I have worked at a video store for seven years. I started in high school, needing a job "to learn responsibility," apparently. My mother made the same mistake that nearly every parent does in assuming that a part-time job teaches kids anything other than how to screw around and break rules without getting caught. Once I graduated, I moved away to college and transferred to a different store in the same chain.
I have worked in a video store long enough to watch the slow death of that business as movies become available online or through the mail. When we have customers, they're in to rent as a novelty more than anything, and they spend an hour browsing through thousands of DVDs looking for the movie they couldn't find on the internet or didn't want to wait to have mailed. It happens less and less.
I worked my way through college and transferred again when I moved to grad school. I finished up my first year and started my second, avoiding the manager position that kept getting thrown my way with a persistence that my fellow employees were continually awed by. I was generally, the oldest employee at any given time, and the one who knew the ins and outs of the system better than most of the managers. I wanted to be the manager less than I had wanted anything else, ever.
Most of the kids I worked with were misfit dudes with little sense of social interaction or super bouncy popular girls who just needed extra money and had no intention of ever serving anyone anything consumable. For seven years, my work life was a revolving door of comic book fanatics and perky, hot jailbait.
Not that there's anything wrong with hot girls. I love attractive women, and I have met many. I don't love jail, though, so I have done most everything possible to avoid going there.
I clocked in to work on a Friday in the middle of winter, having decided years previously that the best way to keep from getting shitfaced and blowing off the pile of homework that only got bigger the more advanced my classes got was to work. The store closes at midnight, so I'd be back home by one, and I could get in a couple of good hours of homework before crashing, wake up the next morning and pound out a couple more hours before taking a jog, a shower and another trip to work.
My manager, Rob, flagged me down as I dropped my coat and backpack in the break room.
"Yo, Carl, what's up?" he asked as he walked up. Rob is a nervous guy, always looking around and shuffling when he talks. He only asks me questions when he needs something.
"Same old. You need something?" I kept my voice polite. I don't hate Rob, as he leaves me mostly alone and isn't a bad guy, really. He also gives himself the night off whenever I work, which is nice.
"Yeah, I sort of need a favor," he said, his eyes going from his shoes, to the clock, back to his shoes, one of which he moved, to his shirt, and then to the front door.
"Ok," I said. Rob's favors are always relatively simple, so I was down.
"I sort of made plans tonight because I remembered that you were working, but then I hired a new girl and forgot that you were working tonight." He cleared his throat, raised his eyebrows, and looked almost at my eyes. That meant the favor was huge in his eyes.
"And you want me to train her, because you told her to come in for training tonight?"
"If you do, I'll give you overtime tonight."
"Sold!"
"Awesome, dude! Thank you so much, man, really. She comes in at eight." Rob actually blushed as he thanked me, and shuffled around me and out the door.
I had a couple of hours until the New Girl, whose name Rob didn't mention, arrived, so I put away the returns and switched out the movies in the DVD player to something less insufferable than what Rob decided promoted a family-friendly environment. I did a walk-through of the store, checked the porn section for strays, then settled down behind the counter with a book.
I refuse to read homework while at work. Combining work with more work causes stress, and I have enough of that. I pulled out a Neal Stephenson novel that I'd been working my way through for a couple of months and put my feet on the counter.
About an hour and two smoke breaks later, the door chimed and I looked up to see what, given the time, could have been Rob's new hiree, but given her appearance I began to seriously doubt it. Rob has a tendency to hire every girl her jerked off to in high school, and this girl wasn't Rob's type. If anything, she would terrify him.
She wasn't short, but not tall either, probably about five foot-six, couldn't have weighed more than one twenty. She was shapely, with firm, high breasts under a t-shirt with a picture of a bone and the words "I Found This Humerus" printed across it and the kind of hips that are perfectly suited to carrying what I was guessing from her toned arms was a perfect ass. Her hair was an amalgamation of brown and faded pink that suggested she was a fan of short-lasting hair color, and the sides of it were buzzed down short under what fell long from the top. She looked back at me, sizing me up exactly the same way with her soft, critical blue eyes. A horseshoe shaped barbell glittered in her septum, and I could see tattoos trailing out of her sleeves and down to her wrists. A short denim skirt sprouted black fishnets wrapped around what were undeniably amazing legs that disappeared into what looked like high-heeled combat boots.
She cleared her throat and licked her lips, wetting deep red lipstick and just a bit of her porcelain white skin.
"You're not Rob," she said.
"Nope," I replied. "Rob had something to do," I continued, smiling as I formed a fist and pantomimed a slow jerking off motion, "so I'll be training you because he can't remember who he schedules when, or why. I'm Carl." I stuck my hand out over the counter.
"Jo," she laughed. She took my hand, wrapping long, slender fingers complete with short nails that matched her lipstick. "So where do I drop my shit?"
"Break room," I said. I stood up and waved her behind the counter, leading her to the break room door. I held it open for her as she walked past, smelling shampoo and pretty much nothing else. "Throw it literally anywhere."
"Cool," she said. Jo turned back to me, shrugged her knapsack off her shoulder, and dropped it to the floor. "So is there a uniform or something?"
"Nope. Wear whatever you want, I'll make you a nametag."
We walked back out into the counter area and I grabbed a blank nametag from the bin under the computer and the label maker from next to it.
I spent the next fifteen minutes explaining to Jo that DVDs are arranged alphabetically, the computer system is simple enough to be used by a five year old, and that when people walk in, saying "hi" is required in the same way it's "required" when meeting someone new.
Jo caught on quickly, not being stupid, and we passed the time talking about basically anything other than movies. She was a smart girl, working to earn some extra cash while attending the same university I was, studying English, loving it just enough to have fun but not enough to fuck herself over. I told her about working weekends to avoid getting wasted and fucking myself over.
"That's not a bad idea, actually," she said. "How do you meet people, though? Seems like working weekends would be a great way to not have any friends."
"Oh, I meet people through class and I take random weekends off, but for the most part, I just want to get through school and get a job that doesn't involve telling people when they need to return their porn." She laughed as I finished.
"No, I mean how do you get laid? Or are we allowed to ask customers out?" She was looking at me with her head cocked to the side, her arms crossed under her, I was starting to assume, absolutely perfect breasts. She asked completely frankly, without embarrassment, like sex was a topic she was totally comfortable with. I liked that about her immediately.
"Ah, sex! I've read much of this mysterious act you people get up to. I've even tried it a few times, here and there. But for the most part, it's books and papers and DVDs that it is strictly against company policy to throw at people."
Jo laughed out loud, her breasts moving wonderfully with the sound.
"Oh thank God," she said. "I thought I was the only one not getting any in college. Seriously, I haven't been fucked in like two months."
The topic changed after that to other, more mundane things. The time passed quickly; she was good company. At closing time I showed her where the vacuum was kept and showed her how to make it look like she'd done a really good job of vacuuming the entire store without having to do more than about ten minutes' actual work. I counted out the drawer and we walked out together.
"Congratulations on completing your first day in the exciting world of video rental," I quipped as we left.
"Yeah, thanks," she said and laughed. "Thanks for showing me the best way to perform my new, wildly difficult job."
"Uh-huh. I'll see you, what? Tomorrow night? Rob usually starts the new guys on weekends."
"Yep. Though, that weekend work plan actually sounds pretty good. I think I'll just apologize to my vagina and request weekends to keep my grades up." She grinned at me.
"Oh, she'll take it fairly well, probably. Might be grumpy at first, but I'm sure she'll come around," I said. Jo laughed again, and I smiled. "On that note, I have a shitload of homework to get to, and you probably do too. I'll see you at seven."
"Later, man." We waved at each other and Jo climbed into an ancient and somewhat rusty Oldsmobile as I crossed the parking lot and started the relatively short walk home.
Jo and I, as it turned out, worked pretty well together, and since we were actually eager to work weekends, Rob basically gave us the Friday, Saturday and Sunday night shifts. We developed games to pass the time and entertain ourselves. One of our favorites was "Fuck, Marry, Kill" which was played every time there were more than three customers in the store.
