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Cpt.Sean Luc Picard posted:I used to work at one in the early 00s and helped to make it eventually go out of business. This is basically my story. Working there was totally not a waste of a few years of my life.
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Aug 27, 2014 06:16
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 18:02 |
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Hey guys! You're about to get a taste of one of my famous Multi-quote-posts! Congratulations and/or sorry! But yeah, like I said, I used to work there so this thread has been a trip down [depressing] memory lane. Flagrant Abuse posted:when i was a kid, blockbuster put a bogus late fee on our account. like just straight-up made it up. we'd lived in one state most of my life, but for a bit over a year we'd lived in another state in a completely different part of the country before moving back. about a month after we got back we wanted to rent some movie or another and found out there was a late fee on our account that had been created while we were living two time zones away. The thing about this is that employees couldn't simply "add fees" to an account. Fees were triggered when an item was checked in (or when the item was gone for so long that it got sold to you.) It's been several years, but from what I remember we couldn't even manually charge anything, e.g. "That box of candy's not scanning, I'll just key in the price of $2." If you had a fee from a rental, it had to be from something that was rented out, paid for, and returned [late.] It was possible to ring something up and then exit the account without tendering payment, and then the balance would be there the next time you accessed the account. Gutcruncher posted:So what was the deal with No Late Fees? Clearly it was a lie, but what were the details? Instead of, say, being charged $X a day for each day your thing is late, you were charged the original rental price for the original rental period. If you paid $5 for a week, as soon as the thing was late you owed another $5 but had another week to hold onto it (before another charge, and eventually the thing would be sold to you.) It was still, effectively, a "late fee" but just not in the traditional "library-style." They tried to change it enough that they could call it something different, but of course that still pissed off people who operate on their own time and don't think they have to return other people's property in a timely, pre-agreed-upon fashion.  NienNunb posted:I don't get why people got so pissed at late fees why couldn't you just return your loving videos on time you idiots. Exactly. You know exactly when something is due, whether it's renting something, filing your income tax return, registering for classes, or anything else. If you don't do it on time there are usually consequences, often of the monetary kind. There was even a grace period, and that still wasn't good enough for some people. gently caress trophy 2k14 posted:HOW The corporate stores closed, but franchises were still allowed to stay open because they were running themselves and just basically renting the name. gently caress trophy 2k14 posted:is it true its super easy to shoplift in a blockbuster you were warned posted:I worked at two different Blockbusters, in '03 and '05. Someone kept stealing DVDs from the first one, but they were cutting the cases open and taking the discs out so they wouldn't trip the alarm. One time we found one with a bunch of blood on it from someone slipping with their razor or whatever. Is it really worth it for the few bucks' worth of eBay resale?? This, basically, happened in my store a lot. Once in a while we'd have someone just run out with stuff through either the main door or the emergency exit, but mostly we'd just find DVD cases sliced open. We all would watch out for suspicious activity, but there were so many blind spots and there was other stuff to do that took away our attention. We never had to search the whole store or file reports though, we just collected the sliced cases and took care of them during inventories. SniperWoreConverse posted:Wait wouldn't it have made more sense to just put empty cases on the shelf and then have like a thing of library-type shelving that holds the actual stock? Then you could put that behind the counter. Ignatius M. Meen posted:we did that for games, I don't think there would have been room for the second big metal drawer at our counter plus that would add like 20-30 seconds to the transaction for every customer There was way too much inventory to do that. It would take up far too much room to hold thousands of discs (or cartridges, tapes, whatever) behind the counter (which would have to be much larger than they were) or in the back room, and it would take too much time to deal with that. Besides, we already had people bringing up the empty cover boxes as if they held the actual discs. 
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Aug 28, 2014 06:23
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Tristesse posted:Someone once stole the bigass gumball machine by just picking it up, walking out the door and tossing it into the back of their flatbed truck. I thought that was the most genius thing ever. Turns out they never emptied the quarters from the base and corporate estimated they got a few hundred bucks easily if they ever got into it. My store manager, who was a good guy, actually ended up getting shitcanned from something related to the gumball machine. We actually would empty it out & cash it in during inventories, but there was some claim that has never fully been explained to me that was used as an excuse to get rid of him. It involved either the machine not getting emptied frequently enough, or there being a discrepancy in the amount cashed in. I knew the guy for a while and trusted him, and he was one of the more qualified, higher-paid managers during the period where the company was going down the toilet. So yeah, gently caress BB for that alone, aside from all the stuff about it being a lovely retail job. I still talk to the guy once in a while, more than I communicate with most of my former co-workers at least. After that me & the other SL ran the store for a few months on our own, until we got a manager transferred in from another store. He was kind of a weird, moody rear end in a top hat that nobody liked, and there was something...suspicious about him as well. We got a few complaints from customers who said they were charged for the Rewards program even though they didn't want it, weren't asked about it, and weren't even aware of the sale transaction at the time (and it may have even happened when they weren't even in the store.) The transactions were also being rung up by employee IDs for people who weren't actually working at the time. I did further research and it turns out the new manager was selling the unwanted Rewards memberships (using others' employee IDs) to boost his sales numbers and committing credit card fraud simultaneously. I turned his rear end in and Loss Prevention did their thing. I was able to give him my letter of resignation (only coincidentally, I happened to find a less-lovely job at the same time), and a couple of weeks before my last day this dude got fired and I think arrested.
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Aug 30, 2014 00:47
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That sounds about right for an assistant manager (ASM). I'm pretty sure the SMs got paid quite a bit more. Our District Manager used to have his office in our back room, and on a couple of occasions we got to sneak a peak at his payroll printouts, which listed everybody in the district and what they got paid. I'm pretty sure the SMs got paid in the $40k range, but then again this is going back 10+ years so my memory is a little fuzzy.
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Aug 30, 2014 01:59
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ilikedirt posted:u know how sometimes ull get a dvd or vhs w/ vaseline peanut butter and cum onit well i was the guy that did that i put my cock in the hole and hosed ift. yw One time this Mexican dude was dropping off a very late DVD rented by his brother. He opened up the case and it was full of ants, and like some leftover pizza crust or something. 
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Aug 30, 2014 07:36
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Sanctum posted:I always found a little bit of sadistic pleasure in dealing with the customers that returned an empty case (but swore they returned the movie with it!) Maybe 1/10 would just own up and say they'll go look for it around their house some more. They always found it eventually. My co-workers were particularly good at checking-in movies that had either the wrong discs or no discs inside. As someone who notices tiny details like those this infuriated me that my co-workers were so inept. This, being my first job, gave me an introduction to the real world. 
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Aug 30, 2014 21:55
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 18:02 |
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Skeleton Ape posted:Oh man, I remember that garbage. Yeah, people would come in to rent movies and we would have to try to sell them a loving satellite dish instead. Thankfully I got in on the tail end of that poo poo. I never had to sell any of that, and nobody ever asked to subscribe. The one memory I have of it is watching the Cubs choke vs. the Marlins in 2003. I_ma_gine posted:Not to mention the fun of running through the aisles searching for the greatest samurai movie ever made... Which one of these is the greatest?  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0325710/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0130236/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_6 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106258/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_19 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0165798/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_10 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118736/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_40 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2275711/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_136 Gutcruncher posted:But wouldnt it cost more money to repair your car than just pay the drat late fees? You missed the "crazy" part.
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Sep 1, 2014 19:39
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