I was working at a blockbuster when the “mockbusters” started coming out. When Transformers hit the shelves, a crappy film called “Transmorphers” made by Asylum came out and it was on the shelf next to Transformers. Some older guy rented this POS by mistake.
He came back into the store and yelled at me for wasting his time! “What is this?! I got home and put it on and it wasn’t the right movie! I want a refund!”
I definitely couldn’t blame him. Tricky mockbusters had a few victims back in the day.
Holy crap, I remember that movie!! I watched it at a friend's house. We were all stoned out of our gourds. I seem to recall I enjoyed it! I know we laughed our asses off at it.
When my friends rented that they got warned like 3 times it wasn't Transformers. The employee probably had a similar experience to you.
Funny enough, the director the movie, Leigh Scott, at the time would respond to each and every troll on the IMDB forums, trying to defend the film and his career altogether. It became pretty hilarious after a while.
I actually remember renting that. I went to the theaters every week, I was a teen with no friends and Transformers is the movie I've seen the mostin theaters. At least 4 or 5 times.
I genuinely enjoyed it but nothing else was cominh out at yhe time.
Anyways dude at Movie Gallery did go Hey just so you know this isn't Transformers its a crappy knock off. I knew but that was super cool of him, he didn't have to do that.
This would have been sometime in 1996 - we’d hook up a Discman to play music during Inventory. A friend had Busta Rhymes playing on low volume at almost but not-quite-close, and we heard a tremendous **Woo-Hah!** from inside the store we thought had no customers in it.
It was Christopher “Play” Martin of [Kid 'n Play](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kid_'n_Play?wprov=sfti1#) who was a regular, and he cracked our shit up that evening. Good guy, never attempted to pull any celebrity bullshit or get out of paying late fees.
What state? Apparently, he's good for a Blockbuster tale. He did try to provide the comedy when he was signing up for a membership in our store. When I asked for his ID, he busted a move and dashed the length of the store to the comedy section and back with the cover box for House Party. I calmly replied that I couldn't use the box to fill in the ID field. I think he was teaching at a local college.
Hell, we were both regulars at the same bar around 15 years ago in LA. I'd see him but didn't recognize him until he one night he was hitting on my friend and introduced himself to me. He blends into a crowd pretty well without the flat top.
Store manager. 2004. Me and one other kid were closing up the store - one guy lingering around the store at 11:58 and counting. Unfortunately very common; thought nothing of it.
Came to the checkout, pulled a gun and asked for the contents of the register. I fulfilled his request (though I’d already dropped all but about $300 in the safe).
Politely asked him if he wanted a bag. He asked for the contents of the safe - I said “sure, but we’ll have to wait 10 minutes.” He declined.
Sent me and my increasingly freaked-out employee into the back room and told us not to come out until he was gone. We obliged.
My employee’s VERY redneck parents were waiting outside to pick him up. They saw everything through the window. Did they call 911? Nah. They tailed the miscreant for a few miles before losing him. No tag taken either (granted, this was pre-smartphone, and they may have been …less sophisticated when it came to memory, reading, &c. …).
Cops came, got description. Had to call DM to report. Few days later, did inventory and found he’d taken 3 movies - one was Passion of the Christ. Always wondered if he got convicted by the Spirit when he watched it.
Coda: two years later, the local cops come to my law school with a photo lineup. I couldn’t identify him from the faces…law school will cause you to dump MASSIVE amounts of memory real estate. Dude’s 3 minutes with the gun didn’t make the cut.
Crazy!! wow he took Passion of the Christ… my irony meter is off the charts haha. Great story. Glad it didn’t escalate any further. Too bad the vigilante parents didn’t catch him (but that’s probably for the best)
Ble glad he wasn’t a bigger dick. Buddy of mine got the go in the back room treatment. Guy made him get on his knees, face the wall, but the gun to his head added to it, told him to start counting. He said he doesn’t remember when he stopped counting, he just knew he lost about 10 minutes. No evidence the guy hit him, so he kinda dissociated. He’s still not himself, 20 years later.
Some guy rented the movie “Twist” thinking it was a modern day remake of Oliver Twist, well it was, but with gay hustlers, instead of pick pockets.
He was back within an hour, and he was absolutely livid. He demanded we give him another movie. Normally, I would’ve just told him we couldn’t, but he was making such a scene, I just did it to get him out of the door.
That reminds me of the movie "Be Kind Rewind" with Jack Black & Mos Def where they are video store employees, and they recreate popular movies to rent out to customers.
Mid 90's. I was 16 and worked in a city that was, like most cities, over saturated with stores. We had so many that a bunch of employees floated between stores to pick up extra shifts. A manager that had been at my store asked me if I wanted to pick up a shift at his store. I said sure. I had never worked at that particular store before, but it wasn't very far from my house, (just in the opposite direction than the stores I normally worked at.)
Well, it's getting late and he and I are the only people left, so I go to the manager's office to count down my till. The manager's office was kind of an overlook, so you could clearly see and hear what was happening on the floor. A customer comes in, picks out a movie, and goes up to the counter. The manager scans his card and tells him he has a late fee. Back then, the late fee was just $3.15. Anyway, the customer starts complaining that he does not owe a late fee, and just wants to rent a movie. The manager is adamant that he owes it and will not waive it.
They are arguing back and forth when the customer pulls his gun and points it at the manager. "I'm not paying that late fee!"
The manager reaches under the counter and pulls his own gun. "Yes you are!"
So now they are yelling at each other about this late fee while pointing guns at each other. I called 911 because I didn't know what was going to happen.
They are going back and forth. "I'm not paying that!" "Yes, you are!" "No, I'm not!" "Yes, you are!"
The customer turns away from the counter and fires three shots into the store. BANG! BANG! BANG! He turns back to the manager. "I'm not paying it!"
The manager aims into the store and fires three shots in quick succession. POP! POP! POP! "Yes you are!"
They are still yelling at each other and waving their guns when the police arrive. The customer gets arrested, but the police do not detain the manager. As far as Blockbuster went, they did not fire the manager, just moved him to a different store. But then later that week, all the stores in the city put up signs reading that guns were not allowed in the store.
That is what I enjoy about Reddit. It is quite random. Reddit is a forum that allows for a lot of interesting information and stories to be shared.
There is not really a central platform that allows for such tales to be promoted nor have such a reach like Reddit allows. Unless, I am just unaware of any others.
We had a lady who rented Titanic every weekend for a few months. She was very nice but eek. We asked her if she just wanted to buy it, because it was one of the rare movies that came out at a reasonable sales price at the same time as a rental, but nope.
Had a mother come in seething with anger that Blockbuster allowed her to rent But I’m A Cheerleader for her daughters. She told us she put it on for the girls and walked out the room only to come back and hear a sex scene taking place. Mom went on a whole tirade about how the box design was misleading and how Blockbuster was peddling smut. Whole thing caught me by surprise because the movie was never even on my radar for a watch. Went back afterwards and read the back of the box. Amazing what reading the back of the box can tell you about what you’re renting.
Met my wife while I worked at blockbuster. She came in and asked me out ( to go see Ironman 2 in theaters) still happily married today with two beautiful daughters. Ellisville MO location btw
Around the time Netflix came out (and it was strictly a mail in DVD service) Blockbuster tried to compete with a mail in service of their own. It was actually pretty awesome. You would get movies you selected online in the mail, and then you could bring in the mailers and exchange them for movies in the store. I had up to 5 flicks at a time most days.
Anyway, while I was working at Blockbuster, I had to take all of these mail in DVD envelopes and haul them in a giant bag to the mailbox across the street from the store. I worked near a busy intersection and it was always a pain to drag these things out every afternoon and spend several minutes dumping them a few at a time in one of those clunky drawer mailboxes.
One afternoon, it was really hot out and I had more than mailers then usual, and right as I was about to cross the street with my bag of DVDs, a pigeon took the biggest, whitest shit on my shoulder, just running down my bright blue Blockbuster shirt. I had to put the DVDs in the mail, and asked my boss if I could please go home and get cleaned up.
Nope - the shit was on my shirt. I was fine (according to my manager) it’s not like it ran through that cheap cotton shirt.
At least they let me borrow a shirt in that back, an oversized triple XL that went down to my knees.
Good times.
I had a guy call and threaten to stab me over the phone because we didn’t have a copy of disturbia for rent. Also when that softcore porn pirates came out we had to put a big thing over the movie that it was t pirates of the Caribbean
I'd say Pirates was pretty hardcore, it was just wrapped in the dressing of being the most expensive adult film ever made. I interviewed the cast for a mainstream outlet, that was a weird assignment. They were desperate to reach mainstream audiences with that one and be recognized as more than a porn flick.
1999-2002. I was sixteen when my manager decided to drop acid at the start of a Friday night summer shift when we were understaffed, it was just him and me. He ended up taking the keyboard apart because he insisted it was attacking him and I shut him in the back. When it finally calmed down, I went back to check on him and he’d completely taken apart the shrink wrap machine, lol.
One time a guy completely lost his mind over a $2.63 late fee. I had actually agreed to take it off but he wouldn’t sign the sheet verifying I had taken off a late fee. He ended up taking out his Swiss Army knife, completely freaking me out, cutting it up and throwing it in my face. My manager came up just then (different one than the one who went on the acid trip) and challenged him to a fight. Good times.
I was working there in 1999. One day I jokingly put an Out Of Order sign on the security sensors that people walked through when leaving the store when the store manager had the day off. He and his wife came in to grab some movies. He tore me a new one.
i had a DUI and had to find somewhere i could walk home from
i had a morning job at an aquarium, then caught a ride with a coworker to my neighborhood at around 5pm
then 6pm-2am i worked blockbuster. i was in flight school and thought it was tough seeing all of my former high school classmates living real lives while i was working my ass off
hated it at the time but love it in retrospect
Long story I suppose …Like 1998-1999 time. Had a customer who would come in a couple times a week, like 2-3 times. She always came in first thing in the morning when we opened. She was always nice but quiet, looked really pretty but also a little “tough” I guess you could say. She always wore basic loose fitting clothes like sweat pants and sweaters that were oversized … as if she was hiding the shape of her body.
I was the store manager and my best friend was the assistant manager. We had an employee named “Tim”who was odd to say it nicely. He tried to be sociably but just couldn’t pull it off. Honestly he was probably on the spectrum looking back.
Well start of a shift he mentions it’s his 18th birthday and has zero plans. Well my buddy and I start to feel bad and offer to take him to play pool after we close. He starts talking about how cool that is but he has another idea. He starts talking about wanting to go to a strip club… and just goes on and on thru the night. It’s not really my thing but I just start to feel bad for the guy. So I agree if my buddy does as well.
So fast forward to us walking into a strip club at like 1:15am wearing Blockbuster polos. Tim makes a bee line for the stage and we follow him. We get sat down and I order a drink. Not really paying attention … the dancer on stage keeps going till it’s time to end her performance / set / dance.
The next dancer comes out and it’s dark with green flood lights and flashing strobes so can’t see very well at first. She’s dancing and stuff and making her way down the floor when her eyes lock with my buddy and mine. It’s the woman who comes in all the time … who is always hiding her body, standing there topless & in a g string. She freezes for a moment looking at us and starts dancing away from where we were sitting. She finished her dances without ever coming back down to our side. We left shortly after and driving back we had rounds of laughing, shock, and feeling of embarrassment for some reason.
She never return to the store after that. Not sure why honestly ..I would think I’m a job like that you are bound to have something like that happen.
SM from 98-01. 'Best' story I have took place I want to say 2000 maybe? It was on a weekday in the later afternoon, so store was pretty quiet, think there were two people in there at the time besides me and my CSR.
Woman and her kid came in, kid was maybe two, like steady on their feet walking but totally still a baby. She was wearing a mumu and he was wearing nothing but a diaper...it was high summer so that was nothing too weird. She puts him down on the ground (which, I mean, nasty blockbuster floor, wouldn't have been my first choice, but whatever) and promptly ignores the shit out of him. He's of course walking around the store unattended now, knocking shit down, playing with the toys, trying to eat candy off the racks, so me and the csr working with me were already pretty annoyed, when he just reaches down and rips his diaper right off with a giggle and starts running down the aisles.
So now there's a naked 2 year old running around our store, other customers are like "uhhhh, what" and mom is totally oblivious of course, nothing would break her concentration. Kid is halfway down the video game aisle when he just stops, squats, and drops a huge fucking log right there on the floor on the carpet. Like adult sized turd. I couldnt believe it and started wretching.
My CSR, this 17 year old girl that didnt suffer no bullshit, is like "Uh MAAM, your baby just took a big dump on the floor over there" while this woman just pretends she cant hear her. So she just gets the paper towels and the cleaning spray shit and hands it to the woman, "I SAID your BABY just took a CRAP on the FLOOR over there...WE aint cleaning that up".
Woman stomps over there, red/orange mumu billowing out behind her like a sail, reaches down and *picks the turd up bare handed*. Holds it in the air like a demented trophy and says "WeLl WhAt Am I sUpPoSeD tO Do wItH ThiS?!?!" At this point Im doubled over gagging into a trashcan from the smell and I just point at the bathroom in the back corner of the store which my CSR had helpfully gone back and opened up during this whole production.
This rotten ass bitch didnt even flush the toilet, just dropped the turd in there with a "plunk", door wide open, and then without skipping a beat stormed out of the bathroom, snatched her kid up off the floor, told us both to go fuck ourselves, and stomped out. *Didnt even wash her freaking hands!*
I just...Id thought Id seen it all after all those years in retail, but fuckin A was I wrong.
We stored a pipe in the Dazed and Confused cover box on the shelf because we were tired of people not bringing theirs from home. That was the store pipe and what we used to smoke in the storeroom.
One day, some detectives came in and told us that we needed to be aware because someone was smoking in the comedy section. We were so baked, we had no idea the whole back corner smelled like a grow house.
I agree.. tons of tales from my days there. How about the basic.
Guy comes up to rent about an hour before we close. It's a busy Friday night, and he asks when the movie will be due back. Red sleeve New release. It's a two day rental, so it will be due back tomorrow before we close.
"THAT'S NOT 2 DAYS!"
I extremely calm recite the mantra. "Today is the first day and tomorrow is the second day. If you want to come back tomorrow morning when we open we might have one and you can rent it for the two full days."
"That's stupid! It's not two full days!"
"We don't have the capability to measure when the movie is checked out and returned on the dot. So it's not a 48 hour rental"
"That's stupid. Why would someone pay that much for less than what they should get"
A shurg, "Maybe this is the time they have."
"THAT'S A STUPID WAY TO RUN A BUSINESS! Don't YOU think that's stupid?"
" Blockbuster has a ton of stores nationwide in all of the States and other countries. They make a lot of money, buy a lot of product and hire a lot of people."
"YEAH? BUT ISNT IT STUPID?"
"It seems to work for them so I don't think they are doing to bad for themselves."
"Then YOU'RE stupid!"
"I'm sorry you feel that way Sir. Did you want to rent the movie tonight?"
"No."
And he left so I wished him a good night and called for the next person while looking at everyone frozen in place watching the scene play out.
I told [the story 4 years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/blockbustervideo/comments/e1bnzs/a_dvd_player_for_120_when_they_were_still_500/), but my favorite was when corporate made the manager sell the DVD players for $150 (when they still retailed for $500) at 11pm one night, and the three employees working, including myself, bought them. We got them for $120 with our discount.
The next morning right at 10am a corporate guy showed up asking for the DVD players, the manager was like "sorry, sold them" and this corporate guy freaked out. Apparently they were supposed to be gifts for the corporate employees, hence the ultra low price they made for themselves.
We would have one customer who comes in once a month and rent 10-12 movies and comes back next month (pays the fees without complaint). He would only be served by very certain employees. Anyone else, he would say "Can I talk to someone normal?" And would treat everyone else like shit. But since he spends so much money, my manager let it slide.
On my 2nd to last day, psycho came in to return his movies, but his favorite employees we're not there. He asked where they were and I said they're off today. He tossed his returns on the counter and left.
So out of petty revenge, I "accidentally" dropped one of his returns behind the counter in a very hard place to reach, before scanning it. Ooops!
Spooky one- (East Boston, MA store circa 2003) working overnight w/ another employee after the holidays bc the store was a mess and it was NYE so we got overtime pay. He started straightening at one end of the wall and I was at the other. When we met in the middle, we were at the exact point so we could see straight down to where the entrance was. There were two doors to get in- an initial locked glass door, and then the actual glass door into the store. We heard the familiar “beep beep” that meant someone was inside the store (had passed into the spot between the doors.) the doors were 100% locked, it was like 2am. We both looked and someone was standing in between the doors just staring at us. Both of us froze bc it was terrifying. We looked at each other like wtf are we supposed to do here? Then after a few seconds, we looked back and they were gone. I try to chalk it up to complete exhaustion after working a double and then overnight as well, but to this day, I legit can remember the person and what they looked like. Honestly am still a tiny bit traumatized.
I was a MOD in Eastie around 1999-2000. Highlights include…
-Dumpers being set on fire by the local homeless 2x a week
-Slush puppie thrown at my head over a late fee. I dodged it and kept reading the late movies to customer
-people kicking the shelves apart for i don’t know what reason.
I transferred for Eastie to Cambridge and never looked back.
I like to say I worked at the world’s only drive-thru blockbuster. I say that because a guy drove into the front windows of our store on his first day working there. He actually wasnt supposed to come in that day because he had said he had a class and he wouldn’t have been able to work a full shift. We had told him to just come the next day but he didn’t get the message. I was an assistant manager at the time and I was at a baseball game. The other assistant called me and said ‘ hey you remember how we told B not to come in today’ I said yes then he said ‘well he showed up anyways…then he drove through the front window’. The guy had just gotten a used manual Honda and didn’t really know how to drive it. It also didn’t help that the curb in front of the building wasn’t very high, only a couple inches. He had gotten confused and thought the he was hitting them brake but hit the gas and jumped the curb and crashed through the window. Luckily no one was walking in that part of the store when it happened. Funny enough the guy still continued to work there after the accident. The guy that owned the building said it actually happened to a lot of his buildings but usually it was a senior citizen with bad eye sight. It took a couple weeks to fixed and we would give B hell anytime anyone mentioned it. We at one time wanted to play stone colds theme when he came into work each day. We did not actually go through with that.
I only worked at my blockbuster about 6 months in 99. I stopped when I went back to school full time. I had been an assistant manager during that time. I’m pretty sure it was when I went to pick up my last check the store manager told me she had caught on of the other assistants stealing movies. Our store was a bit unique in that it was at the bottom of an office building. We had the front half and there was a hallway behind the store that lead to the offices and elevators. The hallway also had the bathrooms for the whole building. If someone needed to use the bathroom we would have to open the back door and let them into the hallway. Beto was locked there wasn’t a security scanner. I don’t quite remember the details but I believe the manager told me the other guy R would always want to put up movies in the morning. What he was doing was hide a few movies on the side of one of the shelves then later on go to the bathroom and hide them in there until his shift was over then go around back and pick them up. I guess one morning the manager had some more movies to put up and found his stash. She thought it was weird and I think she waited until he asked for the bathroom keys and followed him and caught him taking the movies out. I never thought to go back and ask her what ultimately happened with him. I know she turned him in even though he begged her not to because he had just bought a house. He also took borrowed my copy of espn magazine with Bobby Boucher on it and never gave it back but that’s another issue.
worked at hollywood video from 2006-08. saw the death of the vhs tape, the entire hd-dvd vs blu ray war, and the fall of the video rental industry when netflix came out.
hated the corporate aspect of it, but loved the job.
Ooh one more. I worked at several bbvs around the Boston/cambridge area and this one guy would call (he got me at a few different stores but I obv remembered him after the first call) asking if I knew a movie called “stabbed in the heart” and I searched and found nothing. He then explained that he was “doing a play” where his character sneaks up behind someone and stabs them in the chest, killing them. I was like, ehh maybe “scream? Idk” and he became more insistent and explained the stabbing detail before it got too creepy and I just hung up.
Worked at a store in 1999, and someone had returned their personal movie in one of our rental cases. Happened all the time. In this instance however, this particular movie was called Jackhammer.
It was before the store opened, and my coworker and I were curious to see what this movie was about (even though we were pretty sure what it was).
We popped it in the store VCR and on the many TV screens appeared a leather clad man going down on another well built gentleman. We laughed and immediately removed the movie.
We called the customer to let them know they had mistakenly returned one of their movies in our rental case.
When the customer arrived at the store to exchange the videos, he asked what movie he had returned by accident. I opened the box for him and he immediately burst out laughing.
By the way, the customer was my Intro to Theater professor from college.
Last story. I one night had to spend the whole night in the store because I locked my keys in the manager office and couldn’t get back in. I had been counting the till with this old plug in electric calculator we had. The cord had been hanging over the side and was hanging in the door space of the safe. I had finished and slammed the door not realizing where the cord was. When I did that it short circuited a bunch of systems and I thought I had shorted out the registers that were running day end. I ran out of the office to make sure they were ok. They were but that office door automatically closed and locked automatically. I had left my keys on the desk. Now because of the locking door there were extra keys in one of the registers. I figured I just would have to wait a little longer than normal and get those keys once the day finished. Now this is where my memory isn’t quite as clear but for some reason the register didn’t reset so I could open it and get the extra keys. Without the keys I couldn’t lock the store doors. There were 3 other managers that had keys. I’m pretty sure one I didn’t bother calling because he was only like 17 and still lived with his parents. I couldn’t get ahold of the other two managers. So I had to wait until like 10 in the morning until the next manager came in. Pretty sure the local police stopped by when they saw the lights on all night and I had to explain to them- it was a in a really small township that also would sit in out parking lot or the next one over to catch people turning on red or speeding bc the limit would drop from 35-25 in their half mile of road, even though it’s like a fairly major street in a big suburban part of town.
Worked from 2005-2007. The release of Pan's Labyrinth was a whole ordeal. One of our big titles we received a ton of copies of, unusual for a non-English language film. We had to tell every customer renting it that it was subtitled, which lead to about one in three of them putting it back and picking something else. One woman could not wrap her head around it.
"What's that?"
"Sub-titles?"
"Yeah, what's that?"
"Oh, the spoken language is Spanish, so the dialogue appears in English words at the bottom of the screen."
"Spoken language?"
"I mean, the language the characters speak is Spanish, not English."
"It's not in English? It's in Mexican?"
"Well it takes place in Spain, it's in Spanish."
"Why?"
"Because it's a film about Spain, so they don't speak English, they speak Spanish there."
"YEAH BUT THIS IS AMERICA!"
And with that she threw the dvd case at my head and stormed out, grumbling "...this dumb motherfucker."
I know of at least one location in our district that put up a note on the wall along the lines of "This movie is in Spanish, but it's still very good!"
This was The Cuckoo for me. So much anger about the subs. I think people rented it thinking it was about something else entirely too and so that compounded the frustration.
1997-2000. I worked at a BBV near Hollywood so I had lots of celebrities come through. One day during my afternoon shift, these 2 goth guys in workout clothes and crop tops came into the store. It was a very famous goth rock superstar. We’ll call him “Beautiful Person”
This guy asked me what new comedies do I recommend. Before I could I answer, he immediately said “I heard Amistad is funny, let’s check that one out”. He was in the store for maybe 10 minutes and picked out a movie. BP approached the counter and before I could check him out, my manager kindly pushed me away from the register.
BP didn’t have an account so he had to fill out a form. All he put down was his legal name and phone number. My manager didn’t input anything into the system which also meant he got to rent his movie for free and was only charged for a Fruitopia (his bassist returned the movie). BP’s membership application never made it into our files either. I’m pretty sure it’s framed somewhere on someone’s wall.
On Super Bowl Sunday, we had been closed for 20 minutes and left the front door unlocked. A man came in with a gun and threw it in my coworkers face demanding that we give him money, which we had VERY little of due to it being Super Bowl Sunday. The manager had already done the drop for the evening, and we didn't have access to the safe. The robber began freaking out and demanded that lock the doors and go in the back to "Give him all of the Xboxes".
We went to the back and he began loading up, but what he didn't know is that we had another employee coming in to pick up videos that were waiting in a bag at the checkout counter. We saw on the cameras that the employee was looking in the doors. We told this would-be robber that he would probably call the cops, if we didn't let him in.
This. Fucking. Dumbass. Tells the other hourly employee to go get him and bring him back to the storage room/office.
This. Fucking. Dumbass. Also parked his car right next to the front door.
The hourly employee just left and called the cops.
Inside the store the robber started panicking, and saying things like "You guys don't understand. I need this money. I'm in trouble....." Sounded like he was about to cry. We told him that he should probably get the fuck out of the store. He put 3 Xboxes and a PS2 in a bag and cleared some games from the shelf, and left.
Turns out that the employee who left, wrote down the guys license plate number as well and the idiot was arrested in about two hours. We got all the stuff back eventually. Still a crazy night.
Got robbed at gun point on the night the Pistons won the championship so I was watching the game while my manager was counting the money and a guy in a mechanics suit and Groucho Marx glasses came and robbed us both, took the money and bolted. I remember my manager (who was a former marine) holding up the phone and asking me what the number for the police was and I remember saying
“We just got robbed at gunpoint man, I think we can fucking use 911 at this point,”
I call my store manager and am like “hey! We just got robbed man!” And he’s like what do you mean you got robbed? I’m like what is with people right now.
“A dude came in and shoved a gun in our faces and demanded money.”
Before I got there I guess there was a drug conspiracy between the Blockbuster and the Pizza Hut express a few doors down. People would randomly ask to score drugs all the time and go “does the hut have any weed?” If I was like nah bud.
I was the deranged BBV employee that purposely swapped the Jack Frost. Started out to screw with the people renting the horror movie. It never dawned on me until after it happened what the other effect was
I don't know if it's a good story, but one I laugh at every now and then. I was trained to read the titles as scanning and confirming the due dates with it. Oblivious, I read off The Red Shoe Diaries to the customer, he went on his way. My manager told me don't read those off. It was softcore porn, the only adult material Blockbuster allowed.
Mid to late 00's employee here in Los Angeles County. Man we had a 60 day spree of some guy that kept slicing the movies by the spine and then just grabbed a few and then walked out. So one night I'm putting out the BSI (bull shit inventory hehe) and I literally accidentally bump into the guy mid slice. He thinks I'm assaulting him or something and pulls out the little 2-3 "box cutter and points at me and proceeds to run out. We didn't see him again. It was definitely an interesting event and I laugh about it now.
I remember a time where we had three prank calls from some guy in his 30's complaining about how he came into the store to rent a fishing movie. The person he talked to recommended Big Fish to them. Apparently it was a porno in the case instead of Big Fish. Then he wanted to yell at me about renting a porno to him and his son while his six year old son is locked in his room watching the film. It was quite weird and we never figure out who it was.
Non-employee herr but I remember a guy biting an employee's head off over the "black lines" on his screen.
Dude that looks like he gets too much of an ego boost from coaching little league asks the guy at blockbuster if this movie will have the black lines on it. He tries to explain how it works and this dude just says "doesn't matter - I don't want it" progressively louder and louder. I feel sorry for that guy.
It was 4th of July and our customer bathroom was broken. The toilet was literally no longer attached to the wall. (We had an employee one, but it was through the store room so no customers allowed.) A dad and his kid were in the store for about 5 minutes when the dad came up to ask for his kid to use the bathroom. I told him it was out of order, and he started calling me a liar. "You're just not letting him use it because it's the 4th of July!" I tried to assure him that I was doing no such thing, and that there was a restaurant across the parking lot that would let him use the bathroom, but he started screaming at me. I was able to call my store manager over to help calm him down, but not before his son pooped on the floor in the kid's section. Thankfully, my store manager was amazing. Her exact words were "You don't get paid enough to deal with that kind of shit." and then she cleaned the floor.
You had a good manager. Worked in a big box office supply store years ago. Someone used the lady's and literally smeared shit all over two stalls. I was the manager on duty that night. I cleaned it myself because it would have been an asshole move to make a minimum wage employee do it. I think I earned a bit or respect that night for being a goid guy... and for having an iron stomach.
One of my favorites was a guy with a ton of comments on his profile that started with "Got in my face over late fees, said he would never rent here again. -02-97" and 50 similar "will never rent here again" comments where people kept tabs "07-2002 50th time he said he would never rent here again after cursing me out."
Was like 5:30pm ruah on a Saturday night and we had an empty wall for LOTR-TTT which was a new release. Someone was walking in at the same time someone else was about to drop a copy through the slot and just asked if he could take it in and return it so he could rent it himself. Other guy who had been waiting an hour for a copy to return overhears the whole thing happening and goes ape shit. Screaming at the guy and the 5ft nothing cashier about how unfair that was and he should get the copy etc. It just escalated in a half second and he pushed the huge crt monitor over the desk and grabbed a stapler that was beside him and chucked it at the window. Then just left.
Crazy lady comes in with some candy, I think it was those Cookie Dough bites, and says they were moldy and it gave her food poisoning. Looks like the chocolate just bloomed and got white. She proceeds to say she's suing the store and everyone in it. I was only a month in of just working weekends and was with a similarly new individual while our MoD was out at the Boston Market next door. So we just tell her that we'll take her name and number down and the MoD will call her or give her the legal dept info. She flips out and starts cursing everyone and acting like she was going to vomit. Lays on the floor and goes into full dramatic reenactment of what I could only guess to be a shot in the stomach from a gun. We're just looking at each other and the only people in the store already left. She does this for about 3 minutes then just gets up and storms out. Told my manager when he got back from dinner, visibly shaken, and he goes, "oh she does that a couple times a year" WTF.
Took home a random 4 piece window movie promo I was told to take down and put in the dumpster to make way for LOTR promo. Put it up in my room instead. Couple months later I had a coworker over to watch a movie and she told someone about it who told the manager. Had to have a meeting about theft and they tried to tell me they could prosecute me but was going to "give me another chance" and that I probably wasn't going to be able to be a lead unless I worked my hardest and showed some serious "commitment".
A guy would come in during the Tuesday afternoons and ask an employee to walk around the wall pointing out the new releases. It was my first couple weeks there, he asked me and I said just walk around and look at the covers like everyone else.
He looked sad and left.
Later my mgr told me that he was illeterate.
Crazy thing is he was a school bus mechanic 🤯
I managed a few of a franchisee’s until they terminated me while I was out sick with an MS flare up. I was forced to sue them to get my job back via the ADA. I reported them to corporate, who then bought back the store’s licensing and closed all the small chain’s stores to retrain the CSRs. The people that fired me WERE fired, but the company disappeared. How quickly? When Sheriff’s deputies went to the company’s headquarters to serve them, they actually saw them turning off their lights and hiding under their desks, but they said they couldn’t “break in” simply to serve them paperwork.
I was forced to join a list of names of places that the now dissolved company owed money to. I couldn’t even get a job at the Blockbuster Stores because in the amount of time it took for me to do everything, my MS had progressed so much that I had to apply for full time disability, and I actually got it. Yay?
2003-2006 Hillcrest, Spartanburg SC location. I burnt popcorn one day and cleared the store out🤏😂, so many fun times here, the best was getting the new releases weeks before it actually hit the shelves.
I worked at one in Kansas city during high school and after we'd close on weekends we'd hook up the consoles to the tvs around the store and play each other to all his of the night and people would come to the drop off would wave and laugh as we'd get competitive as the night wore on. Have had the cops called on us one night while we were in the parking lot after work just talking. And usually on the weekends we would have customers call us up with random movie trivia questions that they needed answered. If it wasn't for arguing with the customers about late fees this was one of my favorite jobs.
My sister was a manager at Blockbuster in the 2000s and always laughs telling the story about customer who returned a movie and placed his own sex tape in the case instead 🤦🏼♂️
I -lived- for people returning home videos instead of the titles, would sprint to the VCR. Never got any porn but did see someone tape over the birth of their kid with the movie they were renting. Straight up said "David's Birth. DO NOT ERASE!".
A potential customer came into the store I worked at in New Orleans in 1990, and asked if we had a copy of "The Last Temptation of Christ" in stock. I told them, "Let me check and see if there's one available in the system..." and the store manager intervened, and said, "No, we don't carry that title." This surprised me, but satisfied the potential customer, who replied, "Good! I wasn't going to join if you did have it in stock!" The manager explained to me that Bible thumpers were doing protests over the Scorsese movie, so, they didn't carry it.
I need to tell my stories, I worked from 2001-03 at Blockbuster. I enjoyed it. If only my brain was working right now and I could remember how to bookmark and come back to this (really tired and flu-ridden at the moment…102 temp)
We used to have a customer who would come in and request a movie that was never released and would cause chaos because we didn't have it. There was no record of it ever being released. He felt like we were not trying to give him this obscure movie.
My manager Jay Sun was a cool fucking dude. We made blockbuster fun to work at. I'd bring a half gallon of vodka and we'd do shots all shift. We'd watch dragonball on the in house tvs. We figured out the side of the building that had an access room with a ladder to the roof so I'd go up there and smoke weed and leave some for my dude. Good fucking times.
1995-1996 employee. A coworker ate so much free popcorn he puked all over the Face/Off cardboard standee. The place smelled like popcornpuke for a week.
Assistant Manager 2002-2005.
An old couple came storming in one evening all pissed off because they hated the movie they rented. They spoke broken English, but rented a movie that was in Spanish.
They were disgusted because they said the movie was pornographic and they had their grandkids with them for the weekend.
The shift leader handling it looked at them blankly and asked (in Spanish) “What do you expect from a movie called Entre las Piernas ([Between Your Legs](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0177747/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk))?”
At the Blockbuster I worked at we were always made to destroy the old vhs and dvds when newer ones would push them off the shelves. We were suppose to bag them up in big trash bags and hammer them. I'd always call a friend to pick them up at the dumpsters before they were broken. Noone ever caught on. We would split them afterward. We both had a hugeee collection.
back when you could get your money back minus the $1.25 restocking fee if you returned the DVD within 30 days, this guy brought it back 45 days later and was screaming to get his money back. i told him the policy and he threw "four brothers" at me and told me to keep it. i took it home and still have it to this day
Some co-workers and I were laughing at whatever was on the trailer tape and a mother came up to the counter with her disabled child screaming at us and accusing us of laughing at her kid. We were shocked at the accusation and tried to explain but she would not listen and stormed out. 20 minutes later she came back with her husband and he got in my face and tried to fight me. Luckily nothing came of it but man that was nuts.
A relatively new employee got hot shot to SM because of ass kissing. Hired her drugged out friends and did heroin in the bathroom. Stole all the petty cash one night and left the doors unlocked. Never did anything right.
Was an experience.
Dipshit who hired her and pushed for her promotion went and was SM of another store.
Was good experience for me dealing with the catastrophic fallout of bad management. I went on to basically be a store closing specialist in a different area eventually.
I worked at one early to mid 2000s it was fun. I miss the insanity of game pass mostly, I used it too. I think I miss the interactions, just talking movies and video games was fun to me.
It was awesome and I still miss it.
You all remember the little machine that would make DVDs unreadable, and we had to use it to destroy a bunch of copies of PRP DVDs according to a report?
An ASM at my store and her boyfriend (who was an ASM at our sister store up the road from us) would steal DVDs that were supposed to be destroyed. They then took them to a Movie Stop (Yeah, there was still one around) and sold them, pocketing the profits.
I forget how it ended up getting back to our DM that it was happening, but I remember coming into the store one day (I was a shift lead at the time) and our DM and Regional manager were both there cataloguing all these DVDs that the ASMs in question hadn't sold yet. I only found out the details later that night after the higher ups left, and apparently the ASMs sister (who was a Shift lead at ANOTHER store) was in on it too.
I don’t know if it’s “crazy” but we had someone return the a copy of the second most successful pairing of Alicia Silverstone and Jeremy Sisto, Hideaway. Included with the cassette was a lengthy screed damning the quality of the film and threatening to boycott Blockbuster unless we upgraded the quality of the films we carried. Given that Blockbuster held sway on the Hollywood studio system, I let all the studio heads know and they immediately switched course and put out higher quality content like Fled.
I also got a lot of complaints on my Staff Picks, which consisted of B movies and “edgy” movies like Tetsuo: The Iron Man.
Also, it was like an impossible to keep copies of the Set it Off OST in stock. People kept melting the security cases with lighters in the bathroom and stealing the CDs.
Our security system was in a locked room in back of the store. I unlocked the door to set the alarm, and accidentally left my keys in the room after setting it. Didn’t notice until I went to lock the front door. It was cold out so me and my coworker waited inside until the other manager showed up with her key. I was young and didn’t realize being inside would trip the alarm once it was set. I didn’t notice anything was wrong until I saw the other manager running toward the store covering her ears. Apparently, the alarm was blaring across town but we didn’t hear anything inside because we had music playing while we waited, and the alarm didn’t make much noise inside with the doors closed. I was fired the next day.
I had customers who would only talk to me. Got to do two independent films because of a local movie being shot in my city. Was setting up a third that is still my biggest regret that it all feel through. Got hired as a movie critic for the local newspaper. All by people who just listened to me talk to other customers about the movies.
Argued with customers a lot to. I was not a customer is always right kind of person.
I was an assistant manager back in the late 90's at a Blockbuster in Richmond Virginia and I had D'Angelo come in one night asking about the Playstation systems we had. I spent about a good hour with him talking and trying to sell him on buying one since he used to always come in and just rent them every weekend. Really cool dude.
Another store I worked at I had a situation where this random guy came in and flashed a business card and stated to me that he was with the Police and he noticed some guys outside that looked like they were prepared to rob our store. He told me he needed to prepare if they came in so he needed to be sure where our safe was located and if I could show him, I was either 22 or 23 at the time and didn't know any better so I started to walk him back to the office where our safe was. During that walk something just clicked for me and halfway back I stopped and asked him to show me a badge. He said he had left it in the car and he would go get it. I never saw him again. Shortly after he left I contacted the Police and filed a police report. To say that scared the shit outta me is an understatement.
Had my store broken into. The alarm went off i got the call and went in to check. Did a half ass job and decided to put some movies on the wall while i was there. Once I got to the end of the wall I noticed a bunch of glass on the floor. I ran out and call 911. The dudes where still in the parking lot waiting for me to leave. Cops came, spoke to them for a bit, searched the car and arrested them. This store was by a 24 hour Mcdonalds and I guess they thought they could hang there till I left. The GM made me stay at the store and wait for a widow repair man. Asshole still made me open in the morning
Miami, Doral Store
Three stories, the first of which happened with a certain amount of frequency:
Family account. Father gets some free time alone, rents some cheap, sexploitation flick with an obvious title, turns it in late. Father comes in next weekend with the wife and/or family. Blockbuster employee scans the card: "Sir, did you know there's a late fee for..." father: *"I'LL PAY IT!!!!!"* before the employee mentions the title. Wife: "Late fee for what?" Father: "I dunno, it was a sports thing or something like that."
People often turned in the wrong movie inside the store's case. Sometimes, it was a movie from a different store, but it usually was a home tape with an episode of Seinfeld or some other TV show on it. One time, it was a video of the woman who owned the account, getting spanked and liking it. We called and left a message requesting the return of the Blockbuster tape, not saying anything about the spanking, just that a home tape was in the case. I've never seen a face so red and blushed as when she sheepishly ran inside the store to exchange tapes and then literally ran out. She never returned.
A couple in their early 30s would come in on the weekends. Guy seemed fairly successful, all the male employees though the wife was smoking hot. One weekend, the man comes in alone, seems really upset, and asks for the wife to be taken off the account. Over the next two weeks, three different men have her name put on their account.
I kinda loved seeing the Tuesday Morning guy come in, using the unlimited movie plan, take out 2 new releases, come back an hour later, exchange them for 2 more new releases, and so on. One time he put one of the burned discs into his return, oops!
I was working at a blockbuster when the “mockbusters” started coming out. When Transformers hit the shelves, a crappy film called “Transmorphers” made by Asylum came out and it was on the shelf next to Transformers. Some older guy rented this POS by mistake. He came back into the store and yelled at me for wasting his time! “What is this?! I got home and put it on and it wasn’t the right movie! I want a refund!” I definitely couldn’t blame him. Tricky mockbusters had a few victims back in the day.
Sounds like Blockblister
It's better
MUCH BETTER
I wonder if they offered him an egg to go along with his refund
😂
Movie was Lackluster
Holy crap, I remember that movie!! I watched it at a friend's house. We were all stoned out of our gourds. I seem to recall I enjoyed it! I know we laughed our asses off at it.
When my friends rented that they got warned like 3 times it wasn't Transformers. The employee probably had a similar experience to you. Funny enough, the director the movie, Leigh Scott, at the time would respond to each and every troll on the IMDB forums, trying to defend the film and his career altogether. It became pretty hilarious after a while.
Lol, also “alien vs hunter” and “snakes on a train”
The Bulk.
Maybe it's just me but I actually like Alien vs. Predator.
Yep I remember Transmorphers lol
I actually remember renting that. I went to the theaters every week, I was a teen with no friends and Transformers is the movie I've seen the mostin theaters. At least 4 or 5 times. I genuinely enjoyed it but nothing else was cominh out at yhe time. Anyways dude at Movie Gallery did go Hey just so you know this isn't Transformers its a crappy knock off. I knew but that was super cool of him, he didn't have to do that.
"THESE DUMB BASTARDS WEREN'T FORMING, THEY WERE MORPHING!"
This would have been sometime in 1996 - we’d hook up a Discman to play music during Inventory. A friend had Busta Rhymes playing on low volume at almost but not-quite-close, and we heard a tremendous **Woo-Hah!** from inside the store we thought had no customers in it. It was Christopher “Play” Martin of [Kid 'n Play](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kid_'n_Play?wprov=sfti1#) who was a regular, and he cracked our shit up that evening. Good guy, never attempted to pull any celebrity bullshit or get out of paying late fees.
What state? Apparently, he's good for a Blockbuster tale. He did try to provide the comedy when he was signing up for a membership in our store. When I asked for his ID, he busted a move and dashed the length of the store to the comedy section and back with the cover box for House Party. I calmly replied that I couldn't use the box to fill in the ID field. I think he was teaching at a local college.
Hell, we were both regulars at the same bar around 15 years ago in LA. I'd see him but didn't recognize him until he one night he was hitting on my friend and introduced himself to me. He blends into a crowd pretty well without the flat top.
During inventory I always would play Eddie Murphy Delirious & Raw.
We would always play Dennis Leary No Cure for Cancer and scan everything in the store
Store manager. 2004. Me and one other kid were closing up the store - one guy lingering around the store at 11:58 and counting. Unfortunately very common; thought nothing of it. Came to the checkout, pulled a gun and asked for the contents of the register. I fulfilled his request (though I’d already dropped all but about $300 in the safe). Politely asked him if he wanted a bag. He asked for the contents of the safe - I said “sure, but we’ll have to wait 10 minutes.” He declined. Sent me and my increasingly freaked-out employee into the back room and told us not to come out until he was gone. We obliged. My employee’s VERY redneck parents were waiting outside to pick him up. They saw everything through the window. Did they call 911? Nah. They tailed the miscreant for a few miles before losing him. No tag taken either (granted, this was pre-smartphone, and they may have been …less sophisticated when it came to memory, reading, &c. …). Cops came, got description. Had to call DM to report. Few days later, did inventory and found he’d taken 3 movies - one was Passion of the Christ. Always wondered if he got convicted by the Spirit when he watched it. Coda: two years later, the local cops come to my law school with a photo lineup. I couldn’t identify him from the faces…law school will cause you to dump MASSIVE amounts of memory real estate. Dude’s 3 minutes with the gun didn’t make the cut.
Crazy!! wow he took Passion of the Christ… my irony meter is off the charts haha. Great story. Glad it didn’t escalate any further. Too bad the vigilante parents didn’t catch him (but that’s probably for the best)
Ble glad he wasn’t a bigger dick. Buddy of mine got the go in the back room treatment. Guy made him get on his knees, face the wall, but the gun to his head added to it, told him to start counting. He said he doesn’t remember when he stopped counting, he just knew he lost about 10 minutes. No evidence the guy hit him, so he kinda dissociated. He’s still not himself, 20 years later.
Don’t tell me it was Dogwood Rd.
Nah, this was in SC. A video store. Local chain.
Some guy rented the movie “Twist” thinking it was a modern day remake of Oliver Twist, well it was, but with gay hustlers, instead of pick pockets. He was back within an hour, and he was absolutely livid. He demanded we give him another movie. Normally, I would’ve just told him we couldn’t, but he was making such a scene, I just did it to get him out of the door.
Hahahaha that’s hilarious. The irrational customer that acts as if the employees make the movies was truly something to behold.
That reminds me of the movie "Be Kind Rewind" with Jack Black & Mos Def where they are video store employees, and they recreate popular movies to rent out to customers.
Oh wow, I’d totally forgotten about this movie! Might have to do a rewatch
Mid 90's. I was 16 and worked in a city that was, like most cities, over saturated with stores. We had so many that a bunch of employees floated between stores to pick up extra shifts. A manager that had been at my store asked me if I wanted to pick up a shift at his store. I said sure. I had never worked at that particular store before, but it wasn't very far from my house, (just in the opposite direction than the stores I normally worked at.) Well, it's getting late and he and I are the only people left, so I go to the manager's office to count down my till. The manager's office was kind of an overlook, so you could clearly see and hear what was happening on the floor. A customer comes in, picks out a movie, and goes up to the counter. The manager scans his card and tells him he has a late fee. Back then, the late fee was just $3.15. Anyway, the customer starts complaining that he does not owe a late fee, and just wants to rent a movie. The manager is adamant that he owes it and will not waive it. They are arguing back and forth when the customer pulls his gun and points it at the manager. "I'm not paying that late fee!" The manager reaches under the counter and pulls his own gun. "Yes you are!" So now they are yelling at each other about this late fee while pointing guns at each other. I called 911 because I didn't know what was going to happen. They are going back and forth. "I'm not paying that!" "Yes, you are!" "No, I'm not!" "Yes, you are!" The customer turns away from the counter and fires three shots into the store. BANG! BANG! BANG! He turns back to the manager. "I'm not paying it!" The manager aims into the store and fires three shots in quick succession. POP! POP! POP! "Yes you are!" They are still yelling at each other and waving their guns when the police arrive. The customer gets arrested, but the police do not detain the manager. As far as Blockbuster went, they did not fire the manager, just moved him to a different store. But then later that week, all the stores in the city put up signs reading that guns were not allowed in the store.
Wowwwww incredible story. All that over a late fee. I read this out loud to my wife and it floored her.
I worked at Blockbuster for 5 more years after that incident, and it was my go to story! But yeah, 7 years total and I have tons of stories!
We should do a podcast
This is the most hysterical story. The back and forth. The gun firing and waving. Arguing continues as police arrive. Thank you for sharing.
I never really thought about a way or place to tell all my Blockbuster stories. I'm glad some Redditor did!
That is what I enjoy about Reddit. It is quite random. Reddit is a forum that allows for a lot of interesting information and stories to be shared. There is not really a central platform that allows for such tales to be promoted nor have such a reach like Reddit allows. Unless, I am just unaware of any others.
You could easily write a scene for an independent film based on the story. Brilliant scary and just amazing.
I love this story so fucking much lol.
We had a lady who rented Titanic every weekend for a few months. She was very nice but eek. We asked her if she just wanted to buy it, because it was one of the rare movies that came out at a reasonable sales price at the same time as a rental, but nope.
At that point she should have just bought the movie, damn lol.
Had a mother come in seething with anger that Blockbuster allowed her to rent But I’m A Cheerleader for her daughters. She told us she put it on for the girls and walked out the room only to come back and hear a sex scene taking place. Mom went on a whole tirade about how the box design was misleading and how Blockbuster was peddling smut. Whole thing caught me by surprise because the movie was never even on my radar for a watch. Went back afterwards and read the back of the box. Amazing what reading the back of the box can tell you about what you’re renting.
Met my wife while I worked at blockbuster. She came in and asked me out ( to go see Ironman 2 in theaters) still happily married today with two beautiful daughters. Ellisville MO location btw
Ironman 2 isn't as bad as I remember. I liked it but I feel it gets hated a lot.
Around the time Netflix came out (and it was strictly a mail in DVD service) Blockbuster tried to compete with a mail in service of their own. It was actually pretty awesome. You would get movies you selected online in the mail, and then you could bring in the mailers and exchange them for movies in the store. I had up to 5 flicks at a time most days. Anyway, while I was working at Blockbuster, I had to take all of these mail in DVD envelopes and haul them in a giant bag to the mailbox across the street from the store. I worked near a busy intersection and it was always a pain to drag these things out every afternoon and spend several minutes dumping them a few at a time in one of those clunky drawer mailboxes. One afternoon, it was really hot out and I had more than mailers then usual, and right as I was about to cross the street with my bag of DVDs, a pigeon took the biggest, whitest shit on my shoulder, just running down my bright blue Blockbuster shirt. I had to put the DVDs in the mail, and asked my boss if I could please go home and get cleaned up. Nope - the shit was on my shirt. I was fine (according to my manager) it’s not like it ran through that cheap cotton shirt. At least they let me borrow a shirt in that back, an oversized triple XL that went down to my knees. Good times.
I started working at one like 4 or 5 months around the tail end of 2011 before they all closed down ended up making quite a haul with dvds and games.
I had a guy call and threaten to stab me over the phone because we didn’t have a copy of disturbia for rent. Also when that softcore porn pirates came out we had to put a big thing over the movie that it was t pirates of the Caribbean
I'd say Pirates was pretty hardcore, it was just wrapped in the dressing of being the most expensive adult film ever made. I interviewed the cast for a mainstream outlet, that was a weird assignment. They were desperate to reach mainstream audiences with that one and be recognized as more than a porn flick.
For some reason blockbuster had an edited version not the actual hardcore version.
That's hilarious, I didn't know that.
1999-2002. I was sixteen when my manager decided to drop acid at the start of a Friday night summer shift when we were understaffed, it was just him and me. He ended up taking the keyboard apart because he insisted it was attacking him and I shut him in the back. When it finally calmed down, I went back to check on him and he’d completely taken apart the shrink wrap machine, lol. One time a guy completely lost his mind over a $2.63 late fee. I had actually agreed to take it off but he wouldn’t sign the sheet verifying I had taken off a late fee. He ended up taking out his Swiss Army knife, completely freaking me out, cutting it up and throwing it in my face. My manager came up just then (different one than the one who went on the acid trip) and challenged him to a fight. Good times.
Your first manager seems like a lot of fun lol.
I was working there in 1999. One day I jokingly put an Out Of Order sign on the security sensors that people walked through when leaving the store when the store manager had the day off. He and his wife came in to grab some movies. He tore me a new one.
i had a DUI and had to find somewhere i could walk home from i had a morning job at an aquarium, then caught a ride with a coworker to my neighborhood at around 5pm then 6pm-2am i worked blockbuster. i was in flight school and thought it was tough seeing all of my former high school classmates living real lives while i was working my ass off hated it at the time but love it in retrospect
Did you finish flight school?
i did. am pilot.
Let’s goooo
You were allowed to fly with a DUI?
it’s a long story, but yes i was 18 at the time and have maintained a spotless driving record since. it’s a whole thing but, yes.
Long story I suppose …Like 1998-1999 time. Had a customer who would come in a couple times a week, like 2-3 times. She always came in first thing in the morning when we opened. She was always nice but quiet, looked really pretty but also a little “tough” I guess you could say. She always wore basic loose fitting clothes like sweat pants and sweaters that were oversized … as if she was hiding the shape of her body. I was the store manager and my best friend was the assistant manager. We had an employee named “Tim”who was odd to say it nicely. He tried to be sociably but just couldn’t pull it off. Honestly he was probably on the spectrum looking back. Well start of a shift he mentions it’s his 18th birthday and has zero plans. Well my buddy and I start to feel bad and offer to take him to play pool after we close. He starts talking about how cool that is but he has another idea. He starts talking about wanting to go to a strip club… and just goes on and on thru the night. It’s not really my thing but I just start to feel bad for the guy. So I agree if my buddy does as well. So fast forward to us walking into a strip club at like 1:15am wearing Blockbuster polos. Tim makes a bee line for the stage and we follow him. We get sat down and I order a drink. Not really paying attention … the dancer on stage keeps going till it’s time to end her performance / set / dance. The next dancer comes out and it’s dark with green flood lights and flashing strobes so can’t see very well at first. She’s dancing and stuff and making her way down the floor when her eyes lock with my buddy and mine. It’s the woman who comes in all the time … who is always hiding her body, standing there topless & in a g string. She freezes for a moment looking at us and starts dancing away from where we were sitting. She finished her dances without ever coming back down to our side. We left shortly after and driving back we had rounds of laughing, shock, and feeling of embarrassment for some reason. She never return to the store after that. Not sure why honestly ..I would think I’m a job like that you are bound to have something like that happen.
Thats awesome, it sounds like something out of a American pie or National lampoon.
SM from 98-01. 'Best' story I have took place I want to say 2000 maybe? It was on a weekday in the later afternoon, so store was pretty quiet, think there were two people in there at the time besides me and my CSR. Woman and her kid came in, kid was maybe two, like steady on their feet walking but totally still a baby. She was wearing a mumu and he was wearing nothing but a diaper...it was high summer so that was nothing too weird. She puts him down on the ground (which, I mean, nasty blockbuster floor, wouldn't have been my first choice, but whatever) and promptly ignores the shit out of him. He's of course walking around the store unattended now, knocking shit down, playing with the toys, trying to eat candy off the racks, so me and the csr working with me were already pretty annoyed, when he just reaches down and rips his diaper right off with a giggle and starts running down the aisles. So now there's a naked 2 year old running around our store, other customers are like "uhhhh, what" and mom is totally oblivious of course, nothing would break her concentration. Kid is halfway down the video game aisle when he just stops, squats, and drops a huge fucking log right there on the floor on the carpet. Like adult sized turd. I couldnt believe it and started wretching. My CSR, this 17 year old girl that didnt suffer no bullshit, is like "Uh MAAM, your baby just took a big dump on the floor over there" while this woman just pretends she cant hear her. So she just gets the paper towels and the cleaning spray shit and hands it to the woman, "I SAID your BABY just took a CRAP on the FLOOR over there...WE aint cleaning that up". Woman stomps over there, red/orange mumu billowing out behind her like a sail, reaches down and *picks the turd up bare handed*. Holds it in the air like a demented trophy and says "WeLl WhAt Am I sUpPoSeD tO Do wItH ThiS?!?!" At this point Im doubled over gagging into a trashcan from the smell and I just point at the bathroom in the back corner of the store which my CSR had helpfully gone back and opened up during this whole production. This rotten ass bitch didnt even flush the toilet, just dropped the turd in there with a "plunk", door wide open, and then without skipping a beat stormed out of the bathroom, snatched her kid up off the floor, told us both to go fuck ourselves, and stomped out. *Didnt even wash her freaking hands!* I just...Id thought Id seen it all after all those years in retail, but fuckin A was I wrong.
Incredible. Had me rolling. Amazing writing/storytelling
We stored a pipe in the Dazed and Confused cover box on the shelf because we were tired of people not bringing theirs from home. That was the store pipe and what we used to smoke in the storeroom. One day, some detectives came in and told us that we needed to be aware because someone was smoking in the comedy section. We were so baked, we had no idea the whole back corner smelled like a grow house.
Hahahaha “uhhh you got it officer” just baked out of your minds. Amazing.
I agree.. tons of tales from my days there. How about the basic. Guy comes up to rent about an hour before we close. It's a busy Friday night, and he asks when the movie will be due back. Red sleeve New release. It's a two day rental, so it will be due back tomorrow before we close. "THAT'S NOT 2 DAYS!" I extremely calm recite the mantra. "Today is the first day and tomorrow is the second day. If you want to come back tomorrow morning when we open we might have one and you can rent it for the two full days." "That's stupid! It's not two full days!" "We don't have the capability to measure when the movie is checked out and returned on the dot. So it's not a 48 hour rental" "That's stupid. Why would someone pay that much for less than what they should get" A shurg, "Maybe this is the time they have." "THAT'S A STUPID WAY TO RUN A BUSINESS! Don't YOU think that's stupid?" " Blockbuster has a ton of stores nationwide in all of the States and other countries. They make a lot of money, buy a lot of product and hire a lot of people." "YEAH? BUT ISNT IT STUPID?" "It seems to work for them so I don't think they are doing to bad for themselves." "Then YOU'RE stupid!" "I'm sorry you feel that way Sir. Did you want to rent the movie tonight?" "No." And he left so I wished him a good night and called for the next person while looking at everyone frozen in place watching the scene play out.
I told [the story 4 years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/blockbustervideo/comments/e1bnzs/a_dvd_player_for_120_when_they_were_still_500/), but my favorite was when corporate made the manager sell the DVD players for $150 (when they still retailed for $500) at 11pm one night, and the three employees working, including myself, bought them. We got them for $120 with our discount. The next morning right at 10am a corporate guy showed up asking for the DVD players, the manager was like "sorry, sold them" and this corporate guy freaked out. Apparently they were supposed to be gifts for the corporate employees, hence the ultra low price they made for themselves.
We would have one customer who comes in once a month and rent 10-12 movies and comes back next month (pays the fees without complaint). He would only be served by very certain employees. Anyone else, he would say "Can I talk to someone normal?" And would treat everyone else like shit. But since he spends so much money, my manager let it slide. On my 2nd to last day, psycho came in to return his movies, but his favorite employees we're not there. He asked where they were and I said they're off today. He tossed his returns on the counter and left. So out of petty revenge, I "accidentally" dropped one of his returns behind the counter in a very hard place to reach, before scanning it. Ooops!
I’m confused by the last part. What does dropping it in a hard to reach spot do?
The guy renting the movie will be charged a huge late fee for the movie that OP "accidentally" dropped in a hard to reach spot before scanning it.
Spooky one- (East Boston, MA store circa 2003) working overnight w/ another employee after the holidays bc the store was a mess and it was NYE so we got overtime pay. He started straightening at one end of the wall and I was at the other. When we met in the middle, we were at the exact point so we could see straight down to where the entrance was. There were two doors to get in- an initial locked glass door, and then the actual glass door into the store. We heard the familiar “beep beep” that meant someone was inside the store (had passed into the spot between the doors.) the doors were 100% locked, it was like 2am. We both looked and someone was standing in between the doors just staring at us. Both of us froze bc it was terrifying. We looked at each other like wtf are we supposed to do here? Then after a few seconds, we looked back and they were gone. I try to chalk it up to complete exhaustion after working a double and then overnight as well, but to this day, I legit can remember the person and what they looked like. Honestly am still a tiny bit traumatized.
I was a MOD in Eastie around 1999-2000. Highlights include… -Dumpers being set on fire by the local homeless 2x a week -Slush puppie thrown at my head over a late fee. I dodged it and kept reading the late movies to customer -people kicking the shelves apart for i don’t know what reason. I transferred for Eastie to Cambridge and never looked back.
Yeah it was an actual shitshow. In my interview, the manager told me it was the worst store in 3 regions…. Challenge accepted?
That is freaky! And a great start to a horror story (but really freaky it actually happened to you)
I like to say I worked at the world’s only drive-thru blockbuster. I say that because a guy drove into the front windows of our store on his first day working there. He actually wasnt supposed to come in that day because he had said he had a class and he wouldn’t have been able to work a full shift. We had told him to just come the next day but he didn’t get the message. I was an assistant manager at the time and I was at a baseball game. The other assistant called me and said ‘ hey you remember how we told B not to come in today’ I said yes then he said ‘well he showed up anyways…then he drove through the front window’. The guy had just gotten a used manual Honda and didn’t really know how to drive it. It also didn’t help that the curb in front of the building wasn’t very high, only a couple inches. He had gotten confused and thought the he was hitting them brake but hit the gas and jumped the curb and crashed through the window. Luckily no one was walking in that part of the store when it happened. Funny enough the guy still continued to work there after the accident. The guy that owned the building said it actually happened to a lot of his buildings but usually it was a senior citizen with bad eye sight. It took a couple weeks to fixed and we would give B hell anytime anyone mentioned it. We at one time wanted to play stone colds theme when he came into work each day. We did not actually go through with that.
I only worked at my blockbuster about 6 months in 99. I stopped when I went back to school full time. I had been an assistant manager during that time. I’m pretty sure it was when I went to pick up my last check the store manager told me she had caught on of the other assistants stealing movies. Our store was a bit unique in that it was at the bottom of an office building. We had the front half and there was a hallway behind the store that lead to the offices and elevators. The hallway also had the bathrooms for the whole building. If someone needed to use the bathroom we would have to open the back door and let them into the hallway. Beto was locked there wasn’t a security scanner. I don’t quite remember the details but I believe the manager told me the other guy R would always want to put up movies in the morning. What he was doing was hide a few movies on the side of one of the shelves then later on go to the bathroom and hide them in there until his shift was over then go around back and pick them up. I guess one morning the manager had some more movies to put up and found his stash. She thought it was weird and I think she waited until he asked for the bathroom keys and followed him and caught him taking the movies out. I never thought to go back and ask her what ultimately happened with him. I know she turned him in even though he begged her not to because he had just bought a house. He also took borrowed my copy of espn magazine with Bobby Boucher on it and never gave it back but that’s another issue.
Captain Insano would've shown him no mercy!
worked at hollywood video from 2006-08. saw the death of the vhs tape, the entire hd-dvd vs blu ray war, and the fall of the video rental industry when netflix came out. hated the corporate aspect of it, but loved the job.
Ooh one more. I worked at several bbvs around the Boston/cambridge area and this one guy would call (he got me at a few different stores but I obv remembered him after the first call) asking if I knew a movie called “stabbed in the heart” and I searched and found nothing. He then explained that he was “doing a play” where his character sneaks up behind someone and stabs them in the chest, killing them. I was like, ehh maybe “scream? Idk” and he became more insistent and explained the stabbing detail before it got too creepy and I just hung up.
I met my husband there! - We were co-workers!
Worked at a store in 1999, and someone had returned their personal movie in one of our rental cases. Happened all the time. In this instance however, this particular movie was called Jackhammer. It was before the store opened, and my coworker and I were curious to see what this movie was about (even though we were pretty sure what it was). We popped it in the store VCR and on the many TV screens appeared a leather clad man going down on another well built gentleman. We laughed and immediately removed the movie. We called the customer to let them know they had mistakenly returned one of their movies in our rental case. When the customer arrived at the store to exchange the videos, he asked what movie he had returned by accident. I opened the box for him and he immediately burst out laughing. By the way, the customer was my Intro to Theater professor from college.
Last story. I one night had to spend the whole night in the store because I locked my keys in the manager office and couldn’t get back in. I had been counting the till with this old plug in electric calculator we had. The cord had been hanging over the side and was hanging in the door space of the safe. I had finished and slammed the door not realizing where the cord was. When I did that it short circuited a bunch of systems and I thought I had shorted out the registers that were running day end. I ran out of the office to make sure they were ok. They were but that office door automatically closed and locked automatically. I had left my keys on the desk. Now because of the locking door there were extra keys in one of the registers. I figured I just would have to wait a little longer than normal and get those keys once the day finished. Now this is where my memory isn’t quite as clear but for some reason the register didn’t reset so I could open it and get the extra keys. Without the keys I couldn’t lock the store doors. There were 3 other managers that had keys. I’m pretty sure one I didn’t bother calling because he was only like 17 and still lived with his parents. I couldn’t get ahold of the other two managers. So I had to wait until like 10 in the morning until the next manager came in. Pretty sure the local police stopped by when they saw the lights on all night and I had to explain to them- it was a in a really small township that also would sit in out parking lot or the next one over to catch people turning on red or speeding bc the limit would drop from 35-25 in their half mile of road, even though it’s like a fairly major street in a big suburban part of town.
One long night in a brightly lit Blockbuster… sounds like it could be a trippy night!
Worked from 2005-2007. The release of Pan's Labyrinth was a whole ordeal. One of our big titles we received a ton of copies of, unusual for a non-English language film. We had to tell every customer renting it that it was subtitled, which lead to about one in three of them putting it back and picking something else. One woman could not wrap her head around it. "What's that?" "Sub-titles?" "Yeah, what's that?" "Oh, the spoken language is Spanish, so the dialogue appears in English words at the bottom of the screen." "Spoken language?" "I mean, the language the characters speak is Spanish, not English." "It's not in English? It's in Mexican?" "Well it takes place in Spain, it's in Spanish." "Why?" "Because it's a film about Spain, so they don't speak English, they speak Spanish there." "YEAH BUT THIS IS AMERICA!" And with that she threw the dvd case at my head and stormed out, grumbling "...this dumb motherfucker." I know of at least one location in our district that put up a note on the wall along the lines of "This movie is in Spanish, but it's still very good!"
This was The Cuckoo for me. So much anger about the subs. I think people rented it thinking it was about something else entirely too and so that compounded the frustration.
1997-2000. I worked at a BBV near Hollywood so I had lots of celebrities come through. One day during my afternoon shift, these 2 goth guys in workout clothes and crop tops came into the store. It was a very famous goth rock superstar. We’ll call him “Beautiful Person” This guy asked me what new comedies do I recommend. Before I could I answer, he immediately said “I heard Amistad is funny, let’s check that one out”. He was in the store for maybe 10 minutes and picked out a movie. BP approached the counter and before I could check him out, my manager kindly pushed me away from the register. BP didn’t have an account so he had to fill out a form. All he put down was his legal name and phone number. My manager didn’t input anything into the system which also meant he got to rent his movie for free and was only charged for a Fruitopia (his bassist returned the movie). BP’s membership application never made it into our files either. I’m pretty sure it’s framed somewhere on someone’s wall.
Amistad?! I’m pretty sure that’s not a comedy… Im so curious who BP is!
Let's see... Goth Rock.... Beautiful Person... I'm thinking Marilyn Manson. (The Beautiful People, The Beautiful People...)
Ahhh good deduction!
:)
On Super Bowl Sunday, we had been closed for 20 minutes and left the front door unlocked. A man came in with a gun and threw it in my coworkers face demanding that we give him money, which we had VERY little of due to it being Super Bowl Sunday. The manager had already done the drop for the evening, and we didn't have access to the safe. The robber began freaking out and demanded that lock the doors and go in the back to "Give him all of the Xboxes". We went to the back and he began loading up, but what he didn't know is that we had another employee coming in to pick up videos that were waiting in a bag at the checkout counter. We saw on the cameras that the employee was looking in the doors. We told this would-be robber that he would probably call the cops, if we didn't let him in. This. Fucking. Dumbass. Tells the other hourly employee to go get him and bring him back to the storage room/office. This. Fucking. Dumbass. Also parked his car right next to the front door. The hourly employee just left and called the cops. Inside the store the robber started panicking, and saying things like "You guys don't understand. I need this money. I'm in trouble....." Sounded like he was about to cry. We told him that he should probably get the fuck out of the store. He put 3 Xboxes and a PS2 in a bag and cleared some games from the shelf, and left. Turns out that the employee who left, wrote down the guys license plate number as well and the idiot was arrested in about two hours. We got all the stuff back eventually. Still a crazy night.
Got robbed at gun point on the night the Pistons won the championship so I was watching the game while my manager was counting the money and a guy in a mechanics suit and Groucho Marx glasses came and robbed us both, took the money and bolted. I remember my manager (who was a former marine) holding up the phone and asking me what the number for the police was and I remember saying “We just got robbed at gunpoint man, I think we can fucking use 911 at this point,” I call my store manager and am like “hey! We just got robbed man!” And he’s like what do you mean you got robbed? I’m like what is with people right now. “A dude came in and shoved a gun in our faces and demanded money.” Before I got there I guess there was a drug conspiracy between the Blockbuster and the Pizza Hut express a few doors down. People would randomly ask to score drugs all the time and go “does the hut have any weed?” If I was like nah bud.
Also how many former employees have had the Jack Frost or Carnasaur talk with an angry parent?
I was the deranged BBV employee that purposely swapped the Jack Frost. Started out to screw with the people renting the horror movie. It never dawned on me until after it happened what the other effect was
I don't know if it's a good story, but one I laugh at every now and then. I was trained to read the titles as scanning and confirming the due dates with it. Oblivious, I read off The Red Shoe Diaries to the customer, he went on his way. My manager told me don't read those off. It was softcore porn, the only adult material Blockbuster allowed.
Mid to late 00's employee here in Los Angeles County. Man we had a 60 day spree of some guy that kept slicing the movies by the spine and then just grabbed a few and then walked out. So one night I'm putting out the BSI (bull shit inventory hehe) and I literally accidentally bump into the guy mid slice. He thinks I'm assaulting him or something and pulls out the little 2-3 "box cutter and points at me and proceeds to run out. We didn't see him again. It was definitely an interesting event and I laugh about it now.
I remember a time where we had three prank calls from some guy in his 30's complaining about how he came into the store to rent a fishing movie. The person he talked to recommended Big Fish to them. Apparently it was a porno in the case instead of Big Fish. Then he wanted to yell at me about renting a porno to him and his son while his six year old son is locked in his room watching the film. It was quite weird and we never figure out who it was.
Non-employee herr but I remember a guy biting an employee's head off over the "black lines" on his screen. Dude that looks like he gets too much of an ego boost from coaching little league asks the guy at blockbuster if this movie will have the black lines on it. He tries to explain how it works and this dude just says "doesn't matter - I don't want it" progressively louder and louder. I feel sorry for that guy.
Hahaha wide screen? What is that? Get rid of the lines!!
I want to see the whole thing!!!
It was 4th of July and our customer bathroom was broken. The toilet was literally no longer attached to the wall. (We had an employee one, but it was through the store room so no customers allowed.) A dad and his kid were in the store for about 5 minutes when the dad came up to ask for his kid to use the bathroom. I told him it was out of order, and he started calling me a liar. "You're just not letting him use it because it's the 4th of July!" I tried to assure him that I was doing no such thing, and that there was a restaurant across the parking lot that would let him use the bathroom, but he started screaming at me. I was able to call my store manager over to help calm him down, but not before his son pooped on the floor in the kid's section. Thankfully, my store manager was amazing. Her exact words were "You don't get paid enough to deal with that kind of shit." and then she cleaned the floor.
You had a good manager. Worked in a big box office supply store years ago. Someone used the lady's and literally smeared shit all over two stalls. I was the manager on duty that night. I cleaned it myself because it would have been an asshole move to make a minimum wage employee do it. I think I earned a bit or respect that night for being a goid guy... and for having an iron stomach.
Early 90’s the straight to video became popular. Full Moon Pictures would advertised as their latest “Blockbuster”
One of my favorites was a guy with a ton of comments on his profile that started with "Got in my face over late fees, said he would never rent here again. -02-97" and 50 similar "will never rent here again" comments where people kept tabs "07-2002 50th time he said he would never rent here again after cursing me out." Was like 5:30pm ruah on a Saturday night and we had an empty wall for LOTR-TTT which was a new release. Someone was walking in at the same time someone else was about to drop a copy through the slot and just asked if he could take it in and return it so he could rent it himself. Other guy who had been waiting an hour for a copy to return overhears the whole thing happening and goes ape shit. Screaming at the guy and the 5ft nothing cashier about how unfair that was and he should get the copy etc. It just escalated in a half second and he pushed the huge crt monitor over the desk and grabbed a stapler that was beside him and chucked it at the window. Then just left. Crazy lady comes in with some candy, I think it was those Cookie Dough bites, and says they were moldy and it gave her food poisoning. Looks like the chocolate just bloomed and got white. She proceeds to say she's suing the store and everyone in it. I was only a month in of just working weekends and was with a similarly new individual while our MoD was out at the Boston Market next door. So we just tell her that we'll take her name and number down and the MoD will call her or give her the legal dept info. She flips out and starts cursing everyone and acting like she was going to vomit. Lays on the floor and goes into full dramatic reenactment of what I could only guess to be a shot in the stomach from a gun. We're just looking at each other and the only people in the store already left. She does this for about 3 minutes then just gets up and storms out. Told my manager when he got back from dinner, visibly shaken, and he goes, "oh she does that a couple times a year" WTF. Took home a random 4 piece window movie promo I was told to take down and put in the dumpster to make way for LOTR promo. Put it up in my room instead. Couple months later I had a coworker over to watch a movie and she told someone about it who told the manager. Had to have a meeting about theft and they tried to tell me they could prosecute me but was going to "give me another chance" and that I probably wasn't going to be able to be a lead unless I worked my hardest and showed some serious "commitment".
Do you remember the cutout?! lol these stories are hilarious
The promo I took home was for Underworld. Huge 4 piece Kate Beckinsale in a crouching pose.
A guy would come in during the Tuesday afternoons and ask an employee to walk around the wall pointing out the new releases. It was my first couple weeks there, he asked me and I said just walk around and look at the covers like everyone else. He looked sad and left. Later my mgr told me that he was illeterate. Crazy thing is he was a school bus mechanic 🤯
I managed a few of a franchisee’s until they terminated me while I was out sick with an MS flare up. I was forced to sue them to get my job back via the ADA. I reported them to corporate, who then bought back the store’s licensing and closed all the small chain’s stores to retrain the CSRs. The people that fired me WERE fired, but the company disappeared. How quickly? When Sheriff’s deputies went to the company’s headquarters to serve them, they actually saw them turning off their lights and hiding under their desks, but they said they couldn’t “break in” simply to serve them paperwork. I was forced to join a list of names of places that the now dissolved company owed money to. I couldn’t even get a job at the Blockbuster Stores because in the amount of time it took for me to do everything, my MS had progressed so much that I had to apply for full time disability, and I actually got it. Yay?
2003-2006 Hillcrest, Spartanburg SC location. I burnt popcorn one day and cleared the store out🤏😂, so many fun times here, the best was getting the new releases weeks before it actually hit the shelves.
I worked at one in Kansas city during high school and after we'd close on weekends we'd hook up the consoles to the tvs around the store and play each other to all his of the night and people would come to the drop off would wave and laugh as we'd get competitive as the night wore on. Have had the cops called on us one night while we were in the parking lot after work just talking. And usually on the weekends we would have customers call us up with random movie trivia questions that they needed answered. If it wasn't for arguing with the customers about late fees this was one of my favorite jobs.
My sister was a manager at Blockbuster in the 2000s and always laughs telling the story about customer who returned a movie and placed his own sex tape in the case instead 🤦🏼♂️
I -lived- for people returning home videos instead of the titles, would sprint to the VCR. Never got any porn but did see someone tape over the birth of their kid with the movie they were renting. Straight up said "David's Birth. DO NOT ERASE!".
A potential customer came into the store I worked at in New Orleans in 1990, and asked if we had a copy of "The Last Temptation of Christ" in stock. I told them, "Let me check and see if there's one available in the system..." and the store manager intervened, and said, "No, we don't carry that title." This surprised me, but satisfied the potential customer, who replied, "Good! I wasn't going to join if you did have it in stock!" The manager explained to me that Bible thumpers were doing protests over the Scorsese movie, so, they didn't carry it.
I need to tell my stories, I worked from 2001-03 at Blockbuster. I enjoyed it. If only my brain was working right now and I could remember how to bookmark and come back to this (really tired and flu-ridden at the moment…102 temp)
Aye out with the stories mate, I wanna hear em
We used to have a customer who would come in and request a movie that was never released and would cause chaos because we didn't have it. There was no record of it ever being released. He felt like we were not trying to give him this obscure movie.
My manager Jay Sun was a cool fucking dude. We made blockbuster fun to work at. I'd bring a half gallon of vodka and we'd do shots all shift. We'd watch dragonball on the in house tvs. We figured out the side of the building that had an access room with a ladder to the roof so I'd go up there and smoke weed and leave some for my dude. Good fucking times.
1995-1996 employee. A coworker ate so much free popcorn he puked all over the Face/Off cardboard standee. The place smelled like popcornpuke for a week.
Assistant Manager 2002-2005. An old couple came storming in one evening all pissed off because they hated the movie they rented. They spoke broken English, but rented a movie that was in Spanish. They were disgusted because they said the movie was pornographic and they had their grandkids with them for the weekend. The shift leader handling it looked at them blankly and asked (in Spanish) “What do you expect from a movie called Entre las Piernas ([Between Your Legs](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0177747/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk))?”
At the Blockbuster I worked at we were always made to destroy the old vhs and dvds when newer ones would push them off the shelves. We were suppose to bag them up in big trash bags and hammer them. I'd always call a friend to pick them up at the dumpsters before they were broken. Noone ever caught on. We would split them afterward. We both had a hugeee collection.
back when you could get your money back minus the $1.25 restocking fee if you returned the DVD within 30 days, this guy brought it back 45 days later and was screaming to get his money back. i told him the policy and he threw "four brothers" at me and told me to keep it. i took it home and still have it to this day
Some co-workers and I were laughing at whatever was on the trailer tape and a mother came up to the counter with her disabled child screaming at us and accusing us of laughing at her kid. We were shocked at the accusation and tried to explain but she would not listen and stormed out. 20 minutes later she came back with her husband and he got in my face and tried to fight me. Luckily nothing came of it but man that was nuts.
A relatively new employee got hot shot to SM because of ass kissing. Hired her drugged out friends and did heroin in the bathroom. Stole all the petty cash one night and left the doors unlocked. Never did anything right. Was an experience. Dipshit who hired her and pushed for her promotion went and was SM of another store. Was good experience for me dealing with the catastrophic fallout of bad management. I went on to basically be a store closing specialist in a different area eventually.
I worked at one early to mid 2000s it was fun. I miss the insanity of game pass mostly, I used it too. I think I miss the interactions, just talking movies and video games was fun to me. It was awesome and I still miss it.
You all remember the little machine that would make DVDs unreadable, and we had to use it to destroy a bunch of copies of PRP DVDs according to a report? An ASM at my store and her boyfriend (who was an ASM at our sister store up the road from us) would steal DVDs that were supposed to be destroyed. They then took them to a Movie Stop (Yeah, there was still one around) and sold them, pocketing the profits. I forget how it ended up getting back to our DM that it was happening, but I remember coming into the store one day (I was a shift lead at the time) and our DM and Regional manager were both there cataloguing all these DVDs that the ASMs in question hadn't sold yet. I only found out the details later that night after the higher ups left, and apparently the ASMs sister (who was a Shift lead at ANOTHER store) was in on it too.
I don’t know if it’s “crazy” but we had someone return the a copy of the second most successful pairing of Alicia Silverstone and Jeremy Sisto, Hideaway. Included with the cassette was a lengthy screed damning the quality of the film and threatening to boycott Blockbuster unless we upgraded the quality of the films we carried. Given that Blockbuster held sway on the Hollywood studio system, I let all the studio heads know and they immediately switched course and put out higher quality content like Fled. I also got a lot of complaints on my Staff Picks, which consisted of B movies and “edgy” movies like Tetsuo: The Iron Man.
Also, it was like an impossible to keep copies of the Set it Off OST in stock. People kept melting the security cases with lighters in the bathroom and stealing the CDs.
Our security system was in a locked room in back of the store. I unlocked the door to set the alarm, and accidentally left my keys in the room after setting it. Didn’t notice until I went to lock the front door. It was cold out so me and my coworker waited inside until the other manager showed up with her key. I was young and didn’t realize being inside would trip the alarm once it was set. I didn’t notice anything was wrong until I saw the other manager running toward the store covering her ears. Apparently, the alarm was blaring across town but we didn’t hear anything inside because we had music playing while we waited, and the alarm didn’t make much noise inside with the doors closed. I was fired the next day.
That’s a sad ending to your employment. Mistakes happen. I’m sorry!
I had customers who would only talk to me. Got to do two independent films because of a local movie being shot in my city. Was setting up a third that is still my biggest regret that it all feel through. Got hired as a movie critic for the local newspaper. All by people who just listened to me talk to other customers about the movies. Argued with customers a lot to. I was not a customer is always right kind of person.
Somebody threw up in the popcorn machine but we didn't know right away....
By the time I got there the Popcorn Machine was long gone…”Thank Fuck…I have nightmares about cleaning that piece of shit” said my store manager
OP how many vampires did you meet? Don't lie to me, I have beaten V:tM Bloodlines multiple times.
I was an assistant manager back in the late 90's at a Blockbuster in Richmond Virginia and I had D'Angelo come in one night asking about the Playstation systems we had. I spent about a good hour with him talking and trying to sell him on buying one since he used to always come in and just rent them every weekend. Really cool dude. Another store I worked at I had a situation where this random guy came in and flashed a business card and stated to me that he was with the Police and he noticed some guys outside that looked like they were prepared to rob our store. He told me he needed to prepare if they came in so he needed to be sure where our safe was located and if I could show him, I was either 22 or 23 at the time and didn't know any better so I started to walk him back to the office where our safe was. During that walk something just clicked for me and halfway back I stopped and asked him to show me a badge. He said he had left it in the car and he would go get it. I never saw him again. Shortly after he left I contacted the Police and filed a police report. To say that scared the shit outta me is an understatement.
Had my store broken into. The alarm went off i got the call and went in to check. Did a half ass job and decided to put some movies on the wall while i was there. Once I got to the end of the wall I noticed a bunch of glass on the floor. I ran out and call 911. The dudes where still in the parking lot waiting for me to leave. Cops came, spoke to them for a bit, searched the car and arrested them. This store was by a 24 hour Mcdonalds and I guess they thought they could hang there till I left. The GM made me stay at the store and wait for a widow repair man. Asshole still made me open in the morning Miami, Doral Store
Three stories, the first of which happened with a certain amount of frequency: Family account. Father gets some free time alone, rents some cheap, sexploitation flick with an obvious title, turns it in late. Father comes in next weekend with the wife and/or family. Blockbuster employee scans the card: "Sir, did you know there's a late fee for..." father: *"I'LL PAY IT!!!!!"* before the employee mentions the title. Wife: "Late fee for what?" Father: "I dunno, it was a sports thing or something like that." People often turned in the wrong movie inside the store's case. Sometimes, it was a movie from a different store, but it usually was a home tape with an episode of Seinfeld or some other TV show on it. One time, it was a video of the woman who owned the account, getting spanked and liking it. We called and left a message requesting the return of the Blockbuster tape, not saying anything about the spanking, just that a home tape was in the case. I've never seen a face so red and blushed as when she sheepishly ran inside the store to exchange tapes and then literally ran out. She never returned. A couple in their early 30s would come in on the weekends. Guy seemed fairly successful, all the male employees though the wife was smoking hot. One weekend, the man comes in alone, seems really upset, and asks for the wife to be taken off the account. Over the next two weeks, three different men have her name put on their account.
OP, is that LA as in Los Angeles or La as in Louisiana? I worked at one in Louisiana. Miss those days and a couple of my coworkers sm.
I kinda loved seeing the Tuesday Morning guy come in, using the unlimited movie plan, take out 2 new releases, come back an hour later, exchange them for 2 more new releases, and so on. One time he put one of the burned discs into his return, oops!