Near the end of the video rental era, I worked at a game shop that was sometimes attached to a major video rental chain in the United States. Essentially, they would partition some of the stores and sell video games out of the other side.

One night, I was closing by myself, and a guy came in with his wife to complain about a defective game. He had purchased Wii Play — a collection of minigames for the Wii, which at that time came bundled with a controller.

The customer hadn’t brought the game disc, which worked fine, but complained that the controller was defective and that he wanted a replacement. If we had a used copy on hand, it wouldn’t have been a problem to swap out the bundle or just the controller, but we actually didn’t have any used or new Wii controllers in stock.

I explained to the guy that I could get one from the closest store on my way in the next day morning but couldn’t replace it right then.

He saw that we had a new copy of Wii Play on display and demanded I exchange it from that one. This led to two problems: he had bought a used copy, which was cheaper, so he’d have to pay the difference, and he hadn’t brought in the disc, so I wasn’t even getting the old copy back.

I explained this to the guy, and he started to lose it, calling me names, threatening to report me, and eventually telling me I’d better do it or he’d “reach over the counter and beat my a**.”

At that point, some of the staff and customers in the video store were taking notice, but I calmly offered again to get the copy the following morning from our other location.

Then, it occurred to me that I hadn’t asked if I could try out the defective controller to see what the issue might be. So, I asked him if I might take a look and maybe see if I could fix it.

The manager at the video store decided to intervene at that point and told the guy to leave. The guy’s wife asked him to go, too, and we got the obligatory, “I’m never shopping here again, I spend so much money in this store… blah, blah, blah.”

Since he’d put the controller down, while he was distracted, I decided to sync the remote to the demo Wii behind the counter and start playing whatever game we had on demo that night.

I looked over to him and said, “You didn’t know how to sync this to your system, did you?”

The dude froze in his embarrassment and, without collecting the controller, the couple walked out. I put the controller in the back and finished up, delighted to have made that guy look like an idiot in front of the whole store.

I waited a few weeks to see if they returned, and when they didn’t, my manager eventually decided that I deserved to keep the controller for the trouble.

I did see them in the video store one more time a few months later, and neither would make eye contact. I think the manager must have closed their rental accounts that night because I don’t think they ever came back again.

I used to work at this small video rental place in the late 90s. We closed at 9 PM. Some customers come it at 8:57 PM.

Me: “We close in a few minutes, so I can only let you in if you know what you’re renting.”

Customer: “Yes! We do! We just need one movie really fast!”

I let them in, and of course, they start browsing all the movies, wandering slowly around. My manager asks about them, and I tell him how they essentially lied to me. 

My manager waits until they get to the furthest, darkest corner of the store and then shuts the lights off. Only the lights by the registers are still on.

Customers: *Confused.* “Um… we’re still here!”

Manager: *Lying.* “Sorry, the lights are on a timer, and we closed five minutes ago.”

Customers: *Suddenly embarrassed and awkward.* “Oh… sorry, we didn’t know.”

They rushed out the door without renting anything. I miss that place…

I used to work at a video rental place in the town where I went to college. The wealthiest guy in town – easily a millionaire – made his money in payday loans, earning off the backs of people he took advantage of.

His son was a frequent customer and was a real douche. He had the same first name as his dad and he kept taking his dad’s credit card to pay for stuff. He let that slip once so I told him:

Me: “You won’t be allowed to do that anymore.”

He tried this a couple more times, getting more and more of a jerk each time. Finally, his dad came in and demanded an explanation.

Me: “Sir, your son can’t use your card without you being present.”

Customer: “Are you seriously telling me how I can spend my own f****** money, little checkout girl? I could f****** buy you! My son can go out and buy a f****** plane right now in cash! Who the h*** do you think you are telling him he can’t buy a bag of f****** popcorn?”

He continues his curse-filled berating and talking to me like I am gutter trash. As he’s ranting, I – as a shift leader – leave a comment on his account and every one of his family members that they’ll have to show ID and can never rent with a single cent of late fee on their account (we usually have a bit of a grace amount). When he finally stops for a breath.

Me: “Then buy a f****** plane then, but you will never see ‘Fievel Goes West’ for as long as I f****** work here!”

I’m not sure if it was because no one usually talks to him like that, let alone a “little checkout girl”, but my standing up for myself seemed to stop him in his tracks.

Customer: “F*** this place.”

He storms out. My manager told me to NEVER do that again, but also chuckled a little as he hated the guy too.

It was a potentially dangerous thing to do in a small town where the one rich guy had his fingers in a lot of local pies, but I wasn’t going to let him talk to me like that.

I am working a video rental store back in the 1990s. An R-rated popular erotic-thriller (“Disclosure”) has recently become available on VHS. The promotional material we have on display is quite suggestive, although not explicit.

A young couple (early twenties) is browsing, and they seem quite shocked by the movie poster. They eventually make a more PG choice and bring it to the counter. They strike up a conversation with me.

Woman: “Does every movie need to be about sex these days?! You’d think everyone was boinking all day every day with the movie choices you have!”

Me: “Yeah, I know that movie is a bit more suggestive than average, but it seems to be quite popular, so…”

Man: “Yeah, my parents never had sex, and they seem to be doing just fine.”

Woman: “Well, they did it at least once.”

Man: “No, they never had sex.”

Woman: “Then… how… are you adopted?”

Man: “What?! Of course not!”

Woman: “Then… honey, they had sex.”

Man: “No, my parents didn’t have to have sex to make me. My mom got pregnant with me because they got married.”

Woman: “…”

Me: “…”

Man: “What?”

Woman: *To me* “You got any basic sex-ed tapes?”

We actually did! I hope this young man found it useful.

CONTENT WARNING: Public Adult Activity

I used to be a store manager for a video rental store. We had an adult room filled with your typical raunchy adult DVDs. The walls are only about three-quarters of the way up to the ceiling. There is a saloon-style door that blocks the entrance for privacy, as well as a huge bubble mirror on the wall that allows us to see what’s going on from across the store.

One busy Saturday night, I was at the register. One of the employees on the floor told me that this man had been in the adult room for quite a while now — twenty minutes or so. I looked up at the mirror, suspecting that he may be stealing. There he was at just the right angle in the mirror, FURIOUSLY pleasuring himself! His pants were around his ankles, and he was leaning up against the wall.

I must have had such a reaction on my face because the customers at the registers turned around. There had to be about a dozen people in the store now that were watching in horror.

I finally worked up the courage to confront the man and kick him out, but before I could he finally came walking out of the adult room and just started wandering around like nothing had happened. Every customer was staring at him in disbelief.

At that point, I didn’t even know how to react or what to do. He finally picked out a movie, completely oblivious to the customers staring at him, and came to my register to check out.

Random Customer: *Shouting* “How was that adult room, you freak?!”

He turned around just enough to see the huge bubble mirror and turned a dark shade of red. He didn’t even stay and rent his movie; he RAN out of the store so fast.