True Porn Clerk Stories - Ali Davis [4]
The fact that he's an asshole is part of the problem, and the other part is that he seems to be completely devoid of social skills. Even the total dirtbags know better than to hit on me when I'm putting tags away downstairs. Mr. Buddy did not.
And again, he desperately, desperately wants to be friends with us. He's maybe 45 years old, and has a good enough job to spend literally thousands of dollars a year on porn. We can't figure out why he wants to be friends so badly, but he does. "You guys are awesome!" he'll say after trying to get Dustin to pay the extra $.50 he owes for him, "Seriously, you guys are the best!" Never, not once, has he received a positive response to this behavior, but he still does it. "You guys rule, you know that?" I've met golden retriever puppies with more dignity.
I always try to be civil to him in a distant, customer service sort of way, which is apparently the best he gets. ("You're always so nice to me! You rule!")
Round about September 14th, 2001, he brought in a picture he'd downloaded from the Internet. It was President Bush photoshopped so that he had a long beard and was dressed in vaguely Middle Eastern clothes. Mr. Buddy had drawn a cartoon voice balloon coming out of Bush's mouth so that he was saying, "Rent at [My Store's Name] Video!"
I wasn't offended so much by any sort of tastelessness as I was by the completely failed attempt at humor. There wasn't even a vestigial joke. Mr. Buddy handed it to me, I made the same noncommittal friendly noise you make when you've been handed a drawing by a small child, and then tried to hand it back. "No," he said, "I made it for you guys! You keep it!" So I kept it until he left, then threw it away. The next time Mr. Buddy came in he was all upset -- he'd actually expected us to post it behind the register.
You wouldn't think it would be possible to drive away Mr. Buddy, but it turns out you can. As I said, I have always been civil with him, even when he is making yet another attempt to get me to waive his late fees. But a couple of weeks ago he caught me at the end of a heavy dirtball day.
We'd been swamped: pervs, box thieves, scam artists, people dropping tapes and running without paying for them, and plenty of general crabbiness. And it was a New Porn Day, so the phone had been ringing off the hook and I just wanted to get the hell out of there. I was very, very tired. Mr. Buddy was one of my last customers. He pulled his usual asshole routine for about five minutes, and then as I started checking out his tapes he launched into how awesome we were.
I don't remember the exact phrasing of what was said. I just remember that one of the other clerks made a joke about closing early or closing altogether, and Mr. Buddy said something like "Aw, you can't do that -- I need you guys! Who am I gonna hang out with?"
"Oh, Jesus, don't say that!" I said, "We can't be your only source of emotional support!"
I tried to turn my voice up into a joke at the last second, which almost worked.
"Don't say that," Mr. Buddy tried to joke back, "You make me sound pathetic."
We made eye contact before I could compose my face. In that moment, Mr. Buddy knew that I do, in fact, find him pathetic. And I'm the nice one. He still comes in, but he isn't chatty anymore.
The other clerks love it. I feel like a creep.
1 No, we don't carry bestiality. Animal Trainer is about training women.
2 Yes, this was a violation of MPAA copyright.
I Hate Mr. Pig.
There are many customers that bug me, and quite a few that give me the willies. One or two set off a very primal alarm in my fear center, right in my gut. They make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and I know, on a purely instinctual level, that they are very, very dangerous.
But the only one I really hate is Mr. Pig. I loathe Mr. Pig. I hate him so much I need a new word for it.