True Porn Clerk Stories - Ali Davis [30]
People still drop by food sometimes, but I've returned to my old policy of not eating it. I don't really think people want to poison us, but until I feel like I have a better handle on what they do want I don't feel right accepting it.
Home Is the Sailor
I've been back at the store for just over a week after all my summer traveling. I was away for a wholesome vacation to national parklands with my family, then off to an actual performing gig with my improv group. The family trip included my (much younger) little sisters and the show was in a foreign country where porn is illegal (though I hear they're having a bit of trouble with the Internet) so my vacation was blissfully, totally porn-free. I'd sort of forgotten that that's how my life used to be -- no involvement whatsoever with the secret desires of total strangers.
I wish the transition back had been a harder one, but no. I slipped right back into my World of Orifices without batting an eye.
My first day back I actually picked up a shift at one of our other locations; after all that gallivanting around, I need the hours. It doesn't have nearly as good a spot for foot traffic as my branch, so the day got pretty boring. I knew that a lot of our regulars have memberships at both stores, and I could't stop myself from checking:
They hate Mr. Pig too.
Since then I've been back at my usual branch, trying to get back up to speed. I'm off my game a bit -- I used to get compliments on how well I rattled off the New Membership Speech, but now I have to stop and think about it.
New Memberships, by the way, suck. They suck hard. I know they keep the store in business and all, but good lord, do we hate them. They take a clerk out of commission for anywhere from 5--10 minutes (which is not so much during the midmorning lull, but an eternity during the 4 o' clock rush) and if two new memberships get going at once, forget it: we've created a traffic snarl that's not going to get untied for the next hour or so.
No one ever listens to the New Membership Speech. By the time we get through all the paperwork and the ID checks they just want to get the hell away from the counter and rent some frigging movies and they don't want to hear it. We could tell them they have to give us hair and urine samples with every return and they'd just nod and step up their get-on-with-it body language.
We are, in fact, telling them important information like the fact that we don't have an after-hours drop box, but it's a lot to take in all at once and people just glaze over. Which doesn't help either of us a week later when they're back at the counter, this time seething with rage over late fees.
I'd be more sympathetic if there weren't a big sign over my head outlining the very same policies covered in the New Member Speech. People almost never read the sign -- not even a glance at it to see what sort of information it might contain if they chose to read it at some later date.
The quickest way for a new member to win instant and massive goodwill from me is to actually read the sign. "Now how much are rentals -- oh, it's right up there!" is sweet, sweet music to my ears. This is a customer who makes an effort to adjust to new surroundings by looking for and absorbing helpful information. This is a customer who will return his late films and accept his fees with grace, knowing that said late fees were his own fault. This is a customer who will not bitch about the fact that he didn't return his movies on Labor Day because he assumed that we'd be closed and how the hell was he supposed to know we'd be open? because he saw -- and read -- the giant sign to that effect that was posted on the front door.
But most people don't read the signs and they zone out during the speech and they get really angry about late fees. They feel violated. Even though they had both written and verbal warnings of our policies, and even though we gave them a printout with the due dates