Post the Third - Blockbuster is Not Reality

Eliza alone 3

Working…is an experience. It’s very different from what I imagined it would be. Standing on the other side of the counter, it’s almost surreal. I’ve become a nonentity. You don’t remember cashiers, their faces and names, even when they’re really dreadful. You remember that you hate them, you remember what they did, but you don’t remember them. The relationship between a customer and a cashier is an incredibly strange one. I meet a dozen new people every day, but unlike when I meet them outside of work, I do not ask their names. Their likes and dislikes mean nothing to me. And they have even less interest in me. To the customer I am not a person, but a means to an end, just a hoop to be jumped through before driving home and jerking off to ‘Body Language’ in their dark, empty apartment. In a way, we’re almost like prostitutes. We meet, we perform a business transaction, something personal for you, that means nothing to us, and then we part, never knowing each other’s names. Occasionally there are repeat customers, people whose particular kinks and fetishes become familiar. This one’s rented Tomb Raider twenty times. This one has a borderline inappropriate obsession with Will Ferrell. This one likes to be tied up and beaten. In a sense we know them better than their families, their closest friends. But you don’t invite your favorite prostitute to your anniversary party. You don’t even send them a Christmas card. They are commodities. Not people.
But these are the checking-out people, the only ones I meet. They are an entirely different breed from the checking-in people. Standing behind the counter, my eyes are on the store, not the windows to the parking lot where the checking-in people pull up. I check out another customer, who’s rented When in Rome and The Bounty Hunter. Poor, lonely thing. I know how you feel. I hear a clatter behind me, of movies falling into the drop box. I pull them out, Paranormal Activity and Mickey Mouse’s Twice Upon a Christmas. They’re still warm from someone’s car, their hands, and slick with lotion or sweat or worse. I don’t know. I won’t ever know. If they came in, I wouldn’t recognize their face. And they won’t know that it is I whose hand they nearly touched, who they briefly shared body heat with, who knows their guilty pleasure, once the kids are in bed.
Like I said. It’s surreal.
The other day I was setting up a poster display and caught myself talking to the portraits.
“Excuse me, Mr. Marley.”
“A little to the right, Ms. Hepburn.”
“Please stand up straight Ms. Monroe, you’re putting Mr. Wayne all out of sorts.”
I’m surrounded by fiction. Is it surprising that reality becomes a little softer here? A little easier to mold?
The employee bathroom is also a storage area. While I sit, I read boxes of generic brand cleaning products with color coded names. Green Floor Cleaner. Blue Glass Cleaner. Pink and Sudsy Hand Soap. I wish I could say I was joking.
There’s a poster of Will Ferrell from Elf on the back of the door, all yellow tights and creepy smile. Someone’s drawn a speech bubble over his head reading ‘I see you.’ He stares at me with beady eyes and I feel strangely exposed. I get the urge to do something outrageous for his benefit, but I restrain myself. There is work to be done, after all.
The computers here are still on DOS. Caleb says it’s to keep us from playing solitaire or web surfing while we work. Honestly, I don’t think we’d have time to even if they weren’t, they keep us so busy even on slow days. And it would certainly save time with all the computer problems we have. The other day one of the checkout computers had some sort of breakdown, like its wife had left it, or someone had run a magnet over its hard drive. When you tried to pull up a new screen it ran the text directly over the top of the old, so everything was illegible. Some new language of overlapping panic. There were random boxes that had no purpose hanging suspended in virtual space. Occasionally is screamed. My station beeps at me constantly, whenever I step on the wire for the scanner. Which is always, because the wires hang across the floor liked overturned spaghetti. In places, the rubber has worn off from constantly being stepped on or slammed in drawers. I worry about fires.
I love my job though. The people, the other nonentities I work with, are friendly and amusing to watch. The work is never boring, though occasionally frustrating. I’ll never get the hang of unlocking the rentals. And I get ten free rentals a week. Right now I have Dorian Gray (decent, a prerelease), a movie called Franklyn (visually interesting, but the story falls a little flat, new release), Synecdoche New York (strangest movie I’ve ever seen, in the comedy section for some unfathomable reason), Thank You For Smoking (I didn’t get the point, but I enjoyed it. Also a comedy) and Viva Piñata (for the Xbox 360. Ridiculously addictive). When I go into work today (if I go into work today, my ride situation looks dire) I’m going to get When in Rome and The Road.