"Any good movies in?"

There's about 6 blogs that I keep up with, and one of them reminded me of my first job.

My very first job I obtained through nepotism. Damn right I did. Being 16 in a small town with no car to get somewhere else makes it hard to find a better option. So I got a job in a video store through family connections. It wasn't one of the national chains. It was hardly tough labor. My boss was a good friend of the family, and I think that made it worse for me to hate my job. I worked two nights a week-- every friday and saturday, for a couple hours. Not that I was rolling in nightly party plans, but that was hell enough. Add to that the sheer boredom, and the general stupidity of the clientele (by this I do not include the majority of the regulars, they made it bearable,) and the fact that I made $14.97 a week after taxes. Every time I went to work I was sure that children in Thailand making Nikes made more money than me. I worked there during the time Titanic came out. The uproar was insane, we had 40 copies and a waiting list. Still even with all the over-coverage of the movie, people still had the time to complain if someone gave away the ending. That's right, some people were so sure of Hollywood's ability to rewrite history that they must have thought the Titanic would float away into the sunset, while Leo and Kate fornicated in a car.

I was also there when the infamous Pam and Tommy tape came out. We made more money on that little back area behind the curtain than we made a habit of telling anyone. When I worked there I was behind a door, and behind a desk. I was supposed to stay there, unless I absolutely had to leave to do something else my boss told me to do. So when parents didn't take the care to keep their little bundles of joy on a leash (figuratively, of course) it suddenly became my job to start yelling and keep the kiddies from venturing past the curtains to keep them from being warped and likely needing years of therapy from being surrounded by porn tapes. Obviously I didn't want to see little Johnny and Susie learn about sex far too early because they caught a glimpse of Tommy Lee's massive wang...but thats why children should never run around unsupervised. That's why we had the Sing-a-Long and cartoon section.

The tedium was almost the worst. The absolute worst was taking phone calls. Mostly due to the fact that a few months after I started there, we expanded the business and started to make pizza in the back kitchen. My mother hated it, and even I didn't like it-- but I still had to sell it. So I'd be renting out 5 movies to a bitchy housefrau with her kids, selling them soda, candy and then they decide that they want a pizza. But back to the phone calls. How do most people order pizza? They say, for example, "I'll have a large pepperoni and mushroom." What I always seemed to get when it got busy was:

"Do you have any specials...no? Pizza Hut does, you know. I'll take one with half pineapple and ham, a quarter with jalapenos and half pepperoni and extra cheese. What size? Didn't I tell you already? You should pay attention...I want a large, or do you have extra-large? I'll also take a pizza, a small one, with no sauce and broccoli and garlic. What do they call those? Oh yeah, white pizzas. I like those. Do I get a free movie with this? No? I should, you know. I'll be there in 10 minutes, can you have it ready?"

I'm proud of being able to avoid grinding my teeth into dust.

The funniest part of this all to me was that I pretty much ended up getting "let go." I never got fired, and in fact, my boss told me later after my first year at school that I was welcome to come back to work that summer. Yeah...no. I'd rather stitch together sneakers in a sweatshop and make friends with the child laborers. I remember how it happened. One day, another employee had to quit to go to school, and my boss told me that I'd need to work more hours, and I told him that that was great, any more hours would be welcomed (maybe I could break 20 bucks on a paycheck.) Two weeks later, I got called back into the kitchen and he said, "Yeah, we just don't really need you anymore..."

On my last day, he interviewed and hired my replacement in front of me. Classy.