Can you tell me where [Movie I’ve never heard of] is?”

Manager: “Sorry, we don’t have that one.”

Customer: *pauses* “What do you mean you don’t have it? Aren’t you going to—” *makes typing motion* “—check?”

(Neither my manager or I are at the computers; we’re both doing stock, and both have arms full of movies.)

Manager: “With all due respect, I could, but I know for a fact that we don’t have that movie.”

Customer: *huffs away*

Customer’s Son: “Mum, where is it?”

Customer: *loudly* “Apparently, they don’t have it, because that woman knows everything!”

(I’m starting to get a bit amused by this and have just walked back to the desk.)

Customer: *to me* “Where is [Movie I haven’t heard of]?”

(I decide I had better back up my manager a bit here.)

Me: “That doesn’t sound familiar; I don’t think we have it, but let me check.” *pause while I check the system* “Sorry, ma’am, we don’t. It doesn’t look like we’ve ever had a movie by that name.”

Customer: “That’s ridiculous! All your other stores have it!”

(At this point, I know explaining how franchises work won’t go down well, so I enter “let’s just get this customer out as happy as we can” mode.)

Me: “Sorry about that again. If you’re looking for anything else, don’t hesitate to ask.”

(The customer huffs off again. Finally, she’s back with the movies she decided on. I try to offer her a deal where it’s the same price if she wants one more, but she doesn’t even listen, just demanding I ring her through. I get up her account. She has some late fees, more than our maximum balance to be allowed to rent.)

Me: *knowing how well this will go down* You do have late fees of [amount]; did you want to fix any of that up today?”

Customer: “That’s ridiculous. No, I don’t!”

Me: “I’m sorry, ma’am, but you do. They were for [movies]. Unfortunately, we will require you to fix up some of that today.”

(Now her son breaks into the conversation.)

Son: “We’ll pay a dollar! We’ll pay a dollar!”

(He seems to find this quite amusing and speaks over the top of us.)

Customer: “FINE! Put $5 on it, then.”

Me: “Thank you, ma’am. The total is [amount].”

Customer: *as she’s swiping her card* “That’s ridiculous! We could’ve gone to the movies for that!”

(I wish I could respond that she could’ve, but would only have only gotten a quarter of the entertainment time she currently has with her movies. I decide not to say anything and just get her out of the store.)

Me: “That’s approved. Thank you. Here are your movies.”

Customer: *to her son, loudly, so the whole store can hear* “Well, [Son], I guess we’re downloading next time!” *huffs out*

(I turn to the next customer, who happens to be one of my favourite regulars.)

Regular: “What a b****!”

Me: “You said it, not me!”

My first job was at a movie rental store that just recently had the very last location close down in the US.

The way our account numbers worked was that there was a series of numbers to denote our location, and the last five digits were the customer. Our store was 291299, and my account was *****, so my entire number was 291299*****. But there were a few combinations that would never get used, so some employees at some point made fake accounts with joke info.

11111 was Homer Simpson with his address in Springfield.

66666 was Lucifer in Hell, and the phone number was, of course, all sixes.

22222 was Bruce Wayne in Gotham, and he had Dick Grayson marked as able to rent on his account.