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Three Olives posted:Blockbuster was headquartered down the street from me and my neighborhood store was their concept store when they were going out of business, it was pretty funny before they declared bankruptcy and their landlord told them to GTFO and refused to renew their lease they decided that they were going to survive by becoming an even more retarded version of RadioShack so the store by me tried to sell iPods and digital cameras and flatscreen TVs. should've rebranded to cuckbuster IMO.
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Sep 1, 2014 21:13
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 17:25 |
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Agent Escalus posted:Where was this? Deep suburbia, a low-income area? The brazen thefts make it sound pretty rough. South Florida, so yes to all three. As far as pay went, I made $6.12 when I was first hired... I think I made $7.65 by the end. My mind was blown when I was paid 9 dollars an hour for training for my first bullshit computer janitor job AND I got to sit on my rear end all day instead of running around hoping people stop loving up everything on the goddamn shelves. Oh yeah there are more stories too. One time this huge bodybuilder guy got pissed off because I wouldn't let him open a membership with a photocopy of a driver's license. He started screaming loudly, and then he grabbed the exit door and ripped it off it's hinges. The glass didn't break but the metal door frame was completely shithoused. He left his application but (to no one's surprise) he was using a fake name. One of the other managers got tricked by a bunch of middle schoolers. They had one kid distracting her up front while 3 others broke into the back office/ storage room where they had new Xboxs and Playstation 2s that were for sale (that no one ever bought.) They of course stole every single one, making multiple trips right past the manager who was chatting happily with the distraction. My store went through a lot of store managers, so only the long time employees like me knew the direct TV passcode and we just watched whatever the gently caress we wanted as long as it was PG before 9PM and corporate wasn't coming over. One dude I worked with loved wrestling so we'd watch that all the time. I had to work on 9/11 and when I got in the manager at the time had dragonball Z or some poo poo on and she got really really mad when I asked her to change it to the news. One slow day I was hanging out watching TV when this bum comes up and starts watching too. Then he started rambling about how he had a newspaper once but Jesus told the jews to take it away from him and they did and they also took his skateboard. He wound up rambling for so long we had to call the cops to get rid of him and the next weekend the direct TV was gone. loving skateboarding bums. Once someone returned an N64 game with the rental box filled with spiders. I was checking the returns when I opened it up and tons of the fuckers came pouring out all over the goddamn place. It was so bad we called and the lady had to buy the game. It was pretty common for bugs to pop out, and a few times we got movies with ants and roaches in them. One time there was a mouse in a DVD (also when I was checking returns.) I tried to catch it with my hands, and my manager who was this big tough black guy was running around shrieking in fear every time he saw it. That same guy later got fired for having sex in the back office.
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Sep 2, 2014 17:58
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could tristesse just post more stories or something because they are amausing
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Sep 3, 2014 04:01
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Shortly before Nintendo 64 came out I rode my bike up to Blockbuster Video right as they opened and played the demo console they had for Mario 64 for like three hours, trading off with other kids who wanted to try it out and when I finally beat Bowser I thought I won the game but then there was even more castle to explore and that's when I realized I was experiencing the video game revolution and things would never be the same again.
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Sep 3, 2014 04:02
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Three Olives posted:Blockbuster was headquartered down the street from me and my neighborhood store was their concept store when they were going out of business, it was pretty funny before they declared bankruptcy and their landlord told them to GTFO and refused to renew their lease they decided that they were going to survive by becoming an even more retarded version of RadioShack so the store by me tried to sell iPods and digital cameras and flatscreen TVs. They were on that path before it started to get real ugly, blockbusters started looking like Indian 7-11s with dumb poo poo packed in everywhere. My favorite test store rumor was the often talked about Borders/coffee shop/clusterfuck. The idea was to install a coffee bar and wireless PC servers where folks would bring in laptops (this was pre tablets and smart phones) and watch movies streamed to their laptops while sipping lattes turning blockbuster into some kind of low rent central perk. I'm glad I didn't have to deal with any of that but it would have been funny to see.
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Sep 3, 2014 04:22
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Tristesse posted:I had to work on 9/11 and when I got in the manager at the time had dragonball Z or some poo poo on and she got really really mad when I asked her to change it to the news. why is it like 20% of the 9/11 stories I hear involve watching dbz besides it loving owning ----------------
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Sep 3, 2014 04:24
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gently caress trophy 2k14 posted:why is it like 20% of the 9/11 stories I hear involve watching dbz goku did 9/11
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Sep 3, 2014 04:30
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deadwing posted:goku did 9/11 goku barely escaped with his life from the twin towers gently caress you
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Sep 3, 2014 04:44
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Haha, I was opening on 9/11 too. We all just kinda stared at CNN all day while people kept coming in wanting to rent movies.
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Sep 3, 2014 05:34
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There was this awesome video store I used to go to ten years back loaded with gems you can't find anywhere else, including tons of niche movies from the 70s and 80s. Used to go there all the time and saw a bunch of films that are all but forgotten to time, but were both hilarious and sometimes even seriously awesome. Then Blockbuster video bought them out, apparently dumped all of them into a dumpster, and replaced them with a hundreds copies of Adam Sandler movies. They also refused to use my credit card because it also acts as a debt card, even when they said they fully understood it was in fact a credit card. Last time I set foot in Blockbuster. Skeleton Ape posted:Haha, I was opening on 9/11 too. We all just kinda stared at CNN all day while people kept coming in wanting to rent movies. Unrelated but I was in upstate NY when the attacks happened and found out from someone at tech support in Texas asking me what I could see out my window and at the time, thought there were missiles, apparently unaware NYC is hours away from where I was. We both hung up thinking the other person was crazy, until I turned on the news. gently caress trophy 2k14 posted:goku barely escaped with his life from the twin towers gently caress you Who do you think took out the 4th plane, huh? Blazing Ownager fucked around with this message at 05:42 on Sep 3, 2014 |
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Sep 3, 2014 05:38
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RommelMcDonald posted:I had a buddy in high school who worked at Blockbuster. One of our mutual friends, Bill, was constantly being cheated on by his girlfriend. She'd come in holding hands with other dudes and when they left he'd call the boyfriend and say, "Hey dude, your girlfriend is cheating on you." He just wouldn't believe it. oh man lmao
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Sep 3, 2014 05:39
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Blockbuster had a pretty okay deal going on in the sweet spot just before Netflix's VOD service steamrolled them. They basically just copied netflix only you could trade in DVDs you watched for in-store DVDs while you waited for the next movies on your list to come in the mail.
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Sep 3, 2014 05:50
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My sister dragged me along, she rented Dude where's my car and I grabbed a bunch of snacks so I could have something to throw down my face hole while watching the kids choice awards, then the cashier told me I shouldn't buy so many snacks cause it wasn't healthy. That night I ate more popcorn and chocolate then any kid ever and passed out during the world premiere of Danny Phantom. If I could go back and do it all over again, I wouldn't have gotten so many snacks 
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Sep 3, 2014 05:55
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I didn't like they didn't have a porn section.
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Sep 3, 2014 06:04
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Morally Inept posted:I didn't like they didn't have a porn section. Actually that depended on if the Blockbuster was a conversion from a buy out. Originally Movies To Go was the chain in the neighborhood I grew up in and when Blockbuster bought them out all they did was clear out the porn in the side room, anything else that had been on the main shelves was converted to Blockbuster rentals so if you knew what to look for or were nice to one of the staff who knew where to look, you could find the not blatant porn. Equally there was a different in rentals from corporate stores and franchises. Franchises had a much bigger leeway on what they could carry.
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Sep 3, 2014 07:59
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I was watching dbz when the towers went down as well. Also at bb: - Locking ourselves in the back room whilst a customer rampaged round the store because we wouldn't let him sell games without ID. - A customer who rented Passion of the Christ constantly, trying to throw a huge dusty old carpet in the wee little bin by the door. He said he scratched all the names off of the things he bought and found uplighting disturbing. - Manager testing the upfront smokecloak while I was on the till. I'm not sure if it was the staff or customers who stole more stock.
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Sep 3, 2014 09:31
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what is upfront smokecloak
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Sep 3, 2014 16:39
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I worked both corporate and franchise and franchise is definitely better. We didn't have a district manager, stocked what we wanted, and no one gave a poo poo when we smoked weed in the back room 
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Sep 3, 2014 17:27
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M_Sinistrari posted:Actually that depended on if the Blockbuster was a conversion from a buy out. Originally Movies To Go was the chain in the neighborhood I grew up in and when Blockbuster bought them out all they did was clear out the porn in the side room, anything else that had been on the main shelves was converted to Blockbuster rentals so if you knew what to look for or were nice to one of the staff who knew where to look, you could find the not blatant porn. Equally there was a different in rentals from corporate stores and franchises. Franchises had a much bigger leeway on what they could carry. When I was a kid, our local Blockbuster had categories on the shelves labeled "wild" action or comedy. This meant the skinamax and boobarama type movies, mostly from the 80's. So of course my brother and I commenced exclusively renting from that section until they phased it out.
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Sep 3, 2014 18:23
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more like lacklustre video am i right
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Sep 3, 2014 18:35
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I used to work at Hollywood Video and the company did some strange stuff to compete with Blockbuster. In 2007, the big deal with Blockbuster was that they had an exclusive deal with The Weinstein Company in that they would be the only stores receiving rental copies. Hollywood found a way around this that involved the employees buying up store copies. Every Monday, we'd have to tally the cash for the night, but set aside a portion to be used for buying the exclusive DVDs. On Tuesday morning, after the remaining profit from Monday was deposited at the bank and the store opened, the manager on duty would take the set aside funds and go out to the local Best Buy and purchase 10-12 copies of the movie. He brings them back to the store and we stock them on the shelves. The only good that came of this was that I got to blow off work for a few minutes to go to Best Buy.
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Sep 3, 2014 19:18
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My store was pure corporate so we never had porn, but people constantly would come in an demand to go in the back section and get really upset when it didn't exist. I worked at a really really small store, too, easily the smallest I had ever seen. It used to be a nail salon before Blockbuster decided that my neighborhood needed a video rental place every half mile. Want to know how much fun the demands of corporate shitheads that have no idea how to keep their business afloat goes? They were trying to open new stores constantly during the exact timeframe that their business model was becoming obsolete thanks to the internet... When I quit they had 83 stores in my county alone. Of course every store was individually in charge of its own sales goals, which had to improve literally every year or the staff would be punished. The sales goals for our store only ever used the sales data from the exact date last year... So if last year Sep 3rd was a Friday but this year it's a Wednesday your Wednesday closing numbers better be as high as that Friday's (not a chance in hell) or hours for your staff would be cut (spoiler- hours were pretty much always cut.) As new stores opened, the existing stores got less traffic as people went to the store that was closest to them, which then of course negatively affected these stats even more. As a result, the stores that were close to each other would do everything we could to sabotage each other. Every kind of prank call was made back and forth from the innocent "asking for movies that don't exist" game to claiming we were the fire dept and they needed to evacuate for a gas leak, etc. None of the store phones at any location had caller ID and everyone knew this, adding in a bunch of frustrated teenagers who think they're awesome because they work at a loving video store and you had a lot of silly poo poo. We'd lie about fees people owed, or lie about movies in stock. Whatever, who cared. poo poo got extra stupid for my store because we were on the same street as another store 2 miles away. Then they opened a store 3 miles away on a road with nearly the same name (road vs blvd) so people would call in all the time to those other stores, ask if they had a movie, and then come to our store claiming we just promised to hold some poo poo we didn't have ever. Or people would just return poo poo to the wrong store which would then get lost more often than not. Blockbuster went completely crazy about 9/11. I worked closing that day and we smashed the poo poo out of sales goals because everyone was coming in to rent comedies/ anything to not see the news. So Blockbuster decided they were gonna do a hoorah America honor 9/11 thing and made a big deal about making people donate to a 9/11 fund. We had to take a roll of trigger warning stickers and put them on any movies that might remind people of 9/11. I still have a roll at home, I'll take a pic when I get outta work. it says something like "Due to the acts of terrorism on 9/11 this movie may contain scenes some viewers find disturbing." I got in big trouble because I thought they were hilarious to put on random poo poo instead of the intended list (mostly because finding every movie on the list was a pain in the rear end.) The week after 9/11 A Knight's Tale with Heath Ledger was due to come out on video. We had them in the store already because we got stuff the week before it came out, but every VHS copy had to be recalled back to corporate because they had the trailer for Spider Man with the helicopter being caught in a web between the Twin Towers. We received Very Urgent Orders to have every employee immediately return any copies (we could rent the new movies the week before they came out if we returned them before the release date) and to have No One see the preview. So of course during the middle of the day while we were packing them up we watched it with a few customers. Then a whole bunch of people got pissed that A Knight's Tale was delayed for a few weeks while they replaced all the tapes with copies that didn't have that trailer. People would come in and demand all sorts of crazy poo poo sometimes. Once a guy yelled at me for 2 hours about how he deserved a refund and also immediately demanded we give him the end of the movie he wanted to see. He had rented the first Lord of the Rings movie that had only just then come out on video and the second wasn't even in theaters. He felt incredibly ripped off that he watched a 4 hour movie and didn't even see the end of it. No amount of explaining how movies work made him happy and eventually I gave up and told him to leave or I'd call the cops. Customers stole more movies (who would want to steal busted up rentals in the first place, second they were tracked fairly well) and employees stole everything else. I personally disappeared several cases of random candy and popcorn on a regular basis. Once my friends and I had a contest of "who could chug more spray candy" which was this concentrated sour stuff you were supposed to spray into your mouth. Chugging it like shots is a really bad idea, you won't sleep for 4 days and you poo poo ALL sorts of colors. I'll post my "how not to get held up at gunpoint" story later.
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Sep 3, 2014 21:42
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