True Porn Clerk Stories - Ali Davis [23]
I feel bad for them, but I can't stop. (Well, I mostly feel bad for them. A tiny, sadistic part of my brain that I can't quite get rid of sees their pain and laughs like Renfield at their torment. The only one I've actually apologized to is Mr. Gentle. He sheepishly admitted to enjoying it, solidifying his position as my favorite customer ever.)
When I first started at the store, we weren't allowed to play whole albums. Our old manager hated being subjected to one choice for an hour at a time, so he mandated filling the player with different stuff and shuffling.
I hated it at first, but then I really got into it. The challenge of creating really good shuffle is endlessly entertaining, and appreciated by all clerks, no matter what our musical tastes. For a while Casey and I were really into Bollywood soundtracks, and, really, anything that would make the customers look up at the speakers in an attempt to figure out what the hell we were playing. Casey eventually got his hands on some Tuvan throat-singing, which was a delight.
Roy Orbison, the Trainspotting soundtrack, Soul Coughing, and any good new wave collection used to be a favorite blend of mine, though Casey came up with the most elegantly simple mix: Belle & Sebastian and GWAR.
Constructing theme days were fun, but after a while we just got into trying to crack each other up. Someone found a Stryper CD in a bargain bin somewhere and it was in the player for about three solid weeks.
But, as I said, I pull fewer and fewer night shifts and there's a high turnover -- now that mini culture is gone and we're back to throwing stuff in to suit ourselves.
If my CDs send a message, it is, generally, "Be HAPPY!" That's because I'm sort of over it. Most CDs that we play -- and I am occasionally still guilty of this -- send this message: "We are cooler than you."
The clerk is of course automatically cooler than the customer because we are accepted by the public at large as snotty arbiters of movie taste, and also because anybody with a shit job is automatically cooler than someone with a 9-to-5. Too bad, no arguing, we're cooler. Our store is a nasal jewelry, snotty film school sort of place and we employ people coldblooded enough to work with hardcore pornography every single day of our lives (Oh, all right. Just every shift.), so there are plenty of extra bonus cool points right there.
I have actually had word come back to me that people sometimes hate coming to our store because they feel their relative coolness is being rather harshly judged. I, as the least cool clerk (Cf: S.'s firing), sometimes feel bad about this, but many of my fellow clerks don't.
Music underlines that point, especially if it's scary music. Some of the clerks really like death metal -- the kind of stuff that goes so far over the top that I end up pissing them off by giggling at it. I don't like death metal, but it does perform a valuable function -- it puts a big, scary wall of cool between us and our customers. And nothing clears the porn section out faster after a long evening. Mason used to turn it up so loudly and so suddenly that we'd all run to the security monitor to see people flinch.
It sound childish, and it is, but sometimes it's there for a reason. We have a lot of whacked-out people coming into the store. Sometimes it feels like it helps to have a soundtrack of tough playing. It makes me feel like a puffer fish: "Back off, damn it," says our music, "There might be poison in here!"
But as I said, I'm over it, and the mornings are a little lower-key. I don't care if people think I'm cool or not. I just want us all