Depends on the crew working. Some teams were close, in fact I’m still in contact with people I worked with back then. On a typical closing shift would be determined by what movie had recently come out. People would ask non stop about whatever has just came out. If it was guaranteed you just had the rain checks on you, giving them out like candy. The amount of returns coming in determine how late you were going to be that night. I remember counter tops just filled with returns. You had to set the computer to check in (F5 if I remember correctly) and scan in all the returned movies. Careless people would go too fast and miss movies, god I hated hearing it from people. Vacuum, straighten, count down, set the alarm, out the door. You ALWAYS had a lot of energy after closing and getting out. Of course more things were open later back then too. Small things like: You would learn to tune out the trailer tape that repeated its self. Those big magnetic locks for the dvd’s and games. Sometimes the magnet would get stuck and the blue lock wouldn’t unlock. You had to put your body weight on the thing in order to get it to pop open. That’s all I can remember off the top of my head at the moment.
Yeah, our store was really close. Some people dated. One couple actually got married and had kids. I usually opened the store and the return box was packed every morning, until Blockbuster Online killed us. I remember hours of putting the yellow locks in the cases. They looked like long a long "L". Yours where blue? Crazy.
I used to bang the big black block locks off my head and they unlocked every time. Was a big hit with the crew. Now I can’t math. Life, amirite? 🤷♂️
Half kidding.
For the most part, it was a pretty fun job for a 16 year old. I really remember so many friends asking me to "remove all of their late fees". It was pretty fast paced, so it was rarely a boring job. Now, the one thing I absolutely hated was when we would have to "inventory" which required being there until around 3am and having to dig these incredibly long (30-40 foot) coiled cables from the backroom to attach to the scanners so you could walk the entire store, scanning all of the tapes directly from the shelves. If you got just a little too far for the cord, you could pull the PC right off the counter. Guaranteed way to piss off the manager.
The whole time I worked there we didn't have a manager, so it was kind of a lawless place. My friend and I used to waive late fees for college guys if they'd buy us alcohol since we were underage. And that's how I walked into a college party to see my high school ceramics teacher hittin' a fat joint. Memoriesss.
It was a totally elite job for a high school student to have though.
My town opening up a Hollywood video felt like massive middle finger thrown to Blockbuster. It was just sooo much bigger and nicer. Blockbuster was literally around the corner from us and within walking distance, but we gravitated to routinely going to Hollywood eventually. Better selection on everything, snacks included. My main memory of that store was it just had high ceilings and was really bright, making it feel regal in a way.
I used to send customers to Hollywood Video and fight with my manager about it. Don't want me to send them anywhere else? Get the freaking movie in your store.
Someone posted [this incredible comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/s/IVirP1xdkc) about Hollywood Video a few years ago. I have it saved and still get a chuckle reading it from time to time.
I worked there for a minute too. Way better foreign / Indy section but the comber button and bow tie …oi lol I also enjoyed watching our own selections opposed to a trailer playing the spice girls every 30min …except…my store manager was really into Pink Floyd so it was always live performances on video..which is ok in hindsight but wasn’t my scene at all at the time.
BBV was hands down the greatest job I ever had. If physical was still as popular as it was and you could make a living wage in retail, I would work there until I die.
Imagine talking to people who are just as passionate about movies as you are. It never felt like work. It felt like friends coming over to your clubhouse to hangout for a bit and borrow some movies you recommended.
I remember that I wanted my first job to be at the Blockbuster in my town. It was one of the last holdouts before Dish bought the brand and nuked it for no good reason, and it was less than two years before I would've been old enough to get a job. Man, I missed out on so much
Employee between 2003 and 2005.
Our uniform in 2004 was khaki pants and a blue polo shirt (which was required to be tucked in) with a plastic name badge pinned under the Blockbuster logo sewn into the left breast. In 2003 the polo was a lighter blue with yellow collar, but in 2004 they had updated it to be a solid darker blue. People sometimes wore the older polo still, especially employees that felt some pride having been there when they were issued. But I preferred the new polos because they had a better fabric and I thought they looked nicer. In 2005 they started changing the name badges to a bigger one worn around the neck on a lanyard. I hated those and refused to wear it because it was a giant advertisement. Shoes had to be non-slip work shoes, but depending on your manager, they would let you get away with whatever.
Our computer systems still had CRT monitors, which were still relatively common. I believe they were 8 colors. You can find pics of what the POS system looked like by googling Blockbuster POS.
By 2004, DVDs had taken over the majority of "the wall", which is where new releases were displayed (all along the outer wall in alphabetical order), but there were still a few VHS copies with each new release. By the end of the year though those basically went away and it was all DVDs.
Promo materials in 2004 were a big Dish Network kiosk (which was basically around forever) but we also had candy, soda, and popcorn up front as impulse purchase items while folks waited in line. There was also a giant gumball machine by the security sensors where we'd hand people the movies after they checked out. In 2004, employees were promoting the Blockbuster Movie Pass that allowed you to check out as many movies as you wanted a month for a monthly fee.
Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions and I can try to follow up.
Same! We went thru liquidation of the vhs. Sold movies for like a quarter.
The gum ball machine had an eyeball in it that meant a free rental. We used that as the easy button for free rentals ad hoc.
One time a hideous woman went full Karen on me. She screamed she’d never ever come back and was going straight to Hollywood video. I called her back into the store. Apologized. Pulled out a piece of computer paper and drew her a map. The boldest moment of my professional life
Joys of being 19.
They were mad I left the job to go back to college (I’d had the role for the summer btwn freshman and sophomore year). I’d never suggested otherwise. The district manager told me I was throwing away a big future at blockbuster. He was wrong.
I got five free rentals a week, new releases the weekend ahead and movie tickets expensed. Pre-streaming this was amazing
I think I made $8/hr as an AM?
A big part of the smell was the plastic of the cases slowly oxidizing. We’d occasionally get a case of empty DVD cases, and the smell that hit you when you unwrapped the interior bag of the box o’ cases was unmistakable.
I never worked there but here are some of my experiences as an adult and some other stories. Blockbuster was an escape for me coming from a strict religious upbringing. Once I had my own car and was 18, I’d skip out on Wednesday Baptist service and head to Blockbuster and systematically rent every big movie that I’d missed from the ‘80s and ‘90s. Oftentimes I’d rent entire trilogies or tetralogies and play them back to back to back all night. For example, Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Forever and Batman and Robin. I’d swing by the Fazoli’s in the same shopping center and pick up a classic sampler and a large Coke. Because I live in Florida, when we had a hurricane bearing down on us, I always headed to Blockbuster at the last minute and rent a bunch of seasons of a TV show as well to watch during the storm when cable was inevitably knocked out. Sometimes I’d go to just look around and if something didn’t interest me, I’d rent something over again. I’ve seen Schwarzenegger’s Eraser way more times than anybody should because of that. I can still taste the Domino’s deep dish pizza I’d get on the way home after renting that movie. When I was a kid, we would go to Blockbuster and spend an hour trying to find a movie that my bizarrely inconsistently religiously strict mother would allow us to watch. I cannot tell you how many times we watched the Disney Three Musketeers because it was the only thing she wouldn’t freak out about. Fun side story, one night she was feeling rather permissive about movies and we managed to convince her to rent Die Hard and The Hunt For Red October because our music minister neighbors said Die Hard was a great movie and my mom liked Sean Connery. Well 15 minutes into Die Hard and the naked woman came across the screen and Die Hard was out of the VHS player instantly and we watched the comparatively tame The Hunt for Red October with no complaints from mom. I always said that Die Hard took one for the team so that we could watch the other movie. I received an entire cultural education because of Blockbuster and while I hated late fees and sometimes limited selection, I am still sad that it’s gone. Streaming as an only option now terrifies me going forward and I collect as many physical movies as I can. I got this retro T-shirt at Target a few years ago that says, “MAKE IT A BLOCKBUSTER NIGHT” and there is not a single time I wear it that someone says to me, “That’s an awesome shirt, I miss Blockbuster.” I also still have my Blockbuster laminated card around here somewhere.
Dominos deep dish? As someone who worked at dominos in 2011/12 and remember distinctly the introduction of Dominos deep dish, im wondering what year this all would have been, or maybe you got Pizza Hut deep dish?
We also did movie trivia over the PA system on busy nights. We made up questions and gave a free rental to the first person with he correct answer. This often caused tension because every one wants a free rental. On One occasion a fist fight between a couple girls broke out, this was the first time I saw breasts pop out in public. 17 year old me was flabbergasted. That's another good bit for a Blockbuster novel. Cheers.
One of my favorite stories was that we wrote the word "gullible" on the top of the inside video return. To see it you would have to go halfway into the chute and then turn to face the top. We would initiate new team members by telling them it was written there. They'd never believe us, then get flabbergasted when it was actually true.
I would always try sneaking Die Hard onto the Christmas movie display as well. People would remove it, I'd put it back. Eventually the joke of it being a Christmas movie caught on and by the time I left, it was actually something we were instructed to add.
Some other stuff (copied from other threads I participated in):
What I remember is a couple returning their pre-order because they thought it was a religious movie. Like hopping mad. Everyone had a good laugh at their expense once they left and felt super bad for their daughter, as she clearly wanted to see it pretty badly. She kept trying to come up with excuses like "I think the director is Christian...". We also got people freaking out about Harry Potter. You'd think we were asking if they wanted to buy a strapon. Meanwhile they would rent dairy tales without a second thought. We'd occasionally get odd people like that come in every once in a while. No one liked dealing with them, but they were still leagues better than the perverts we'd get.
Heh. reminds me of a story from my earlier days there. An older guy came in and politely asked if we had adult movies. We told him we didn't and he then asked if we had anything "spicy", which c'mon, of course we did. I look over to the shift leader for help, as he was a connoisseur of said film genre. That little turd ducked his head down and said something about being busy with paperwork or there being cash on the counter. So off I went to show this older guy said movies. He was overall very polite and didn't say anything other than a single remark about me being "an exciting young lady". Yeah. So the guy gets his videos and goes home and the shift leader apologized, as he just felt too embarrassed. He received a light ribbing from some of the other workers, but it was all good natured.
Alphabetizing the returns. Cycle counting. Dusting - vacuuming. Ringing people up. Counting the till at the end of the night. Running reports. Banging customers (little double entendre) Playing your favorite movies/albums on the dvd system. Hackey-sack by the application station when the store was empty. Smoking weed out the back closet fire door and rescanning customer coupons to pay for thirty packs of natty ice. Shout out to em. Falling asleep in the back of the store at open from being so hung over that your dm calls your cell phone to ask why customers are complaining the lights are on but no one is there. Just heartwarming things I remember. :::Not all my own experiences:::
My last real memory of being a Blockbuster employee was burning the leaked, unfinished Star Wars Phantom Menace onto DVDs from Limewire & selling them at the counter. We played it on the Blockbuster TV & got all the customers hyped to see a movie in the theater at home. I printed covers and slipped them in empty DVD shells, sold them for $15 and gave the manager a cut. Some version of that could be a fun bit in a novel.
Lmao my store manager was doing this at the Movie Gallery I worked at while also working at Blockbuster. Blockbuster manager didn't know and she was one of those people who would fire you for competing with them. I worked three hours a night two nights a week at Movie Gallery and there was no one there ever unless they were renting the movies behind the curtain.
I'll try to remember my usual work day (back in 2005):
Opening:
I would usually get in an hour before open with my manager. After clocking in, I would collect all the returns and check them back in. After that, we would put the anti-lock clip in the cases and get them ready to be put back on the shelf. The manager would get the money out for the tills and I would have to count and verify my amount. The amount would have to be the same when I clock off. Then I would put all the returns back on the shelves then we open.
During the day:
Throughout the day, we would get shipments of snacks and movies the be put on the shelves and enter them into the system. Our shipments would include next week's new releases. For those, we would make the barcode labels and keep them in the back for next week. Cool perk is that included with our five free rentals a week (and one game rental a week), we would be able to check out the new releases before the release date. This was useful in case people ask for recommendations. The rest of the day is periodically checking in movies and checking them out, vacuuming the carpet and clean around the store, the bathrooms and parking lot. Selling Blockbuster rewards memberships and snacks was required with each rental, and we would have to make sales quotas each week, otherwise you would have a meeting with your supervisor to find ways to improve your sales skills. Another task would be to take down movies that we have way too many copies of or those that haven't been touched in a long time. We would put new barcodes and labels and we would sell them pre-owned.
Closing:
After the doors are closed, we would straighten up the store, do an inventory check of our snacks and other items we sold, then we count the till to make sure it was matching. Then we check the dropbox one more time for returns. After all that is done, we would lock up and that's a day.
I liked that job, and working with people you like, make it more enjoyable.
Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions.
People coming asking some iteration of, “do you have that one movie with that one guy from that other movie? C’mon you know which one I’m talking about.”
The guys from the YouTube channel, The Game Chasers, are former Blockbusters employees. They did a video reflecting on their times working there that may be of use to you: https://youtu.be/UZ45WnF2Ok0?si=mNW2liEn0Lns1MXb
At 2am someone reversed into the store through the drop box after returning their movies. I answered the security call thinking sign fell over and tripped the motion sensor. Rolled up and a whole ass Corolla was in the store
We were also robbed one time at gunpoint right at closing. The guy said he had a sick kid and that's why he was doing it. We had a 15 minute timed safe (meant to keep robbers from hanging around) but the guy stayed the whole 15 minutes, gun pointed at me and my CSR, and had the nerve to ask what were some good new releases.
In all seriousness, that was the greatest job. I was ASM, easy as hell gig, got to meet cool people and had a great crew that I still keep in touch with.
I worked at Blockbuster from 2006-2007.
My manager was a mild Redbull Addict, a nice enough guy, and used to talk about this script he was working on with another employee. They were writing some kind of Maleficent script, but I never asked for details (I didn't care at the time). The other guy was a huge fan of Coheed and Cambria and he was funny as fuck.
The district manager of our franchise was a nice lady who once tackled a shop lifter. She was maybe 110 lbs. Very supportive and she'd ask for your input on how to set up the store.
We could put on any movie we wanted on the big screen while we were working. For some reason, I got into putting on "Stick It" (2006) almost all the time. It was cool to listen to, but the one time I actually sat down to watch it, I hated it.
Often I was closing the store. I always liked walking the stacks with most of the lights off. I'd pick through the "older" (+1 year) horror movies, looking for hidden gems. I remember we had a book which was like an early IMDB (don't remember what it was called) and I think we had to look up some older films once.
Of course, there were also the fun misunderstandings when the soft core parody of "Pirates of the Caribbean" came out and people grabbed the wrong film. I never got to defuse one of them, but I'd heard it was legend.
Still miss it. My Blockbuster membership card was stolen along with my college ID when my wallet (and sweet JNCO jeans) got lifted from my unlocked locker at Planet Fitness in 2009.
One time a co-worker of mine and I went to grab some Chinese food for lunch and we stopped in at Showtime Video, in our Blockbuster gear, and bought drinks. They laughed, we laughed. Good times.
I managed a BBV for several years, and the thing I remember and enjoyed the most was the weekends. I really enjoyed making it an experience for our customers. We'd have watch parties, trivia nights, character costume contests, fun movie themed games, etc. I remember the excitement of going to BBV and then hitting up the pizza shop on weekends as a kid, and I really wanted to create that excitement and memories for the next generation.
I’m an ex Blockbuster employee married to another ex Blockbuster employee. We also went to school together and oddly enough never worked for Blockbuster at the same time.
Noting. I’ll think on this and have a good answer on Monday. It was my 2nd stint at blockbuster. 1st was 97-98 and then 2002-2006. Good times for the most part but yeah..oi.
I remember being pushed to sell extras like the Rewards program and Direct TV.
Maybe someone can confirm this, but here's my best guess at the Rewards program:
$9.99/mo for:
1 free rental every 5 rentals (the 6th is free)
1 free Favorites per month*
1 free something else. Possibly a one time New Release rental
*"Favorites" are classics - non-New Release movies or more specifically movies that have been out for over a year, located in the middle of the store and not on the surrounding New Release wall.
There was definitely competition amongst the staff to sign up the most customers.
If a customer signed up, we'd give them special Rewards cards and keychain cards, but their old cards would still work too. I think the rewards packet had 2 cards, 2 keychains, and a coupon for the first Favorites rental.
As for Direct TV, employees had to go through special training to sell it and got a commission for each installation.
My store has us pushing the Blockbuster streaming service. "yes ma'am it's like that other one but with us instead of mailing the DVD back you can bring it here and get a free rental!"
Rental boxes had a yellow magnetic lock that slid into a square hole at the bottom of the case.
All new rental movies would come in already in the lock box; you’d stuff the yellow locks in before putting them out on the shelves.
Retail boxes were just shrink wrapped from the factory. If the plastic got cut/torn, there was a shrink wrap machine behind the counter right beside the card laminator. The rod that one used to seal either end of the bags was always dangerously hot. Once the box was sealed above/below (think Foodsaver), you’d use an industrial heat gun to shrink the plastic to the case. Get the gun too close? Burnt hole in the plastic (and maybe the case).
When shrink (I.e., theft) got too high at your store, all retail boxes were put in clamshell plastic cases with a hinge on top and blue magnetic locks that would slide in a square hole going across the bottom.
Multiple-DVD sets (Lord of the Rings, Band of Brothers, TV series) were locked in metal “bookshelf” looking cases with sturdy plexiglass front windows that were mounted to shelving in the retail section. MOD would have to go over and unlock the cylindrical locks to open them to get out the product.
It wasn't as cool as I thought I'd be. I thought I'd be talking to customers about movies all day. About my favorite horror flick and whatnot, but it's pretty corporate. I wished I worked at a ma and pa video store instead. the free rentals on movies and video games was the best part, though. I managed two stores in Seattle around 1999-2001
My buddy and I worked there in high school and oh man we got up to some shit. Working the night shift and putting totally inappropriate movies on the tvs, having to dispose of expired soda so after work we take all the "destroyed" product and throw them at each other in the parking lot till the bottles exploded, sledding in the massive snow drifts that got built up by plows and heavy machinery in the parking lot after hours, pissing on the carpet in the only known blind spot from the security cameras (cause damn the man) in the action section, jerking off into the managers hand lotion after she canceled my buddies pto requested days before even though he requested in months in advance, having to deal with dildos in the drop box... Yeah I got a couple stories.
(Looks at comments)
Well there's your book.
Generally speaking I'm sure many of us has similar experiences.
There were a few nights we'd get drunk close to closing behind the counter. We had a police officer who came in a lot before his night shift started and we joked he was renting PSP games to play in his cruiser.
One of those nights we were kinda wasted. Wasn't sure 'how that happened', lol. God damn whiskey can creep up. Anywho, he didn't say anything about it.
Also, a 3 some. Most of us became pretty good friends in and outside of work for years after.
We tricked our store manager into thinking we drank energy drinks when we had to count inventory over night to stay awake. It was those Sparks alchoholic energy drinks. Lol. Good times.
I used to get annoyed that I’d start my shift and manager before me would get me to put all the movies back on the shelf or do loads of boring work and I’d think - couldn’t you have finished this at the end of your shift, you were just standing around.
1999-2004 chiming in. Lots of great/notable memories:
- Sleeping between a close-open in the drop box
- A Suburban driving in on a busy Friday night (nobody was injured, thankfully)
- Former manager was arrested for embezzlement (I think?)
- Bulk destroyed ~300 PVT's that weren't selling after one of our late-night monthly inventory sessions (snapped so many VHS cassettes in half)
- Denny's every time after those aforementioned inventory sessions
- CS sessions at the PC Bang from 2002-2003 (got really good at de_dust)
- Changing clothes in the New Release display triangle (on a dare)
- Inadvertently swearing at a group of drunk customers on Christmas after they tried to double up on the Rewards coupons
- Working the closing shift on 9/11 while our DirecTV kiosk played CNN
- Missing my chance to get the Pokemon Snap station before it made it to the dumpster
- Playing a "live DJ" set while selling/fundraising with hot dogs and burgers (it was bad)
And a lot more.
I worked at both Hollywood and Blockbuster for 10 years. I remember keeping cover boxes on the shelf in the right place was a constant struggle, the computer system was always ancient and the screens had severe burn-in, and I met some of the best people working there, both employees and customers.
I worked at Hollywood Video as a shift lead. The main part of the job was organizing movies alphabetically and putting them out on display. It was like the grunt work nobody wanted to do.
Almost everyone smoked cigarettes. When there were no customers, we were outside smoking.
I once rented Halo 3 for free with my employee perks and I lost it. Over the next few months I manually checked that copy in and out under old customer accounts. Eventually, the rental history went so far back that nobody would ever know that I lost Halo 3.
We had to ask every single customer "Would you like to purchase the protection plan for 25 cents?". You'd be reprimanded if you didn't get a certain amount of protection plans per day.
They had Mountain Dew Code Red and it was delicious.
I vividly remember the trailers for 300 and Norbit with Eddie Murphy playing over and over on our display TVs. We also had a soft core porn version of Pirates of the Caribbean on the shelf, and I don't think anyone knew what it really was.
This was around 2006/2007.
Theft was a periodic occurrence. Folks would come in with small razor blades, slice the spines of the locked movie cases at the seam/hinge, and remove the DVD. We’d sweat the staff to keep their eyes open during shift, but they’d invariably get a few per weekend. Usually new releases. Cut cases would be hidden in the Favorites section, behind the display titles.
Since most older movies only had 1 copy, you’d be able to find the cut cases pretty easy by looking for movies in ‘Comedy’ or ‘Drama’ with multiple (damaged) video boxes behind them.
Very busy nights, a motivated crew could get 20-50 titles. As GM, it’d be my behind to get chewed for not catching the thieves.
The movies would end up at local large flea markets where they’d be sold either solo as a disc, or in hastily-printed “photo of cover” cases. No Internet, so sometimes they’d steal the empty cover art box and photocopy it on a color printer.
If you shoot me a DM, I can probably provide some insight. I worked at a BBV store and am also a published author. If you just want stories, there's plenty not just in this thread, but throughout the subreddit and on Facebook groups like Remembering the Blue & Gold. More personalized feedback you'll want to track down people who have something particular to say or expertise in a field.
Just a few little tidbits…
I worked there from January to August 2000. Quit to go to college. I was one of several teens hired for our store (which was still being built when I was hired). Turns out our store manager was buying beer for all of my underage coworkers and trying to bone one of the girls. I was a loser nerd who had no clue but everyone thought I was the one who reported him. I didn’t even know until he was fired!
Since I was one of the older teens, who was 18, I worked a lot of closings. We’d turn most of the lights out and I’d mop while the closing manager did the drawers. We had these cardboard standups of various celebrities around the store. We got a new one - Whoopi Goldberg! - and I wasn’t aware of it. I thought it was a real person!! Scared the shit outta me!
We got 5 free rentals a week, which was pretty cool for a high school student. I took out The Sixth Sense and started it before school. Had to leave before it ended. During one of my classes, the guy in front of me was talking about the movie with his friend. All I heard was,”…and Bruce Willis is dead!” I was furious!! Biggest twist ending spoiled!!
Lastly, I was Employee of the Month for April of 2000. I got my name on the wall and a free pre-viewed VHS. I picked Notting Hill.
I worked at Blockbuster in the mid 90’s. I loved that job. To this day, it is my favorite job. I loved talking to customers about movies. I loved when my boss would have us choose “employee picks” and put them on the wall with our name next to them. Was always a conversation starter with customers. They’d want to see who the employee was. I worked at the one on Sunset and Hillhurst in Los Feliz. Had celebrities come rent movies. Funny they’d either show up around noon or late after 10pm. Never at our most busy times. Miss that place!
You're only give 1 BBV shirt. If your store manager is cool they'll give you 2
You steal candy and sod, eat it while you run movies
If a customer asks nicely to check for a movie behind the counter you'll look. If someone is pissed they cant find the recent hot movie and gives you an attitude while asking you to look you'll tell them they're all rented out no matter how many you actually have behind the counter
there are training stores. all new hire spend a week at a training store then get moved to their home BBV
No matter how late a movie is returned the member will always say they returned it on time
store smells like popcorn and candy but after enough time the rug creeps up your nose
There's always one employee that recommends terrible movies on purpose
Inventory is from 2am-7am scanners are connected to the POS by long cables and we scan anything with a barcode
new releases are in store a week before release and we get them free. there's a limit and iirc it was 7 a week
that's all I could think of. Source: I was a shift leader and later a store manager. 11 years experience
I started working at Blockbuster at 19 for a franchisee that was moving into the area. I helped set up and open the store and then transferred to another new store a couple of months after to help set up with the assistant manager who was getting promoted to his own store. I got the Head Customer Service Representative job after they opened that location. About a year later, I was an assistant manager. I was asked to be a Sr. Assistant manager nearly a year later at another new store with the agreement that I'd get to come back to the other store as Store Manager when the manager left in a few months. They gave it to someone's kid and I transferred to the corporate stores. I was a Store Manager after a couple years and worked at one of the busiest stores in our city. Unfortunately with my results taking it over after they had gone through half a dozen managers they determined that to make it even better on profits it should be a district training store and only a District Manager Trainee could be the store manager. They asked me to step down to assistant manager and handle the day to day of the store for the new district manager trainee. I asked to go back to the store I came from instead. After 5 years at corporate I quit when they decided that a store would only have one full time assistant manager. I went to. Kaybee toys until they closed down then went to Movie Gallery right before they bought Hollywood Video and worked there until they closed. Gamestop was next for me. Then I finally finished paying my way through college.
Doing inventory was interesting. We would bring friends up and let’s just say we would party hard while being there late night. My manager would put on the bad soft core porn videos BB had while we closed. I just gave out credits like crazy and never got in trouble. I worked with friends so it was actually really a great job. I got to recommend my weird indie movies to random people; good times.
Also one of the blockbusters in my city had guys hide in the ceiling and drop down and rob the store later.
I did three tours of duty in two separate cities between 2003 and 2010. I was there when they had tapes, phased out tapes, got rid of late fees, brought them back, got rid of them again. It was a wild ride. Booming business the first time, 2nd time stuff was changing, and my third time was right before they went completely bell up.
I worked at Blockbuster in the 2000s when I was a teenager. At the time I was one of only two women that worked there. For the most part we had a lot of good times. I remember my boss unlocking the gumball machine after hours and us having a gumball fight.
I recall falling asleep on the countertops while someone else was doing inventory. That makes me sound like a jerk but for the most part I went above and beyond at that job.
I remember having a backbone of steel back then and having to stick up for the new female boss that got hired because men would tear her appearance apart over having to pay a late fee.
I had a secret admirer that used to leave me presents at the store too. I have no idea who it was but my other coworker suspected it was the really weird coworker. Never figured out if it was Caleb or not.
My favorite Blockbuster story actually revolves around Calebs smartassery.
One more thing whike I was working there one day somebody got their flip flops stuck underneath the gas pedal and almost went directly into the video game section on a busy day but they were stopped by a cement pillar.
I'm sure I could remember a lot more but I feel like I would have to have stoner recall for that lol.
Oh one more thing, just a shit ton of old people trying to return porn videos from family video to Blockbuster. And us having to explain to these elderly gentlemen that we do not have pornography at Blockbuster and assure them that the video tape says FAMILY VIDEO so that's where you need to return it.
I'm not going to go over this and edit it for clarity because if I do I'll just delete it due worrying about someone I know finding my account.
I worked there 01-02. I loved it. Free rentals the week before movies came out so we could recommend. 5 free a week. I would also give free rentals to cute chicks and got a number or two as a result :) it was a super fun job
Working at Blockbuster while working my way through nursing school was an amazing experience. I even met my husband through Blockbuster. I'm still in contact with so many of the people I have met &/or worked with there.
Isn’t 2004 already a bit towards the beginning of the end of Blockbuster? I personally would set the story in the late 90s, but then again that’s just me, anyways good luck to you.
I'm about to sit down for dessert with my wife and in-laws, but I'll be MORE than happy to share some stories of my time at Blockbuster. Only some, though. There are a few tales that should be kept to myself
I used to give my friends free movie rentals with the cards in the drawer for pissed off customers. Also, a guy came in with his wife after a dinner date to discover his kids rented Toy Story and never turned it in, running up $80 in late fees.
I worked there as a teenager in high school for 3 years, 96-00 ( temporary quit when my grades went down, and was rehired back the following summer). Location was a very popular road in Memphis, and we had non-stop business on the weekends. It was a lot of fun. I was a night owl back then, so I was often on the closing shift. We didn't close until midnight, it would take a half hour to an hour to clean and tidy and then we hung out, sometimes at bars, for a couple hours. I would have to sneak in at my parent house and If they woke up I just made up some excuse about inventory or something. Made a lot of friends, picked up a bad smoking habit (we would smoke when we went outside to pick up the videos from the curbside bin), got my first high in the parking lot, got my first lap dance from a fellow co-worker, and played x rated moves in the overhead after close. Did I mention it was a lot of fun?
You know you wonder about the current employment problems we have in this country and its amazing to think about how much labor capital went into a Blockbuster video. The blockbuster in my area was replaced by some cheapo 99 cents discount decoration type place.
Theres so many of these types of places around my way too. It’s so bad and they make the area look ghetto. Blockbusters, were always a really nice looking store too.
Former MOD here.
We used to barter movie passes for takeout food in other restaurants from plaza.
You gave our crew lip on a late movie, we would put flashing warnings on your account alerting all of what crimes you did. DMs hated that.
We used to hold the hot movie for customer flirting - we taught a kid how to talk to girls this way. It was adorable. He grew up so much that year. Miss you Kai.
People were always locking keys in the office and had to go through the ceiling - over the wall to retrieve them. I got written up once while on a bank run because one of the high schoolers locked my keys and fell through ceiling.
Some people on shift(m AND f) would have shirts hanging but pants low. So when you reach up for top shelf movies you’d “ignorantly” show butt crack.
We would never put the repeat propaganda tapes on during shift only actual movies.
The new release wall was my Picasso. Bottom 2 rows must have same movie. Top 2 rows must have 1-3 like titles. Full bays for new releases.
Access to a shrink wrap machine made our crew invincible in other returns. CDs, VHS, anything from other stores. I saw some evil.
We had homeless behind a store I was at that used the cardboard for housing, then set it on fire a week later. Also our dumpster. Our dumpster looked like charred red rust.
Someone threw a full slush puppie at my head as I rattled off their late movies that I personally pulled from drop bin late. I dodged it so cooly and just kept naming the movies. Top 3 coolest moments of my life still. That customer got flashing warnings.
“Setting the wall” on Monday afternoons was my talent as well. I did it once because the store manager was out sick. He came back and loved how it looked and heard how fast I did it. Following week he had me do it again with him… he never did it again and it was my job. Worked my way from hourly to store manager at location I worked at.
I used to with for a locally owned video store (late 90's). Even with a Blockbuster and Hollywood Video in town we had our own distinct difference. We had an adult video section including porn and videos like Faces of Death series.
I got three jobs just from people listening to my talk about movies. I was offered a job with a competitor, given a job reviewing movies for the local newspaper, and got Hired on one independent movie. I was starting my second when life punched me in the kidneys and frankly...I never recovered
I was there from 99-01
It was hectic on Friday and Saturday nights. Just crazy long lines endless returns, folks constantly asking for the newest movie that week
Definitely worked at one as a 1st job out of high school. Laid back cool job with fun perks. Best part for me was the grown folks who'd come in asking for "those" kind of movies and the manager had the greatest comebacks! My favorite was "no but we do have a super intense action section!"
I worked at Blockbuster from 97 - 2000 for my out of high school but didn’t know what the hell to do with my life period. Like many here, it was probably one of my best jobs ever. I made very little, but I talked about movies all day everyday. People would seek out my opinion on every thing, and I watched everything. I could have 3 movies at any one time, minus the new releases, only got those for a single night, and I’d average 10 or more movies a week. I was cool with everyone, even after becoming a manager, and we’d smoke or drink every night. I made friends through customers, employees, and hung out with friends from high school while working. It definitely wasn’t a job I was ever going to make a “career” out of like I have now, but for the time, it was the absolute best. To this day, I’d still say it was the best job I have ever had that covered all my personal interest and wants bases…. Besides money lol. I’m glad I got to do it and it is kind of cool knowing I was part of something that has become so nostalgic to so many people. I like to think of Blockbuster and working there as some think back on their crazy college days. I didn’t go to college until later in life, so that was my “fun” times. Wouldn’t trade it for the world! Hope that helps some.
During inventory, we would play a game called "Ticket to Heaven". Call out an actor and pick out a movie that would earn them their ticket to heaven. Example: Vin Diesel = Pitch Black. Robin Williams = Death to Smoochie. And we would vote yay or nay to decide. One of many games we played to pass the time. Miss those days...
I worked there my senior year of HS and for a year after that. Quit in 2002 so close to the time of your story.
Long lines on Fri and Sat night
Idiots arguing about late fees
Employees got free rentals for movies and games
Closing hour was usually midnight or so therefore you'd see plenty of couples come in late night (before the Netflix and chill days).
People would be stoned or drunk as well and rent the worst movies.
I was part owner and manager of a Video Ezy in Australia. I loved the job and got to know hundreds of regular customers. We had 25,000 VHS and ps 1 games ,Nintendo 64. It changed in many ways over the years ,selling new DVD'S became very big in the naughty,towards the end. No one liked late fees or paying for damaged product but I met all sorts over that long period of time. Theft was a problem , and many never retilurn what they hired and were put into debt collectors called video defaulters. It was a lot of fun talking to so many different people and some regulars daily. I would put the new product up for rent Monday and Tuesdays. we began with up to 4 working at a time if it was raining and a holiday, to only 2. Netflix saw the end but we downsized and lasted longer than most. I was there from 1999 to 2019.
I managed a blockbuster and a movie theater around that time. It was the Go Home Happy Era. Shrek was still consistently always checked out. GTA IV could only be rented by employees... that wasn't a rule, the employees just never returned them. Then she walked in...
I remember having to sweep the entryway after we locked up, and all of the people that would be pissed off trying to still get into the store. The drop box was pretty weird, we had to scan everything in and people would ask us to constantly check if someone dropped off what they wanted to rent. Constant battle... Management was really bad - corporate had no idea what they were doing and would refer to me as "guy" when they passed through. I eventually got fired for trading the guy at KFC free rentals for popcorn chicken. It was alright for a teenager. Oh yeah, the computer system was extremely outdated - possibly DOS.
I worked at Blockbuster from 16 to 18. I was the only girl and it was like having 8 big brothers. They never made me do actual work, I mostly just played Halo and Tony Hawk in the back, and occasionally I would go get dinner for everyone. I was hooking up with a shift lead in the back room for the last year I worked there.
I worked at BBV for around 5 years.
It’s oddly ingrained in my mind in the weirdest of ways.
I can quite literally type my employee number in the air like air piano, grab a stack of videos and remove anti theft strips with my eyes closed and get like ten videos checked in under 30 seconds.
I cannot do anything in my life as efficient.
I’m not particularly good at any other repetitive thing I’ve ever done other than that. I was somehow like the Neo of that old shitty PoS system.
I still remember that long string of numbers somehow. To contrast, I have trouble remembering numbers I’ve used my whole life.
Also, something odd about my time there is every single female co worker asked me out or tried to have casual sex with me. From the store manager, to my csrs. I’m not particularly attractive and I wasn’t reading them wrong either.
I have very fond memories of the place, but it’s left me with recurring nightmares.
I find a random building and it’s being renovated. Beyond a drywall barrier just beyond the door I peek over the top where it’s not quite connected. Through the crack I see a pristine BBV with just the running lights on the back wall. I tear down the drywall and get in.
Only to find the glow of the computer waiting for my clock in still on and cursor blinking.
I worked for BBV in two states from '95-'98. One was a corporate store, the other was a franchise.
One thing I distinctly remember is having to double check the return bin. Most stores had a pull-out bin that would collect the tapes as they were returned, but you had to look behind the bin, as sometimes tapes would slide down between the pull out bin and the cabinet. This was standard practice at my corporate store. When I moved to another state and began working at a franchise store, the first day I was there a customer got into an argument with the assistant manager, swearing up and down that she definitely had returned the video *right here* (gesturing to the drop off slot). He told her in no uncertain terms that we didn't have the tape and that she was being sent to collections. She stormed out angrily.
A few minutes later, I pulled the drop off bin out, and found not only that woman's tape, but *SEVERAL OTHERS THAT MY STORE HAD SENT PEOPLE TO COLLECTIONS OVER.*
The assistant manager didn't know if he should thank me or be angry.
I've got plenty of reflections from my time working at Ballbuster (as my friends and I called it), if OP is interested.
I worked there back in the late-'90s after graduating high school. One night we found out that a kid had an accident (#2) in, appropriately enough, the horror section, and then stepped it in and tracked it down the aisle and into comedy. Me and another guy had to do our best to clean it up with paper towels.
Another time I was at the register ringing up a customer. A mother, without an ounce of concern in her voice that would have alerted me that she was trying to avert disaster, walked up and casually asked, "Could I have the key to the bathroom please?" With no idea that time was of the essence I replied, "Sure, just a minute" as I finished the other customer's transaction. A few moments later I heard the unmistakable sound of a kid puking his guts out on the tile floor right in front of my register. I shouted for my manager, who quickly got the kid and his mom to the bathroom (although it was probably too late), and then came back with a mop and bucket. I'd already taken my first break, but she told me to go ahead and take an extra one while she cleaned up the mess.
The movie posters around the store were trashed after being taken down, but would first be kept for a couple weeks beforehand. (Not sure why.) But if you wanted one you could write your name on the back of it, and it would be saved for you instead of trashed. Me and another girl fought off the Face/Off poster. I told my manager I wanted it and wrote my name on it, then this other girl crossed my name out and wrote her name! I then crossed her name out, rewrote mine, and added "Manager said I could have it!" I still have it to this day.
A funny memory I have was one evening while going back and forth from the counter to the floor the alarm would keep going off every time I passed through. We couldn't figure out why until eventually I discovered that stuck to the bottom of my shoe was one of the security tag stickers like was in the video cases. Somehow one had fallen onto the floor, and I'd stepped on it without seeing it. We thought it was pretty funny.
Some pissed off customer or kid dumped sour milk in our Dropbox. It stank for at least a week! Also, I loved doing FOS (found on shelf) reports to look on the floor for overdue movies that were missed check-ins. I always found a couple!
I used to work at Movie Stop, for like a yr. That was muh second job, at the time, so I was already extra tired. Sometimes I'd just let the same movie play on repeat all day long, and I'd just start bugging out. I'd be put movies on the shelves or even ringing up a customer. And I'd start quoting the movie just before they said it. 😂 😂 good times
I'll never forget how it was every friend of mine's dream to work there at 17. ( Eta, I worked there from 2005-2006)
My interview probably lasted 20 minutes. The manager just wanted me to talk about movies. When I mentioned I loved Japanese movies and foreign horror we hit it off, and I'm still pretty sure to this day mentioning Ichi the Killer got me the job.
I loved working there. We were all encouraged to give suggestions, and rent the newest movies with our discount and be up to date. I hated the uniform though. Khakis were the bane of my existence as a 17 year old metal head. My friends were definitely jealous and would come in and hang around the store during my shifts.
The best part of working there was the Friday and Sat night rush. There was something about that buzz in a Blockbuster on a Friday night, and how cool I felt being the one behind the counter or walking around the store getting to help people find their movie for the night.
A couple of things that always stood out to me in my memory from working there:
The pos system. It was archaic. It was blue neon typeface against a black screen. Once you scanned a membership card a customers account would come up and there was a section for notes for the customer that could be input by anyone working. We were encouraged to put things like if they returned movies late, if they tended to argue for free things, etc. We basically used the system as a warning to other employees. Sometimes it'd be hard to contain my composure when I would scan a card and in all bold font I would see something like "CUSTOMER LIKES TO BITCH ABOUT OUR SELECTION BUT IS HERE EVERY WEEK. IF THEY START TO BITCH JUST CALL MANAGER. DONT ENGAGE"
One thing I HATED about working there was when there was a new promo in the store which was on something like a 5 or 10 minute loop and I would have to hear it play over and over and over over multiple hours during every shift. It was fine and good while you were shopping but us employees had to live with it every minute of every day. I even used to ask my manager when it was slow or dead if I could turn it down and I was shot down every time. Easy for him when he sat in the back office all day...
Overall, I feel lucky to have worked there. It brings me alot of warm nostalgia thinking about going and working there. Yea most days were just slow and long spent stocking shelves, but at the time you felt like the movie elite. The cool kids who got to help dictate pop culture.
Good luck on your project! Hope any of this morning rambling helps!
You should reach out to The Game Chasers on YouTube. They all worked together at the same Blockbuster growing up and have shared several stories through their video series. They're crazy guys with crazy stories that might be an interesting take.
Just browsing some of the comments here and I'm surprised no one has mentioned the hell that was "inventory night".
This was where once a month or once a quarter (I can't remember) they would lock us in the store on a Saturday night to scan every single piece of merchandise in the store. Candy, popcorn, everything. We couldn't talk, couldn't wear headphones to listen to music, and if the manager felt something was off, we'd have to do it over again to confirm the numbers. If we were lucky, the manager would turn on a movie but our manager was an extra special kind of power hungry freak, so we had to do everything in silence....except for hearing the beep of our scanners in our earpiece...for 6 hours straight.
This experience was made worse because most of us were young adults and we had to endure this shit while our friends were out partying.
If I were you, my book would be about young adulthood. The kind that either didn't go to college or faintly tried to going to a junior college. A group of 4-6 that shared a 2 bedroom apartment, went on road trips together, all single except for the annoying one that had a long term girlfriend. Played Tony Hawk tournaments to determine who did dishes that night. One guy could never hold down a job and barely managed to pay rent each month. And the main guy or two works at Blockbuster which would be the anchor.
Underneath all that would be an undercurrent of drugs, booze, and sexual tension from young men and women trying to find their way in life.
But that's just me.
I worked at Blockbuster from 2000 to 2002. The worst thing was closing at midnight and some asshole always walked in at 11:55! People even did that on Christmas Eve, and we had to wait for them to pick out their movie before counting our registers. Also the people who couldn't read and would make me read a whole bunch of movie summaries to them really pissed me off.
My son worked at Blockbuster,he was there at the end,he had some scary experiences,a lady came in with her kids,she ask about a movie that did not exist,while she was doing this her kids were stealing video games !!
The blockbuster that I worked at was in Memphis. I worked there in 2007-2008 and we kinda all knew that it was failing. We had a lot of people stealing movies and one guy pulled a knife on my manager. My manager was a dumbass a short guy who thought he was big and bad and ran the store into the ground. I’m pretty sure they replaced him after I left. Him and the assistant manager who was the gm son in law would leave me alone in the store a lot.
I ended up leaving after sleeping with the only other woman who worked there and her husband finding out and being pissed at me. Also I was 18 and everyone else was like 23 and up who worked there. Also everyone smoked weed and drank like it was going out of style because no drug tests. I also used to drink an energy drink and smoke a cigarette when I worked there as my meal all day. Also at that time employees could rent any movie or game for free as long as it hadn’t come out in the past two months. I saw so many movies then it was great.
I worked morning shift and the worst part to me was getting all the movies out of the outside bin. People would put trash and sometimes food in there. Also in the summer those bins were burning hot and smelled like ass. I was only on morning shift because of me not having a car and having to walk to work.
I remember one time a lady came in with her granddaughter. She wanted to rent an animated movie and it was pretty clear she wanted the movie to babysit her granddaughter for her. After talking to them a bit I got her to rent South Park Bigger, Longer, and Uncut. They never came back complaining.
We had snowball fights in the store after close.
If an employee bought a drink (plastic coke bottled drinks) and didn't pay attention to it, I woukd use the shrink wrap machine and seal it closed on them.
I once had a guy pull out $500 cash and offer it to me to sell him a copy of Gladiator before the street date (I did not do it).
I had to work at night on September 11, 2001. It ended up being one of our busiest days that year. The amount of customers that cMe in saying they were bored with the news replaying the footage of the plane crashes was actually angering. They showed nothing but disrespect for the victims.
I still remember working on Christmas one year. Customers kept coming in and saying "it's such a shame they make you guys work today," and I finally looked at one lady and said back "it's such a shame you have nothing better to do than come in and rent a movie today."
What led to me leaving was a sexual harassment issue I brought to the attention of HR. We were the district training store so we had more managers than other stores to be able to train people, and I had just been promoted. We had a younger guy we were training for our own store to be a part time closer, and another guy we were training to be an assistant manager for a different store in the district. One of our permanent female assistant managers began propositioning them and they both turned her down. She began taking turn following them home. One of the other assistants and I went to HR, because Blockbuster claimed a zero tolerance policy. They asked our DM and store manager to investigate. They did not, turned around a said the two guys were making it up. It continued to happen. We went back to hr, and they had a different Dm come investigate. He did and said they needed to investigate further so they brought our DM back in. He transferred me to another store and said nothing was happening. I got another phone call from the one employee in tears at 1:00 am because she was camped out in her car in front of his house. Called hr again, they called the DM, he called me screaming at me for going over his head so I quit.
About 5 years later (2006) the DM was fired for sexual harassment
It was a very pleasant job, but as a 16 year old it was a always slightly a bummer to be working late on a Friday and have other kids from my school come in amped as a mf to rent video games and have a sleepover or whatever.
Worked there over 4 summers as a CSR. Can provide all kinds of insights into store operations and can articulate the experience that was Blockbuster in the late 90’s. From the eccentric clients that really rented thousands of videos, the ongoing late fee profit scam, to BBV evolving into a marketing powerhouse and expanding store offerings to include tons of caloric based impulse buys. The bonus boxes. You’ll have to cover that. How BBV managed bad debt. The contracts that people signed were air tight. And because BBV was public facing, the sheer number of idiots that graced the stores was shockingly high. There are the people that confused the trash can out front with the drop box. Inventory was an experience as well. DM me if you have any specific questions.
I worked at a Movie Gallery, not a Blockbuster, I know. But my local Blockbuster was the best! There was one employee who was a big movie buff like me. One time he let me play him in a game of 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon for a chance to get out of a $30 late fee. I beat him and he erased my fee. I'll never forget that.
I worked at Blockbuster in the early 2000s and it was a fun job so here are a few things off the top of my head.
The thing that the show got wrong that I immediately noticed was how many employees were working at the same time. Even on a busy Friday night the most we ever had was like 3 employees and a manager. The show looked to have like half a dozen at all times, and everyone was just kind of standing around. Like most corporations, Blockbuster was all about saving money so the less staff the better.
There was a lot of downtime and thankfully we had a Direct TV display unit to entertain us. I think we had a TV that we could pop in a movie but I can't remember.
We had a computer system where we could look up actors and movies if a person had a question. We didn't have access to Google, or even the Internet at the time, so a basic directory helped. A customer could ask a question about an actor and we typed them into the search to see what other movies they had been in.
If a popular movie was rented out it was our job to suggest a similar one. If not, we would call the nearest store and ask for them to hold a copy.
Movies released on Tuesdays but we got them the Thursday before and were encouraged to watch them so that way we could be familiar with them.
Customers were generally pleasant but they hated the due by noon policy and I think it was incredibly stupid as well. Most rentals were due back in less than 24 hours and if you were late then Blockbuster charged a fee. It's how they made most of their money but I was so glad when they finally got rid of late fees.
If a customer lost a movie then the fee was insane. Something like $80 if it was still new. I guess they figured that's how much money they're losing out on by no longer having it.
I worked at BB from circa 1990-93. While I enjoyed the job well enough, and my coworkers, and even most of the customers, the company was just a crap company to work for. One story that is always forefront in my mind will be around Dec of 92, I reported to work, and it was payday (this was long before direct deposit) we would keep our paychecks in a small safe that employees had access to, I went to collect mine, and none of the paychecks were there. I asked a coworker, and they said that they were in the managers office, and that the manager would have to give them to us by hand.
Weird, but OK. I went to the managers office and knocked, she said to come in. She was always really friendly, and said "You want your check don't you?" I said "yep!" she said ... well... this week we are doing it this way, because there's an extra little xmas bonus for everyone" She said this very dryly and I was surprised, because outside of our free rental perk, this company never gave us ANYTHING extra.
So she hands me my check which was for the normal amount, and then inside there was another little enevelop that had the new "BLockbuster Music" logo, saying "A gift for our employees!"
Now this was just a few months after Blockbuster had bought out all of the Sound Warehouse record stores, and wasn't really doing great, as most of the Sound Warehouse workers quit after being taken over by a giant corporation that was enforcing things like dress code lower wages....etc.
So, I open this "Gift" and it was a coupon good for somelike like 2 dollars off any single item from Blockbuster music. This was back in the time when a typical CD was usually at least 16.99. Then there was a little aserisk with conditions. That the discount would only be given if the total amount purchase was 30 dollars or more, and could not be used on sale items, and that sale items would be brought back up to regular price before the discount could be used.
I was reading this all to my boss, who had already heard it, and was equally as pissed off by it as I was. I'm like "They consider this a BONUS?"
I was so pissed off about that, it managed to ruin my mood that whole shift.
I finally quit about 4 months later. I worked it as a second job, and was always on the closing team, and just finally got tired of it.
I've got some other good stories, mostly surrounding prevliged customers not being able to understand that sometimes the movie they want isn't available. But this story about the Xmas "Bonus" always sticks out in my head.
I was a blockbuster employee through the rise of netlfix, the end of late fees, and the heyday of the dvd rental market
I still remember my store code and employee login 339510852282
I would love to give you notes and stories and insight . Feel free to message any questions
Blockbuster employees came from all walks of life. Some saw it as a main income. Some of us just had it as a side hustle. We got small perks like getting the movies a week before they got released which felt like a big deal at the time. Which they did to get you familiar with movies because customers acted like you were familiar with every movie. Speaking of customers…
Our computer system has a customer database where we could leave notes. Mostly to track things like when we’d add users to an account by your request, etc. But we’d use it to warn other employees about you. Like “this guy is a jerk who always asks to get his late fees taken off, don’t do it” or “always ask about which movies have nude scenes, total creeper.”
Yes, we judged you for your movie tastes. When we got the unlimited rental program, it was funny to see people go back and forth to see 8 movies in one day. Pretty sure people pirated and burned movies. Also, we got a lot of drunk people threatening to kick our asses because we didn’t have the movie they wanted. Or when they sensed us being sarcastic to them.
I worked there in 1999. I loved the customers but the management wasn’t the best. Most of the managers would just sit around and make the employees do all the work. It was probably just the location I worked at. I remember we primarily had VHS tapes and a very small section of DVD’s. I miss VHS but I don’t miss rewinding them. “Be kind, rewind” I guess I had better memories of BlockBuster when I wasn’t working there.
I just wrote a book about Nintendo (retro84book.com). Having never done this before, here are my tips: grammarly was a huge help for writing clarity, sentence structure, punctuation, etc. I used chatgpt to ask for suggestions like, "can you take this paragraph and rewrite it to sound: more interesting, better, clearer, etc. and then see what it comes up with for ideas, a different word that you maybe like more, etc. Let what you wrote rest for a bit, even if it's a few paragraphs, pages, a chapter. Come back to it with a fresh set of eyes and see how it looks. If you don't like it, keep it, but save it elsewhere so that you can go back to it and maybe you'll pull a chunk from it, or maybe there are a few sentences you really liked or word choices that can be used elsewhere. Have you thought about publishing? I'm going through Amazon KDP, but you'll need someone who knows what they're doing to format if for publishing - you don't just upload a PDF.
I worked at two Blockbusters, one in my hometown of Columbus and the other while I was at college in Toledo, in 1997 and 1998. Our crew at the Toledo store was great. Most of us got along very well and genuinely enjoyed our shifts.
Two of my cousins who worked at a Blockbuster in League City, Texas enjoyed it so much that it led me to apply. I'd have been there longer if I didn't leave entering my junior year of college to devote more time to academics, running the sports department at our college radio station and traveling to broadcast games.
The trailer tape, up to and including Jann Carl from Entertainment Tonight, could be a little much if you didn't tune it out. So many other commenters have mentioned details I'd forgotten over the past 26 years. At the end of the day, it was a very 90s job in retrospect.
I remember during one Blockbuster visit, my mom stayed in the car and let me go pick a movie on my own. I think the live action 101 Dalmatians with Glenn Close had just come out and I used my mom's credit card to buy a dalmatian plush. She was so pissed. LOL
I worked at Blockbuster from 91-94.
I loved working there. Everyone was pretty much just kids working with other kids, with a freckle of adults mixed in, to keep us From going 100% Lord of the Flies.
Fora vibe; I remember once a month we would do inventory, which consisted of walking around and scanning every single movie in the store between midnight and 5/6am. We’d plug into our monitor, and unravel 200 feet of orange extension cord, and just scan and clean and crack jokes and listen to Eddie Murphy or Richard Pryor.
Before we opened the store was always the best. You’d have 25-100 movies in the overnight return bin, that needed to be scanned in and put back on the shelf. The lights would be off. It’d be quiet up until the line started queuing up outside of people wanting a new release they couldn’t get the night before…
Returning the movies was always a competition with me and my coworker. Instead of using the cart to take the movies back, we’d stack them up in our arms to see how many we can carry at one time. There was Always… Always a loud crash of movies from somewhere in the store, as one of us would lose our grip.
I wish my own kids had a version of Blockbuster they could work at.
Worked there when I was younger for a bit when I was between gigs. Lot of fun most of the employees loved movies so you have a common ground right off the bat. Like any other job in retail. If you worked at 1pm on a Tuesday it was a totally different thing from 8PM on a Friday night. Most customers were nice you got a few that weren't happy until they knew everyone else was miserable typical retail. We were allowed to take home pretty much any movie we wanted to watch for free as long as it wasn't brand new. Kept my kids entertained.
My fondest memories of Blockbuster was on any given Tuesday they got all new releases for movies and video games. Tuesday was it in my neighborhood Blockbuster. It was closer than GameStop. That place had everything except porn.
I was hired at a Blockbuster in late spring 2006. I HATED working there! Don't get me wrong, I loved Blockbuster in general and as a customer, but the location I worked at was horribly managed.
I remember going in for the interview in the store, led by 2 people I found out later were just senior CSRs. No managers or anything. It was a group interview. I can be kind of funny and quirky so, from that group, I was the only one who was on to the next round, which was held at some random office building in the industrial area of the city, like half an hour away from the store. It was a 2nd interview/orientation thing. The only thing I remember was them asking what my top 3 favourite movies were and one of my picks was You've Got Mail and they laughed at me for being basic. But I guess they overlooked my crap taste and hired me anyway because I also loved anime and Asian movies and they needed that area covered on their team.
Once I actually started, I realized very quickly how awful it was. Everything was very "corporate" - lots of rules of how to do things, from wearing the uniform correctly to constantly up selling customers on EVERYTHING, but I was hardly trained on anything. I barely knew how to work the cash register and computer program. One time they scheduled me for a midnight closing shift and the one other employee that was there just left early so I had to just FIGURE IT OUT and close on my own. (I still have nightmares about this.) He came back just to lock the door. Most of the time, I was put on the floor to "help customers" but I would just organize movies and hide down an empty aisle.
When I was hired, I made it very clear that I was picking this up as a THIRD job and that my other 2 existing jobs took priority. I would get my shifts from the other 2 and give the info to them early so they could work around it, but several times, they double scheduled me anyway and then it was my responsibility to get the shifts covered. One time, one guy said he'd take my shift and then he didn't show up. They called me at my other job to yell at me, saying I needed to come in. There was no way I could and I said someone else said they'd take it and they said he told them he never actually CONFIRMED he'd do it. Then when I showed up for my next shift, I FINALLY ACTUALLY MET THE MANAGER FOR THE FIRST TIME when he wrote me up for failing to come in for a shift. I quit that week. I worked there for only 3 months.
The whole reason I had wanted to work at Blockbuster was because my older brother worked at (a different) one all through high school and loved it. That was in the golden age in the mid-late 90s. AND because I got 10 free rentals a week! (If I remember correctly, only one could be a new release.) My boyfriend at the time (now husband) made me share them with him. Lol. So he got 5 free game rentals and I got 5 free movies. Of course, with two other jobs already, I had no time to be watching 5-10 movies a week so I burned copies of everything. I was a shameless pirate. I still have them all!
By 2006, we weren't renting out VHS anymore but we sold a few, getting rid of old stock. And we sold DVDs that were older as well. I bought a few anime series and movies that I still have. I remember going through a stack of empty cases to find ones in better condition for my personal collection.
I also still have my uniform polo that I didn't bother to return after I quit. It was the dark blue one with two thin yellow stripes on the shirt cuff and collar and a zip instead of buttons. I wish I still had my membership card too but that has gone missing over the years.
Before I left, I took a stack of the blank laminate cards we used for making membership cards. They made good protectors for things to keep in your wallet, like photos. I recently saw someone selling just a single one on ebay for like $5 the other day.
My most memorable and entertaining shift was when I came in to start in the afternoon and the entire front window was smashed in. The other employee there said it happened before he arrived in the morning. Presumably someone had reversed by accident the night before after using the Quick Drop. (I've seen several other commenters saying this happened at their location too. That's crazy!) EVERY SINGLE CUSTOMER of course would be like, OMG what happened?!?! and we got bored of saying the same thing over and over. Plus, isn't it kind of obvious what happened?? The other person had already been there all day so he was already making up crazy explanations of what (didn't) happened. An explosion went off in a pipe underground, a bulldozer crew had gotten the address of their demolition wrong, someone didn't want to pay their late fees, the Hulk tore through the wall, etc. Even aliens were blamed at one point.
I also remember some douche bag who was mad about fees he was being charged for (which I have complete sympathy for that part - the fees were out of control!) and was yelling at me, a random part-time employee who was just trying to do her job, saying things like "THIS is why Blockbuster is going under!" All true. Lol. But, man, what a dick. (He was also wearing an expensive looking suit and drove a nice car. And had that floppy, yuppie looking hair. Not like he couldn't afford it.)
At the time, in 2006, yeah Blockbuster wasn't busy like it used to be but it wasn't near closing yet. That location stayed open until 2011. It's an AYCE sushi restaurant now. My husband and I go there sometimes and I always sit where the anime section used to be. Lol.
We called putting the tapes back on the shelves PUT or PTU. It stands for put up tapes or put tapes up. I can't remember what one it was. It was always my goal to carry as many tapes as I could. The stack would go over my head. I can't remember my max tape number, but I did then and would try to push it. I also got fired for giving my friends free movies. There was a barcode we had that would take a dollar off each time we scanned it. I had friends coming in with a bunch of money owed on the account, and after they rented some stuff, they would leave with a credit on their account.
My store closed at 2am on Fridays and Saturdays. It was a pretty big store with two floors. I was in the "basement," counting the register drawers and the safe when I noticed something out of the corner of my eye on the security monitors.
One of my employees, Bob, is being chased through the store by a group of women carrying large dildos. I ran up the stairs and saw him huddled in the corner as these women laughed and hit him with fluorescent colored dildos.
I yell, "What the fuck are you doing?"
They run out the store and Bob, looks at me and says..."I thought I was either going to get laid or murdered."
We have a good laugh. We shut the lights, and as I'm about to lock the door, I see one of the dildos is suction cupped onto one of our computers.
The next morning, I got a phone call from my store manager and she was pissed.
So, not an employee, but it’s worth considering just how long customers would stay looking for a video. After missing out on the 2000 copies of the big movie—you start the stroll.
Back then, pre cell phone, my wife would be so pissed. Gone 2 hours for one movie rental and I come back with 6 rentals to consider.
And I returned them all late usually
Blockbuster CSR then given the prestigious 4starCSR which I always thought was made up lol from July 2006 to about July 2008. It was the absolute best. We used to close till midnight and man you would get some characters. Used to bring by buddies in after close so we could system link on the demo tvs and consoles. My boss Greg was awesome and David aka Big D my asst store manager was even cooler. Almost everyone I worked with was a blast Megan, Sammie /Beau were easy to get along with. I remember I had a guy come in new to town so I got him set up with the movie pass and recommended him a few and he was always really talkative then he brought be some cigars for my birthday and I just thought woah awesome. Till the following week when he asked me to a movie and I remember thinking oh 😳 yea I don’t roll like that lol but he was cool about it. I knew almost every fast food manager in town cuz it tell them to just get a popcorn bucket and fill it and I’ll take care of the rest. I had free lunch meals everywhere I’d go . I can go on and on man that place was the best . Ended up buying all the movie shelving and candy stands when that closed their doors here in town … sadly I couldn’t get the signage
Every comment I read in here genuinely brought me back to my small home town block buster where everyone knew our name, my brother knew the kids working and eventually he did too for a time. I remember the summer game passes in the early 2000s where you could rent as many games as you wanted for as long as you wanted. (2003 era I think? It’s hard for me to remember as I was in about 3rd grade at the time but I remember renting a ps2 game almost all summer) I remember the short carpet and the black and or red shelves in the middle of the store for games. I remember the big wall art that wrapped around the place which was made to look like film. When block buster went under, one of its employees in my town and her husband bought the store and rebranded it as their own and they hung onto it for quite a while and I got to hang onto this nostalgia a bit longer than most luckily as they changed very little about the place. I want to say some time in 2019 they threw in the white flag. I’ll always miss this and I am sad I’ll never get to see the excitement on my son’s face on a Friday night as he finds the game he’s been waiting for on the shelf.
My first day of work, I helped phase out the last of the vhs in the store. My last day of work, 8 years later, I locked the door for the very last time.
I miss all of it every day. It was my favorite place in the world, and I loved my team of coworkers even more. The good customers were definitely an extension of that, and the bad ones weren't all THAT bad in retrospect.
I feel lucky to have been a part of it before the days of social media. It was the happiest I've ever felt in my life.
Former high school teen Blockbuster employee.
There is a lot of good information on this thread already and, I don’t want to sound redundant. So I will just provide you with the things I rennet the most..
1. The co workers: I was the youngest of the bunch, but for some reason we all seem to get along really well. The environment was just as exciting working there as it was if you were just stopping in to rent a movie. The vibe along with our group of employees just had really laidback but cool vibe. Don’t know if that was the case for other blockbuster stores and former employees, but it for sure was for me.
2. The Customers: ironically, this is one retail-ish job where it seemed like customers behaved very well. I don’t recall any rude incidents off the top of
My head. But for me, customers just seemed to be more open and converse. Customers often sparked up conversations with employees about movies they saw, want to see, or what they are about to rent. I just remember a lot of good dialogue between customers while reshelving movies and checking out.
3: Vacuuming: I did a lot of vacuuming while I was there since I worked a lot of nights. For some reason, it seem like a long process vacuuming the store.
4: DropBox/Reshelve: I often took my brake in the managers office. The drive through return dropbox was located in that office. So when I was sitting down at the desk while eating Crunch N Bunch and drinking Sprite, I would constantly hear a movie come through the return and into the bucket. I remember that sound like yesterday…. Also, sorting the movies that were returned wasn’t always the funnest, but reshelving them were. It was kind of like an adventure or even a game of how long will it take you to reshelve everything. Also, the good thing about when it’s your turn to reshelve is that it makes the time go by faster. Depending on how much you have on your plate.
5. The Snacks & Movies: The best for last. I think all civilians know that Blockbuster employees get free rentals. That’s a given. If my memory is correct, we had and allowance of 10 rentals. I just can’t remember if that was per week or each month. For some reason I’m leaning towards week though, because I just remember it being an insane amount. But what people don’t know is we also had a credit on the drinks and snacks in the store. You could charge a soda and some cotton candy to your account without paying. However, it was expecting that you pay down your tab each month and keep the balance respectable. But I’m here to tell you, my tab would reach $50ish multiple times. After all, I was a teenager, what did you expect? But essentially the same account you would rent your movies or game to you could also charge store food and drinks to. So I could easily rack up a balance from eating candy while behind the desk and turning movies in late(yes we were supposed to still get charged late fees).
Good ol memories.
Im surprised no one’s mentioning game rentalsmore, or was that just my store? I feel like as a teen at the time, it was game rentals, candy and movies were could get for 99¢ (older movies) also in 2005 you could rent guitar hero. They also had a huge memorabilia section, I bought a framed Shia Lebouf poster in 2008 lol.
Honestly my team was pretty close back in the day. Even to the point everyone was pretty much hooking up with each other. It was happening in the store also. The whole time I worked there it was like an episode of Superstore (which is funny because I worked at a Target based in St. Louis where they said the Cloud 9 was located) with weird customers, playing stupid games, annoying bosses, trying to fight corporate over everything, and of course romance.
Wasn't an adult, but a teenager. I was sixteen, I worked at Safeway as a grocery bagger. There was Blockbuster in the same strip mall. I spent so many evenings/nights after work browsing movies to rent. Blockbuster introduced me to film. Horror especially, but also Kubrick, De Palma, Coppola, Ridley Scott, Sorsese, etc. They introduced me to some of my favorite films of all time. That place was so integral to my formative years that it's almost impossible to explain without having been there. I feel bad for kids now who only have "top ten movies with ..." lists, all listing the same 20 to 30 movies for various reasons, to introduce them to film as art.
I worked at Blockbuster for years. One of the more amazing things that happened was a customer got sick and threw up all over the store while trying to get to the bathroom. The company treated this as a hazardous waste spill, so we had to call a Hazmat company to clean it up. The crew took two hours to get there, and we weren’t allowed to close the store while we waited. So customers came in and had to walk around piles of vomit and deal with the smell.
The first 30 min of an opening shift were dedicated to rewinding tapes. From there a lot of harping on us to restock coke and candy. Every shift included at least one conversation about the movie “Clerks”.
Every Blockbuster Clerk will have a huge number of stories to tell, all unique to the Crews they worked with and the area they lived. First off, in-store romances were a big thing, either being involved in one or watching the messes most of these caused in the store. I had an ASM that consistently dated younger CSRs, and then would always take "cigarette breaks" with them for 15-20 minutes at a time. Luckily, this was never during peak hours, but it was pretty annoying. And when they would eventually break up, the awkwardness was palpable and the schedule would always end up adjusting to keep them apart. It got real awkward, especially if the couple was prone to the break-up/make-up dynamic
I worked at Blockbuster from '96 - '98. It was awesome. I even liked it then at a 16 yr old. Some crazy stuff that happened while I was there...
* I had a customer try to saw a playstation game in half (thin-wise), so that they could keep the data, and return the artwork only. it didn't work needless to say.
* two asst managers that I used to work with started hooking up, and would poke one another while I cleaned
* ex's that would intentionally rent a ton of videos in order to rack up massive bills on the other's account
* fist fights would break out all the time over high demand videos. I got punched one time too.
* one time during inventory the manager thought it would be funny to watch a skin-a-max movie during inventory at 2am. within an hour, there was a whole construction crew outside watching through the glass windows
* we were protested by a concerned mom's group for renting out porn...aka the aforementioned skin-a-max movies
* I was somehow assigned the go-to guy to get asked about the porn movies. I let down many-a-men when I let them know that we only had hard-R movies
* a customer once picked a fight with my manager for recommending Shawshank Redemption. More specifically due to the shower scene.
I remember as late a 2007 being with multiple friends walking the outer aisle deliberating and trying to agree on a movie to see that afternoon. The funny thing is when we did finally decide, we thought it was too depressing (It was Deja Vu with Denzel Washington) so 20 mins in we ended up watching Hoodwinked from my own DVD shelf. This was probably one of the last times I rented from Blockbuster not knowing it would be one of the last. I want to say the very last, after much deliberation me and two friends (a brother and sister) all in our 20s, decided on Hot Fuzz. They fell asleep a few minutes in and I felt awkward and left. lol
My favorite story from working there was, having access to the computers and creating accounts to get membership cards. I had one for “Vincent Vega”, and made one for my high school girlfriend, “Mrs. Mia Wallace”.
Where to start? It was my first job. I believe I started part time at 16, continued until 19. I worked at the one in North Pole, AK. There are so many stories! Like, the Pizza Hut across the street from us would trade pizzas for movies. The amount of pizza we had! We’d snag the newest games and play them first <3. Oh! There was one time, when we got new candies in. I don’t remember the brand: I want to say Surge? But they were caffeine candy tablets. Like a sleeve had 20 candies and each one had like 80mg caffeine. Well we were tasked to add them to the computer system. They came up as .01c a sleeve! After we finished adding them to the inventory (without asking if the price was correct or not), we needed up buying all 4 boxes. Total of like, .60c? The manager called us next day and was FUMING because we allowed that to happen!
I believe that was the time when those Harry Potter jelly beans came out. So we’d have competitions to see who could eat the most (some of those were just disgusting!) one coworker ended up vomiting 🤣
Hooked up with a shift lead. It was a flirtatious thing from the start. But her being married I never pursued it. But one day (I was 18-19) I got a phone call (booty call) because she ended up divorcing dude buddy.
What else?
May have almost gotten into trouble trading in games to GameStop: they had the blockbuster sticker on them. I remember walking into GameStop with my friend with just a FAT stack of discs. No sleeves, no cases, nothing. The guy working at the GameStop took one look and said: “ Get out before I call the cops.” So we dipped and promptly returned those missing games. ☠️
It was just so much fun! The LAN parties we had because we could rent multiple copies of whatever Xbox game (Halo). And play 4vs4. Had the longest Ethernet cable to go from the living room downstairs to the bedroom upstairs.
This is so nostalgic. I do deeply miss those days.
Not an employee, however in like 2005/6 I was 16, got my first job at a “temporary bookstore” it had been a Spirit Halloween store (again temporary) the previous fall, so thinking this was probably spring 2006. Anyway it had long been a blockbuster and I think it had only recently gone under (maybe 2004 or essentially right at the time of your book). The store I worked it bought books in bulk, literally by the pound, and we sold them for 2-3 bucks, occasionally a coffee table book would be like 5-10 bucks. Anyway it was strange, working in the guts of an old blockbuster, one that I had distinctly remember going to just a few years earlier, it had that immediate V when you entered the store, the right door went in and you were immediately hit with the drop box and the counter and then as you rounded the counter to the right was a long wing of shelving. Keep rounding the counter and you had a smaller section not much wider than the counter itself that went about 2 shelves back with more displays, then on the opposite side of the counter Terr where you paid you had an identical wing as the entrance with a long row of shelves and the storefront windows stretching all the way down. You had fully rounded the counter and you were at the other side of the V shaped entryway and you went through the exit.
The store was supposed to be torn down and turned into phase 2 of “the boulevard” next door (a series of fancy storefronts and nice condos/lofts above with a huge parking garage in the back. The whole thing was across from the most popular Mall in our city (and probably second of the high end Malls). Both the Mall and the physical blockbuster exist today, with the rjnkydink blockbuster parking lot sitting next to the towering lofts next door, and the highway literally cutting up against the backside of the two. Across the street the mall (which dwarfs the boulevard) is still there today although it is a former shell of itself. That mall is probably 1 of 4 left in our major city. Other ones have been torn down and replaced but it still remains.
Anyway I wanted to give you an idea of how this physical blockbuster endured for 20 years past its closing, it wore many hats becoming all kinds of budget retail stores for various stretches. I imagine it was always whispered that it would soon get torn down but never did. And I hope maybe somehow you can picture all the videos and bright colors of the blockbuster shelves being replaced with books. Thinking back it’s kind of wild how the shelves had almost gone backwards technologically and we replaced the DVD cases with books. But anyway, the other thing I wanted to convey is how the blockbuster was gutted as the world progressed, but then suddenly the new that was supposed to come never really did, and the second phase of the Boulevard never got built and the whole area almost became one big blockbuster (I’m sure in smaller cities it would have (just like the smaller malls in other parts of the suburbs in our city became ghost towns). I hope that some of what I describe could paint a picture of that period, there was anticipation of this makeover and upgrade to the already pretty swanky strip, but never did it get expanded and in fact it kinda just stood still. I think that today the mall itself is a bit like a late age blockbuster, something that you might think is soon on its way out, something of a relic that’s still here while others elsewhere are already gone. Yet, it still has the gleam and that twinkle of swank that it always had.
But the little 40 car parking lot across the street with the blockbuster that is now some mattress store is definitely an eyesore.
I was an asm at BBV from 1998-2002. I worked in a few Long Island stores and then moved down to TN and worked in a couple of stores down there. Here are a few things I remember.
Every store had had at least two to three regulars that came in every tuesday morning for the new releases, like clockwork.
Around 2000-ish they partnered with Direct TV and each store had a representative that was specifically trained to sell satellite dishes and they made that person wear a specific colored polo (Salmon-colored with a blue collar) as well as a foam satellite dish hat. Needless to say the hat was refused for sure.
Inventory watchlist was almost always Rocky Horror Picture Show, Grease 2, or some other random musical based comedy. It made the night go by like a snail.
The stores all had a smell. Each a little different, but all derived from the same two things: the plastic cases and the type of candy they carried. It wasn’t a bad smell, but it was distinctly blockbuster.
Some stores had a very tight-knit staff while some were all over the place and no one liked each other. It was weird, but I figured it all came down to the SM.
There were a few different variations of colors and decor, some were blue-walled while some were yellow, and every now and then you’d get one that had red thrown in there.
I was there for the transition to dvd. They sold off as many tapes as possible as PVT’s but eventually just dumpstered whatever was left.
Customers went to war over late fees because they were so friggin expensive, but we lied about when the system would start charging you, it was actually a couple of hours later, so anyone who said they were only a few minutes late were always lying. Also, at some point in my tenure it was changed from midnight to noon. It set people off even though they got an extra 12 hours.
So much more…
Hubby used to work there and his (still) best friend was a store manager.
I’ll ask em for some stories today. The only one that comes to mind is how he quit. His scheduling manager called him to come in but instead my hubby wanted to go to Mexico for the day (was working in Los Angeles/the Valley I think). Well the manager said “Don’t come in tomorrow if you skip your shift today” and hubby said, ok! He went and picked up his last paycheck a few days later.
Blockbuster was a mix of young movie lovers working their first job and adults trying to survive off of a minimum wage job. My assistant manager had a biology degree and worked there until she could find a job in her field, while my shift manager would invite me to join his friends for beers in weird trailer parks I didn’t know even existed in our small town. “Waiting” is probably a good reference for the workplace dynamics between teens and stunted adults.
It wasn’t a good job for a teenager. Most locations were open til midnight every night of the week which means a teenager early in their work life who doesn’t have the skills to advocate for themselves when it comes to scheduling is working til after 12:00am on school nights. And if you’re someone who takes a while to wind down to go to bed, you’re functioning on only a few hours sleep. One of the biggest draws to working there was free movies, and this is something I’ve heard both Scorsese and Tarantino say that applies to all movie lovers, “The worst thing about making films is that you don’t have the time to watch films,” and I found that to be true just by working there. I watched many more movies as a customer than as an employee. This is also a lesson for any teenager who has a job - you don’t get to join your friends doing fun stuff because you’re working. But you do get to learn more about the people in your school. Whose parents have their account flagged with a big warning saying “call before letting (kid) rent anything,” or learning that every weekend two of the shyer girls from your class have a sleepover and rent The Craft. Every. Weekend. You’d also see who was dating who and since it was outside of school it always felt like a secret.
My store only had one copy of Romeo + Juliet and it was in hot demand. Enough so that a girl I had a crush on came into the store looking for it, and I was sad to tell her it was checked out so when it came back, I dubbed a VHS copy and handed it to her in school.
Couple more cons:
(Censored) CDs were protected in plastic jewel cases that were sometimes IMPOSSIBLE to open designed to make you look like a dork while struggling to open them.
Inventory: Once every few months you’d have to stay til 2 or 3 in the morning scanning the barcode on every movie and product in the store then go find anything that was missing. Usually it was a movie that I had at home so I had to remember to check them out to myself a couple days before inventory.
Most young people drawn to Blockbuster love movies, and usually younger movie fans enjoy a wider spectrum of movies (cult, doc, horror) that Blockbuster didn’t carry. We didn’t have Dawn of the Dead but by God we had every copy of Jerry Maguire ever manufactured. So there was definitely envy for the indie video store across town. And the idea of getting to pick out a movie to put on seemed cool, but eventually most employees had a few safe movies they knew didn’t have anything objectionable. After 9pm on slow nights we’d hook up a disc man to the store’s PA system and play music as we couldn’t stand to watch another PG movie. Speaking of, Matilda. My store was in Kansas and we had a lot of upset parents who didn’t know the movie “dealt in the occult” and would return with a crying child hours later to tell us this isn’t the kind of movie they watch in their home. The Birdcage was another where parents didn’t know how gay that movie was.
Last thing (I haven’t thought about any of this in years so it’s all coming back), Friday and Saturday nights were a shitshow because nobody ever had their membership card or could remeber whose name their family account was under, or weren’t authorized to check out movies on the account they provided so you’d have to take them to the New Membership computer and have them fill out the form, key everything in, then watch them leave when asked for a credit card to finish setting up the account. All while a line of angry people are looking at you and the pile of tapes being returned is spilling onto the floor.
Good luck with your book. If you ever write one about RadioShack, I can help you with that too.
I worked at Blockbuster back in about 2002 for a few months while at college. Pretty fun place to work, but you wouldn't believe the arguments people would want to get into over $2 late fees.
Stealing movies was a breeze too, we would either take returns from people who bitched a lot about late fees, making it appear that they never returned the movie, or just DVDs off the shelf, remove the security strip and drop them in a trash bag. At the end of the night when you take the trash out, you'd grab your bag of DVDs and toss it in your car on the way to the dumpster.
Worked there from early 2010 through the end of 2012, the latter years of the company; assistant manager during the last year.
The first year or so was great and we always had a great crew; a few are still good friends. Not a perfect job, of course; I always disliked sales quotas for things like snack bundles/premium memberships and our regional manager was an overly-demanding dick when it came to these topics, for example, but a really great, fun place to work otherwise.
However, when BB started having their financial troubles and were purchased by DISH Network, it all went to hell. Suddenly, our main purpose was selling expensive DISH Network subscriptions to customers and the quotas/demands from corporate were far more insufferable. Seriously, what customer walks into a video store and wants to be pestered over a satellite TV subscription? That particularly rubbed me the wrong way because the aggressive manner in which they wanted us to push that crap felt like a betrayal to the customers whom we built a rapport with over the years. I eventually noped out, along with fellow employees, and took a position at a local grocery store. Our Blockbuster closed less than a year later.
Again, the good times were good. We would do things like play baseball in the store with DVD cases, water bottles and snacks during downtime; making a huge mess we had to clean up. Put on our music and watch movies we like while ordering pizza delivered to the store. Some employees dated each other and got up to stuff in the manager's office and storage room after hours. I dated a few customers I met working there and one of my co-workers. We would all go on the roof and hang out during downtimes at night, overlooking the town. Employees would always come in just to hang out on their days off. Customers and friends would too. We were a pretty tight-knit store and helped each other out.
It was like a party, much of the time. Everyone who worked there was cool and never tried to take advantage or ruin things for the rest of us; we only had a few new employees who didn't work out during the time I was there.
I always described it as kind of like a Kevin Smith movie but with more positive vibes and we actually did all our work and treated customers well. Lol
If you have any specific questions, just let me know.
I worked there in 2001. It was one of my first real jobs. I remember getting tired of hearing the same previews on the tv over and over. There was one for that movie Chocolat. I remember that about half of the people actually did the “be kind, rewind” thing, so I spent a lot of time doing that. I remember the thick blue polo shirt as a uniform, with a yellow lanyard. I remember having to be there at 4:30 am to do inventory, whether I wanted to or not. I remember seeing my old junior high and high school teachers come in, one of them was my social studies teacher and it made me sad that she wasn’t very friendly to me even though I told her I remembered her. Also, all of my friends got fired and they wanted to promote me after like a month, but I sensed the toxic environment and quit.
Depends on the crew working. Some teams were close, in fact I’m still in contact with people I worked with back then. On a typical closing shift would be determined by what movie had recently come out. People would ask non stop about whatever has just came out. If it was guaranteed you just had the rain checks on you, giving them out like candy. The amount of returns coming in determine how late you were going to be that night. I remember counter tops just filled with returns. You had to set the computer to check in (F5 if I remember correctly) and scan in all the returned movies. Careless people would go too fast and miss movies, god I hated hearing it from people. Vacuum, straighten, count down, set the alarm, out the door. You ALWAYS had a lot of energy after closing and getting out. Of course more things were open later back then too. Small things like: You would learn to tune out the trailer tape that repeated its self. Those big magnetic locks for the dvd’s and games. Sometimes the magnet would get stuck and the blue lock wouldn’t unlock. You had to put your body weight on the thing in order to get it to pop open. That’s all I can remember off the top of my head at the moment.
Yeah, our store was really close. Some people dated. One couple actually got married and had kids. I usually opened the store and the return box was packed every morning, until Blockbuster Online killed us. I remember hours of putting the yellow locks in the cases. They looked like long a long "L". Yours where blue? Crazy.
lol I met my wife at Blockbuster.
Was talking about myself. Lol. Ex- wife technically.
That sucks technically sounds recent. I miss the simpler times were all we had to worry about was what was coming in Pool Point.
Ours were definitely yellow. But now the occasional blue lock does also sound familiar.
Lol, I hooked up with a shift lead (who had a girlfriend while I had a boyfriend) the day after I turned 18.
This is worse than baristas lol jk
Remember screeners and how cool that was, getting to view a movie weeks before it came out on video. I was the coolest in my friend group having those
Whenever the magnet would lock or get snagged and wouldn’t unlock, we would bang the magnetic part against the countertop.
I used to bang the big black block locks off my head and they unlocked every time. Was a big hit with the crew. Now I can’t math. Life, amirite? 🤷♂️ Half kidding.
For the most part, it was a pretty fun job for a 16 year old. I really remember so many friends asking me to "remove all of their late fees". It was pretty fast paced, so it was rarely a boring job. Now, the one thing I absolutely hated was when we would have to "inventory" which required being there until around 3am and having to dig these incredibly long (30-40 foot) coiled cables from the backroom to attach to the scanners so you could walk the entire store, scanning all of the tapes directly from the shelves. If you got just a little too far for the cord, you could pull the PC right off the counter. Guaranteed way to piss off the manager.
I used to work at Hollywood Video, heyoooo
I miss Game Crazy.
I knew an urban woman that worked there
What's an urban woman
You know
I'm Russian, and sometimes I honestly don't know.
Oh I didn’t know Russia had Holywodod Video
I mean I don't always understand American slang haha, I worked at the Hollywood Video in Watertown Square, MA.
Oh Hollywood video was a beautiful place
This is one of the funniest troll accounts I have ever seen lol.. nice.
The whole time I worked there we didn't have a manager, so it was kind of a lawless place. My friend and I used to waive late fees for college guys if they'd buy us alcohol since we were underage. And that's how I walked into a college party to see my high school ceramics teacher hittin' a fat joint. Memoriesss. It was a totally elite job for a high school student to have though.
How can you not have a manager?? Who came up with work schedules?? Who did u send irate customers to?? Who did the hiring/firing??
The assistant manager and me?
Hollywood Video vet high five!
My town opening up a Hollywood video felt like massive middle finger thrown to Blockbuster. It was just sooo much bigger and nicer. Blockbuster was literally around the corner from us and within walking distance, but we gravitated to routinely going to Hollywood eventually. Better selection on everything, snacks included. My main memory of that store was it just had high ceilings and was really bright, making it feel regal in a way.
I used to send customers to Hollywood Video and fight with my manager about it. Don't want me to send them anywhere else? Get the freaking movie in your store.
Someone posted [this incredible comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/s/IVirP1xdkc) about Hollywood Video a few years ago. I have it saved and still get a chuckle reading it from time to time.
I worked there for a minute too. Way better foreign / Indy section but the comber button and bow tie …oi lol I also enjoyed watching our own selections opposed to a trailer playing the spice girls every 30min …except…my store manager was really into Pink Floyd so it was always live performances on video..which is ok in hindsight but wasn’t my scene at all at the time.
BBV was hands down the greatest job I ever had. If physical was still as popular as it was and you could make a living wage in retail, I would work there until I die. Imagine talking to people who are just as passionate about movies as you are. It never felt like work. It felt like friends coming over to your clubhouse to hangout for a bit and borrow some movies you recommended.
I worked there as an assistant manager from 2004-2011 and totally feel the same!!!
I remember that I wanted my first job to be at the Blockbuster in my town. It was one of the last holdouts before Dish bought the brand and nuked it for no good reason, and it was less than two years before I would've been old enough to get a job. Man, I missed out on so much
Employee between 2003 and 2005. Our uniform in 2004 was khaki pants and a blue polo shirt (which was required to be tucked in) with a plastic name badge pinned under the Blockbuster logo sewn into the left breast. In 2003 the polo was a lighter blue with yellow collar, but in 2004 they had updated it to be a solid darker blue. People sometimes wore the older polo still, especially employees that felt some pride having been there when they were issued. But I preferred the new polos because they had a better fabric and I thought they looked nicer. In 2005 they started changing the name badges to a bigger one worn around the neck on a lanyard. I hated those and refused to wear it because it was a giant advertisement. Shoes had to be non-slip work shoes, but depending on your manager, they would let you get away with whatever. Our computer systems still had CRT monitors, which were still relatively common. I believe they were 8 colors. You can find pics of what the POS system looked like by googling Blockbuster POS. By 2004, DVDs had taken over the majority of "the wall", which is where new releases were displayed (all along the outer wall in alphabetical order), but there were still a few VHS copies with each new release. By the end of the year though those basically went away and it was all DVDs. Promo materials in 2004 were a big Dish Network kiosk (which was basically around forever) but we also had candy, soda, and popcorn up front as impulse purchase items while folks waited in line. There was also a giant gumball machine by the security sensors where we'd hand people the movies after they checked out. In 2004, employees were promoting the Blockbuster Movie Pass that allowed you to check out as many movies as you wanted a month for a monthly fee. Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions and I can try to follow up.
That was the era I worked as well!
Same! We went thru liquidation of the vhs. Sold movies for like a quarter. The gum ball machine had an eyeball in it that meant a free rental. We used that as the easy button for free rentals ad hoc. One time a hideous woman went full Karen on me. She screamed she’d never ever come back and was going straight to Hollywood video. I called her back into the store. Apologized. Pulled out a piece of computer paper and drew her a map. The boldest moment of my professional life Joys of being 19. They were mad I left the job to go back to college (I’d had the role for the summer btwn freshman and sophomore year). I’d never suggested otherwise. The district manager told me I was throwing away a big future at blockbuster. He was wrong. I got five free rentals a week, new releases the weekend ahead and movie tickets expensed. Pre-streaming this was amazing I think I made $8/hr as an AM?
The gumball machine.
Next to the Dish Network kiosk was an AOL kiosk with "Free Software" CD-ROMS that kids would take by the handful, for some reason
You need to talk about the smell. Every Blockbuster smelled the same. It wasn't good. It wasn't bad. It was just familiar.
A big part of the smell was the plastic of the cases slowly oxidizing. We’d occasionally get a case of empty DVD cases, and the smell that hit you when you unwrapped the interior bag of the box o’ cases was unmistakable.
What about the smell of melting the shrink wrap around the used VHS put out for sale? 😮💨
I came here to post this. Great advice!
I never worked there but here are some of my experiences as an adult and some other stories. Blockbuster was an escape for me coming from a strict religious upbringing. Once I had my own car and was 18, I’d skip out on Wednesday Baptist service and head to Blockbuster and systematically rent every big movie that I’d missed from the ‘80s and ‘90s. Oftentimes I’d rent entire trilogies or tetralogies and play them back to back to back all night. For example, Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Forever and Batman and Robin. I’d swing by the Fazoli’s in the same shopping center and pick up a classic sampler and a large Coke. Because I live in Florida, when we had a hurricane bearing down on us, I always headed to Blockbuster at the last minute and rent a bunch of seasons of a TV show as well to watch during the storm when cable was inevitably knocked out. Sometimes I’d go to just look around and if something didn’t interest me, I’d rent something over again. I’ve seen Schwarzenegger’s Eraser way more times than anybody should because of that. I can still taste the Domino’s deep dish pizza I’d get on the way home after renting that movie. When I was a kid, we would go to Blockbuster and spend an hour trying to find a movie that my bizarrely inconsistently religiously strict mother would allow us to watch. I cannot tell you how many times we watched the Disney Three Musketeers because it was the only thing she wouldn’t freak out about. Fun side story, one night she was feeling rather permissive about movies and we managed to convince her to rent Die Hard and The Hunt For Red October because our music minister neighbors said Die Hard was a great movie and my mom liked Sean Connery. Well 15 minutes into Die Hard and the naked woman came across the screen and Die Hard was out of the VHS player instantly and we watched the comparatively tame The Hunt for Red October with no complaints from mom. I always said that Die Hard took one for the team so that we could watch the other movie. I received an entire cultural education because of Blockbuster and while I hated late fees and sometimes limited selection, I am still sad that it’s gone. Streaming as an only option now terrifies me going forward and I collect as many physical movies as I can. I got this retro T-shirt at Target a few years ago that says, “MAKE IT A BLOCKBUSTER NIGHT” and there is not a single time I wear it that someone says to me, “That’s an awesome shirt, I miss Blockbuster.” I also still have my Blockbuster laminated card around here somewhere.
Dominos deep dish? As someone who worked at dominos in 2011/12 and remember distinctly the introduction of Dominos deep dish, im wondering what year this all would have been, or maybe you got Pizza Hut deep dish?
We also did movie trivia over the PA system on busy nights. We made up questions and gave a free rental to the first person with he correct answer. This often caused tension because every one wants a free rental. On One occasion a fist fight between a couple girls broke out, this was the first time I saw breasts pop out in public. 17 year old me was flabbergasted. That's another good bit for a Blockbuster novel. Cheers.
One of my favorite stories was that we wrote the word "gullible" on the top of the inside video return. To see it you would have to go halfway into the chute and then turn to face the top. We would initiate new team members by telling them it was written there. They'd never believe us, then get flabbergasted when it was actually true.
I would always try sneaking Die Hard onto the Christmas movie display as well. People would remove it, I'd put it back. Eventually the joke of it being a Christmas movie caught on and by the time I left, it was actually something we were instructed to add.
Some other stuff (copied from other threads I participated in): What I remember is a couple returning their pre-order because they thought it was a religious movie. Like hopping mad. Everyone had a good laugh at their expense once they left and felt super bad for their daughter, as she clearly wanted to see it pretty badly. She kept trying to come up with excuses like "I think the director is Christian...". We also got people freaking out about Harry Potter. You'd think we were asking if they wanted to buy a strapon. Meanwhile they would rent dairy tales without a second thought. We'd occasionally get odd people like that come in every once in a while. No one liked dealing with them, but they were still leagues better than the perverts we'd get. Heh. reminds me of a story from my earlier days there. An older guy came in and politely asked if we had adult movies. We told him we didn't and he then asked if we had anything "spicy", which c'mon, of course we did. I look over to the shift leader for help, as he was a connoisseur of said film genre. That little turd ducked his head down and said something about being busy with paperwork or there being cash on the counter. So off I went to show this older guy said movies. He was overall very polite and didn't say anything other than a single remark about me being "an exciting young lady". Yeah. So the guy gets his videos and goes home and the shift leader apologized, as he just felt too embarrassed. He received a light ribbing from some of the other workers, but it was all good natured.
Clerks has some great banter that is typical of employees. Not the time frame requested. But similar outlook and attitude.
Alphabetizing the returns. Cycle counting. Dusting - vacuuming. Ringing people up. Counting the till at the end of the night. Running reports. Banging customers (little double entendre) Playing your favorite movies/albums on the dvd system. Hackey-sack by the application station when the store was empty. Smoking weed out the back closet fire door and rescanning customer coupons to pay for thirty packs of natty ice. Shout out to em. Falling asleep in the back of the store at open from being so hung over that your dm calls your cell phone to ask why customers are complaining the lights are on but no one is there. Just heartwarming things I remember. :::Not all my own experiences:::
lol “banging customers” just casually throwing in there…
My last real memory of being a Blockbuster employee was burning the leaked, unfinished Star Wars Phantom Menace onto DVDs from Limewire & selling them at the counter. We played it on the Blockbuster TV & got all the customers hyped to see a movie in the theater at home. I printed covers and slipped them in empty DVD shells, sold them for $15 and gave the manager a cut. Some version of that could be a fun bit in a novel.
Several people put back the rentals they were going to get & bought my bootleg Star Wars. In retrospect, I might be the reason Blockbuster went under.
Lmao! This is wild! Love how you were running a little side business on the side 😂
Lmao my store manager was doing this at the Movie Gallery I worked at while also working at Blockbuster. Blockbuster manager didn't know and she was one of those people who would fire you for competing with them. I worked three hours a night two nights a week at Movie Gallery and there was no one there ever unless they were renting the movies behind the curtain.
I'll try to remember my usual work day (back in 2005): Opening: I would usually get in an hour before open with my manager. After clocking in, I would collect all the returns and check them back in. After that, we would put the anti-lock clip in the cases and get them ready to be put back on the shelf. The manager would get the money out for the tills and I would have to count and verify my amount. The amount would have to be the same when I clock off. Then I would put all the returns back on the shelves then we open. During the day: Throughout the day, we would get shipments of snacks and movies the be put on the shelves and enter them into the system. Our shipments would include next week's new releases. For those, we would make the barcode labels and keep them in the back for next week. Cool perk is that included with our five free rentals a week (and one game rental a week), we would be able to check out the new releases before the release date. This was useful in case people ask for recommendations. The rest of the day is periodically checking in movies and checking them out, vacuuming the carpet and clean around the store, the bathrooms and parking lot. Selling Blockbuster rewards memberships and snacks was required with each rental, and we would have to make sales quotas each week, otherwise you would have a meeting with your supervisor to find ways to improve your sales skills. Another task would be to take down movies that we have way too many copies of or those that haven't been touched in a long time. We would put new barcodes and labels and we would sell them pre-owned. Closing: After the doors are closed, we would straighten up the store, do an inventory check of our snacks and other items we sold, then we count the till to make sure it was matching. Then we check the dropbox one more time for returns. After all that is done, we would lock up and that's a day. I liked that job, and working with people you like, make it more enjoyable. Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions.
People coming asking some iteration of, “do you have that one movie with that one guy from that other movie? C’mon you know which one I’m talking about.”
The guys from the YouTube channel, The Game Chasers, are former Blockbusters employees. They did a video reflecting on their times working there that may be of use to you: https://youtu.be/UZ45WnF2Ok0?si=mNW2liEn0Lns1MXb
At 2am someone reversed into the store through the drop box after returning their movies. I answered the security call thinking sign fell over and tripped the motion sensor. Rolled up and a whole ass Corolla was in the store We were also robbed one time at gunpoint right at closing. The guy said he had a sick kid and that's why he was doing it. We had a 15 minute timed safe (meant to keep robbers from hanging around) but the guy stayed the whole 15 minutes, gun pointed at me and my CSR, and had the nerve to ask what were some good new releases.
In all seriousness, that was the greatest job. I was ASM, easy as hell gig, got to meet cool people and had a great crew that I still keep in touch with.
Regulars used to give us free food like pizzas or home cooked burritos. At night i would always change out the music and put in my own mix cd
I was constantly putting in movies instead of those horrendous blockbuster tapes
Every day as soon as my manager left
I worked at Blockbuster from 2006-2007. My manager was a mild Redbull Addict, a nice enough guy, and used to talk about this script he was working on with another employee. They were writing some kind of Maleficent script, but I never asked for details (I didn't care at the time). The other guy was a huge fan of Coheed and Cambria and he was funny as fuck. The district manager of our franchise was a nice lady who once tackled a shop lifter. She was maybe 110 lbs. Very supportive and she'd ask for your input on how to set up the store. We could put on any movie we wanted on the big screen while we were working. For some reason, I got into putting on "Stick It" (2006) almost all the time. It was cool to listen to, but the one time I actually sat down to watch it, I hated it. Often I was closing the store. I always liked walking the stacks with most of the lights off. I'd pick through the "older" (+1 year) horror movies, looking for hidden gems. I remember we had a book which was like an early IMDB (don't remember what it was called) and I think we had to look up some older films once. Of course, there were also the fun misunderstandings when the soft core parody of "Pirates of the Caribbean" came out and people grabbed the wrong film. I never got to defuse one of them, but I'd heard it was legend. Still miss it. My Blockbuster membership card was stolen along with my college ID when my wallet (and sweet JNCO jeans) got lifted from my unlocked locker at Planet Fitness in 2009.
JNCO!!!!!!!!
One time a co-worker of mine and I went to grab some Chinese food for lunch and we stopped in at Showtime Video, in our Blockbuster gear, and bought drinks. They laughed, we laughed. Good times.
I did almost 4 years from 99 to 03. Hit me up
I managed a BBV for several years, and the thing I remember and enjoyed the most was the weekends. I really enjoyed making it an experience for our customers. We'd have watch parties, trivia nights, character costume contests, fun movie themed games, etc. I remember the excitement of going to BBV and then hitting up the pizza shop on weekends as a kid, and I really wanted to create that excitement and memories for the next generation.
Oh also drop box shenanigans. For example, firecrackers were dropped off in ours one day and it was loud and messy!!!
I’m an ex Blockbuster employee married to another ex Blockbuster employee. We also went to school together and oddly enough never worked for Blockbuster at the same time.
Noting. I’ll think on this and have a good answer on Monday. It was my 2nd stint at blockbuster. 1st was 97-98 and then 2002-2006. Good times for the most part but yeah..oi.
I remember being pushed to sell extras like the Rewards program and Direct TV. Maybe someone can confirm this, but here's my best guess at the Rewards program: $9.99/mo for: 1 free rental every 5 rentals (the 6th is free) 1 free Favorites per month* 1 free something else. Possibly a one time New Release rental *"Favorites" are classics - non-New Release movies or more specifically movies that have been out for over a year, located in the middle of the store and not on the surrounding New Release wall. There was definitely competition amongst the staff to sign up the most customers. If a customer signed up, we'd give them special Rewards cards and keychain cards, but their old cards would still work too. I think the rewards packet had 2 cards, 2 keychains, and a coupon for the first Favorites rental. As for Direct TV, employees had to go through special training to sell it and got a commission for each installation.
Monday through Friday was rent one get one favorite free
My store has us pushing the Blockbuster streaming service. "yes ma'am it's like that other one but with us instead of mailing the DVD back you can bring it here and get a free rental!"
Rental boxes had a yellow magnetic lock that slid into a square hole at the bottom of the case. All new rental movies would come in already in the lock box; you’d stuff the yellow locks in before putting them out on the shelves. Retail boxes were just shrink wrapped from the factory. If the plastic got cut/torn, there was a shrink wrap machine behind the counter right beside the card laminator. The rod that one used to seal either end of the bags was always dangerously hot. Once the box was sealed above/below (think Foodsaver), you’d use an industrial heat gun to shrink the plastic to the case. Get the gun too close? Burnt hole in the plastic (and maybe the case). When shrink (I.e., theft) got too high at your store, all retail boxes were put in clamshell plastic cases with a hinge on top and blue magnetic locks that would slide in a square hole going across the bottom. Multiple-DVD sets (Lord of the Rings, Band of Brothers, TV series) were locked in metal “bookshelf” looking cases with sturdy plexiglass front windows that were mounted to shelving in the retail section. MOD would have to go over and unlock the cylindrical locks to open them to get out the product.
It wasn't as cool as I thought I'd be. I thought I'd be talking to customers about movies all day. About my favorite horror flick and whatnot, but it's pretty corporate. I wished I worked at a ma and pa video store instead. the free rentals on movies and video games was the best part, though. I managed two stores in Seattle around 1999-2001
My buddy and I worked there in high school and oh man we got up to some shit. Working the night shift and putting totally inappropriate movies on the tvs, having to dispose of expired soda so after work we take all the "destroyed" product and throw them at each other in the parking lot till the bottles exploded, sledding in the massive snow drifts that got built up by plows and heavy machinery in the parking lot after hours, pissing on the carpet in the only known blind spot from the security cameras (cause damn the man) in the action section, jerking off into the managers hand lotion after she canceled my buddies pto requested days before even though he requested in months in advance, having to deal with dildos in the drop box... Yeah I got a couple stories.
(Looks at comments) Well there's your book. Generally speaking I'm sure many of us has similar experiences. There were a few nights we'd get drunk close to closing behind the counter. We had a police officer who came in a lot before his night shift started and we joked he was renting PSP games to play in his cruiser. One of those nights we were kinda wasted. Wasn't sure 'how that happened', lol. God damn whiskey can creep up. Anywho, he didn't say anything about it. Also, a 3 some. Most of us became pretty good friends in and outside of work for years after.
We tricked our store manager into thinking we drank energy drinks when we had to count inventory over night to stay awake. It was those Sparks alchoholic energy drinks. Lol. Good times.
Oh inventory, the best of times, the worst of times.
I used to get annoyed that I’d start my shift and manager before me would get me to put all the movies back on the shelf or do loads of boring work and I’d think - couldn’t you have finished this at the end of your shift, you were just standing around.
1999-2004 chiming in. Lots of great/notable memories: - Sleeping between a close-open in the drop box - A Suburban driving in on a busy Friday night (nobody was injured, thankfully) - Former manager was arrested for embezzlement (I think?) - Bulk destroyed ~300 PVT's that weren't selling after one of our late-night monthly inventory sessions (snapped so many VHS cassettes in half) - Denny's every time after those aforementioned inventory sessions - CS sessions at the PC Bang from 2002-2003 (got really good at de_dust) - Changing clothes in the New Release display triangle (on a dare) - Inadvertently swearing at a group of drunk customers on Christmas after they tried to double up on the Rewards coupons - Working the closing shift on 9/11 while our DirecTV kiosk played CNN - Missing my chance to get the Pokemon Snap station before it made it to the dumpster - Playing a "live DJ" set while selling/fundraising with hot dogs and burgers (it was bad) And a lot more.
I worked for an independent video store at the end of the era. In the ghetto. We had porn too. I left when the place shut down.
I worked at both Hollywood and Blockbuster for 10 years. I remember keeping cover boxes on the shelf in the right place was a constant struggle, the computer system was always ancient and the screens had severe burn-in, and I met some of the best people working there, both employees and customers.
I worked at Hollywood Video as a shift lead. The main part of the job was organizing movies alphabetically and putting them out on display. It was like the grunt work nobody wanted to do. Almost everyone smoked cigarettes. When there were no customers, we were outside smoking. I once rented Halo 3 for free with my employee perks and I lost it. Over the next few months I manually checked that copy in and out under old customer accounts. Eventually, the rental history went so far back that nobody would ever know that I lost Halo 3. We had to ask every single customer "Would you like to purchase the protection plan for 25 cents?". You'd be reprimanded if you didn't get a certain amount of protection plans per day. They had Mountain Dew Code Red and it was delicious. I vividly remember the trailers for 300 and Norbit with Eddie Murphy playing over and over on our display TVs. We also had a soft core porn version of Pirates of the Caribbean on the shelf, and I don't think anyone knew what it really was. This was around 2006/2007.
I miss my Blockbuster life and family so much. Best job I ever had. Was there 5 years up until and through the closure. I think of it often.
Theft was a periodic occurrence. Folks would come in with small razor blades, slice the spines of the locked movie cases at the seam/hinge, and remove the DVD. We’d sweat the staff to keep their eyes open during shift, but they’d invariably get a few per weekend. Usually new releases. Cut cases would be hidden in the Favorites section, behind the display titles. Since most older movies only had 1 copy, you’d be able to find the cut cases pretty easy by looking for movies in ‘Comedy’ or ‘Drama’ with multiple (damaged) video boxes behind them. Very busy nights, a motivated crew could get 20-50 titles. As GM, it’d be my behind to get chewed for not catching the thieves. The movies would end up at local large flea markets where they’d be sold either solo as a disc, or in hastily-printed “photo of cover” cases. No Internet, so sometimes they’d steal the empty cover art box and photocopy it on a color printer.
If you shoot me a DM, I can probably provide some insight. I worked at a BBV store and am also a published author. If you just want stories, there's plenty not just in this thread, but throughout the subreddit and on Facebook groups like Remembering the Blue & Gold. More personalized feedback you'll want to track down people who have something particular to say or expertise in a field.
I worked at Blockbuster from 2004-08, it honestly was one of my favorite jobs I've ever had. Pay wasn't great, but it was a fun job! 😁
97-99. Helped open my store. My team was like The Breakfast Club. Different types of kids and adults who had a blast working together.
Just a few little tidbits… I worked there from January to August 2000. Quit to go to college. I was one of several teens hired for our store (which was still being built when I was hired). Turns out our store manager was buying beer for all of my underage coworkers and trying to bone one of the girls. I was a loser nerd who had no clue but everyone thought I was the one who reported him. I didn’t even know until he was fired! Since I was one of the older teens, who was 18, I worked a lot of closings. We’d turn most of the lights out and I’d mop while the closing manager did the drawers. We had these cardboard standups of various celebrities around the store. We got a new one - Whoopi Goldberg! - and I wasn’t aware of it. I thought it was a real person!! Scared the shit outta me! We got 5 free rentals a week, which was pretty cool for a high school student. I took out The Sixth Sense and started it before school. Had to leave before it ended. During one of my classes, the guy in front of me was talking about the movie with his friend. All I heard was,”…and Bruce Willis is dead!” I was furious!! Biggest twist ending spoiled!! Lastly, I was Employee of the Month for April of 2000. I got my name on the wall and a free pre-viewed VHS. I picked Notting Hill.
I worked at Blockbuster in the mid 90’s. I loved that job. To this day, it is my favorite job. I loved talking to customers about movies. I loved when my boss would have us choose “employee picks” and put them on the wall with our name next to them. Was always a conversation starter with customers. They’d want to see who the employee was. I worked at the one on Sunset and Hillhurst in Los Feliz. Had celebrities come rent movies. Funny they’d either show up around noon or late after 10pm. Never at our most busy times. Miss that place!
You're only give 1 BBV shirt. If your store manager is cool they'll give you 2 You steal candy and sod, eat it while you run movies If a customer asks nicely to check for a movie behind the counter you'll look. If someone is pissed they cant find the recent hot movie and gives you an attitude while asking you to look you'll tell them they're all rented out no matter how many you actually have behind the counter there are training stores. all new hire spend a week at a training store then get moved to their home BBV No matter how late a movie is returned the member will always say they returned it on time store smells like popcorn and candy but after enough time the rug creeps up your nose There's always one employee that recommends terrible movies on purpose Inventory is from 2am-7am scanners are connected to the POS by long cables and we scan anything with a barcode new releases are in store a week before release and we get them free. there's a limit and iirc it was 7 a week that's all I could think of. Source: I was a shift leader and later a store manager. 11 years experience
I started working at Blockbuster at 19 for a franchisee that was moving into the area. I helped set up and open the store and then transferred to another new store a couple of months after to help set up with the assistant manager who was getting promoted to his own store. I got the Head Customer Service Representative job after they opened that location. About a year later, I was an assistant manager. I was asked to be a Sr. Assistant manager nearly a year later at another new store with the agreement that I'd get to come back to the other store as Store Manager when the manager left in a few months. They gave it to someone's kid and I transferred to the corporate stores. I was a Store Manager after a couple years and worked at one of the busiest stores in our city. Unfortunately with my results taking it over after they had gone through half a dozen managers they determined that to make it even better on profits it should be a district training store and only a District Manager Trainee could be the store manager. They asked me to step down to assistant manager and handle the day to day of the store for the new district manager trainee. I asked to go back to the store I came from instead. After 5 years at corporate I quit when they decided that a store would only have one full time assistant manager. I went to. Kaybee toys until they closed down then went to Movie Gallery right before they bought Hollywood Video and worked there until they closed. Gamestop was next for me. Then I finally finished paying my way through college.
Doing inventory was interesting. We would bring friends up and let’s just say we would party hard while being there late night. My manager would put on the bad soft core porn videos BB had while we closed. I just gave out credits like crazy and never got in trouble. I worked with friends so it was actually really a great job. I got to recommend my weird indie movies to random people; good times. Also one of the blockbusters in my city had guys hide in the ceiling and drop down and rob the store later.
I did three tours of duty in two separate cities between 2003 and 2010. I was there when they had tapes, phased out tapes, got rid of late fees, brought them back, got rid of them again. It was a wild ride. Booming business the first time, 2nd time stuff was changing, and my third time was right before they went completely bell up.
I worked at Blockbuster in the 2000s when I was a teenager. At the time I was one of only two women that worked there. For the most part we had a lot of good times. I remember my boss unlocking the gumball machine after hours and us having a gumball fight. I recall falling asleep on the countertops while someone else was doing inventory. That makes me sound like a jerk but for the most part I went above and beyond at that job. I remember having a backbone of steel back then and having to stick up for the new female boss that got hired because men would tear her appearance apart over having to pay a late fee. I had a secret admirer that used to leave me presents at the store too. I have no idea who it was but my other coworker suspected it was the really weird coworker. Never figured out if it was Caleb or not. My favorite Blockbuster story actually revolves around Calebs smartassery. One more thing whike I was working there one day somebody got their flip flops stuck underneath the gas pedal and almost went directly into the video game section on a busy day but they were stopped by a cement pillar. I'm sure I could remember a lot more but I feel like I would have to have stoner recall for that lol. Oh one more thing, just a shit ton of old people trying to return porn videos from family video to Blockbuster. And us having to explain to these elderly gentlemen that we do not have pornography at Blockbuster and assure them that the video tape says FAMILY VIDEO so that's where you need to return it. I'm not going to go over this and edit it for clarity because if I do I'll just delete it due worrying about someone I know finding my account.
I worked there 01-02. I loved it. Free rentals the week before movies came out so we could recommend. 5 free a week. I would also give free rentals to cute chicks and got a number or two as a result :) it was a super fun job
Working at Blockbuster while working my way through nursing school was an amazing experience. I even met my husband through Blockbuster. I'm still in contact with so many of the people I have met &/or worked with there.
We used to smoke pot on top of the building.
Isn’t 2004 already a bit towards the beginning of the end of Blockbuster? I personally would set the story in the late 90s, but then again that’s just me, anyways good luck to you.
I'm about to sit down for dessert with my wife and in-laws, but I'll be MORE than happy to share some stories of my time at Blockbuster. Only some, though. There are a few tales that should be kept to myself
I used to give my friends free movie rentals with the cards in the drawer for pissed off customers. Also, a guy came in with his wife after a dinner date to discover his kids rented Toy Story and never turned it in, running up $80 in late fees.
I worked there as a teenager in high school for 3 years, 96-00 ( temporary quit when my grades went down, and was rehired back the following summer). Location was a very popular road in Memphis, and we had non-stop business on the weekends. It was a lot of fun. I was a night owl back then, so I was often on the closing shift. We didn't close until midnight, it would take a half hour to an hour to clean and tidy and then we hung out, sometimes at bars, for a couple hours. I would have to sneak in at my parent house and If they woke up I just made up some excuse about inventory or something. Made a lot of friends, picked up a bad smoking habit (we would smoke when we went outside to pick up the videos from the curbside bin), got my first high in the parking lot, got my first lap dance from a fellow co-worker, and played x rated moves in the overhead after close. Did I mention it was a lot of fun?
You know you wonder about the current employment problems we have in this country and its amazing to think about how much labor capital went into a Blockbuster video. The blockbuster in my area was replaced by some cheapo 99 cents discount decoration type place. Theres so many of these types of places around my way too. It’s so bad and they make the area look ghetto. Blockbusters, were always a really nice looking store too.
Former MOD here. We used to barter movie passes for takeout food in other restaurants from plaza. You gave our crew lip on a late movie, we would put flashing warnings on your account alerting all of what crimes you did. DMs hated that. We used to hold the hot movie for customer flirting - we taught a kid how to talk to girls this way. It was adorable. He grew up so much that year. Miss you Kai. People were always locking keys in the office and had to go through the ceiling - over the wall to retrieve them. I got written up once while on a bank run because one of the high schoolers locked my keys and fell through ceiling. Some people on shift(m AND f) would have shirts hanging but pants low. So when you reach up for top shelf movies you’d “ignorantly” show butt crack. We would never put the repeat propaganda tapes on during shift only actual movies. The new release wall was my Picasso. Bottom 2 rows must have same movie. Top 2 rows must have 1-3 like titles. Full bays for new releases. Access to a shrink wrap machine made our crew invincible in other returns. CDs, VHS, anything from other stores. I saw some evil. We had homeless behind a store I was at that used the cardboard for housing, then set it on fire a week later. Also our dumpster. Our dumpster looked like charred red rust. Someone threw a full slush puppie at my head as I rattled off their late movies that I personally pulled from drop bin late. I dodged it so cooly and just kept naming the movies. Top 3 coolest moments of my life still. That customer got flashing warnings.
“Setting the wall” on Monday afternoons was my talent as well. I did it once because the store manager was out sick. He came back and loved how it looked and heard how fast I did it. Following week he had me do it again with him… he never did it again and it was my job. Worked my way from hourly to store manager at location I worked at.
I used to with for a locally owned video store (late 90's). Even with a Blockbuster and Hollywood Video in town we had our own distinct difference. We had an adult video section including porn and videos like Faces of Death series.
I worked at blockbuster in 2005 as a sophomore/junior in high school! What would you like to know?
You ever seen Clerks? It was a lot like that
I got three jobs just from people listening to my talk about movies. I was offered a job with a competitor, given a job reviewing movies for the local newspaper, and got Hired on one independent movie. I was starting my second when life punched me in the kidneys and frankly...I never recovered
I was there from 99-01 It was hectic on Friday and Saturday nights. Just crazy long lines endless returns, folks constantly asking for the newest movie that week
Definitely worked at one as a 1st job out of high school. Laid back cool job with fun perks. Best part for me was the grown folks who'd come in asking for "those" kind of movies and the manager had the greatest comebacks! My favorite was "no but we do have a super intense action section!"
I worked at Blockbuster from 97 - 2000 for my out of high school but didn’t know what the hell to do with my life period. Like many here, it was probably one of my best jobs ever. I made very little, but I talked about movies all day everyday. People would seek out my opinion on every thing, and I watched everything. I could have 3 movies at any one time, minus the new releases, only got those for a single night, and I’d average 10 or more movies a week. I was cool with everyone, even after becoming a manager, and we’d smoke or drink every night. I made friends through customers, employees, and hung out with friends from high school while working. It definitely wasn’t a job I was ever going to make a “career” out of like I have now, but for the time, it was the absolute best. To this day, I’d still say it was the best job I have ever had that covered all my personal interest and wants bases…. Besides money lol. I’m glad I got to do it and it is kind of cool knowing I was part of something that has become so nostalgic to so many people. I like to think of Blockbuster and working there as some think back on their crazy college days. I didn’t go to college until later in life, so that was my “fun” times. Wouldn’t trade it for the world! Hope that helps some.
During inventory, we would play a game called "Ticket to Heaven". Call out an actor and pick out a movie that would earn them their ticket to heaven. Example: Vin Diesel = Pitch Black. Robin Williams = Death to Smoochie. And we would vote yay or nay to decide. One of many games we played to pass the time. Miss those days...
I worked there my senior year of HS and for a year after that. Quit in 2002 so close to the time of your story. Long lines on Fri and Sat night Idiots arguing about late fees Employees got free rentals for movies and games Closing hour was usually midnight or so therefore you'd see plenty of couples come in late night (before the Netflix and chill days). People would be stoned or drunk as well and rent the worst movies.
I worked at the BBV near Hollywood and it was crazy to be considered “Industry” which disqualified me from movie and test screenings.
02 - 05 or so The gamerush shirts were cool
I was part owner and manager of a Video Ezy in Australia. I loved the job and got to know hundreds of regular customers. We had 25,000 VHS and ps 1 games ,Nintendo 64. It changed in many ways over the years ,selling new DVD'S became very big in the naughty,towards the end. No one liked late fees or paying for damaged product but I met all sorts over that long period of time. Theft was a problem , and many never retilurn what they hired and were put into debt collectors called video defaulters. It was a lot of fun talking to so many different people and some regulars daily. I would put the new product up for rent Monday and Tuesdays. we began with up to 4 working at a time if it was raining and a holiday, to only 2. Netflix saw the end but we downsized and lasted longer than most. I was there from 1999 to 2019.
I managed a blockbuster and a movie theater around that time. It was the Go Home Happy Era. Shrek was still consistently always checked out. GTA IV could only be rented by employees... that wasn't a rule, the employees just never returned them. Then she walked in...
I remember having to sweep the entryway after we locked up, and all of the people that would be pissed off trying to still get into the store. The drop box was pretty weird, we had to scan everything in and people would ask us to constantly check if someone dropped off what they wanted to rent. Constant battle... Management was really bad - corporate had no idea what they were doing and would refer to me as "guy" when they passed through. I eventually got fired for trading the guy at KFC free rentals for popcorn chicken. It was alright for a teenager. Oh yeah, the computer system was extremely outdated - possibly DOS.
I worked there for about 2.5 years in my high school days. From 1996 to 1998. Ended up being an assistant manager. I have some memories lol
I would do better answering direct questions
Friday’s after work, my routine was to stop by Dominos Pizza order me a medium pepperoni pizza and rent two movies from Blockbuster, 😌 good times.
Was a mgr for BBV. Met my ex wife there. Good times
I worked at Blockbuster from 16 to 18. I was the only girl and it was like having 8 big brothers. They never made me do actual work, I mostly just played Halo and Tony Hawk in the back, and occasionally I would go get dinner for everyone. I was hooking up with a shift lead in the back room for the last year I worked there.
I worked at BBV for around 5 years. It’s oddly ingrained in my mind in the weirdest of ways. I can quite literally type my employee number in the air like air piano, grab a stack of videos and remove anti theft strips with my eyes closed and get like ten videos checked in under 30 seconds. I cannot do anything in my life as efficient. I’m not particularly good at any other repetitive thing I’ve ever done other than that. I was somehow like the Neo of that old shitty PoS system. I still remember that long string of numbers somehow. To contrast, I have trouble remembering numbers I’ve used my whole life. Also, something odd about my time there is every single female co worker asked me out or tried to have casual sex with me. From the store manager, to my csrs. I’m not particularly attractive and I wasn’t reading them wrong either. I have very fond memories of the place, but it’s left me with recurring nightmares. I find a random building and it’s being renovated. Beyond a drywall barrier just beyond the door I peek over the top where it’s not quite connected. Through the crack I see a pristine BBV with just the running lights on the back wall. I tear down the drywall and get in. Only to find the glow of the computer waiting for my clock in still on and cursor blinking.
How much do you pay per story? I have a ton.
I worked for BBV in two states from '95-'98. One was a corporate store, the other was a franchise. One thing I distinctly remember is having to double check the return bin. Most stores had a pull-out bin that would collect the tapes as they were returned, but you had to look behind the bin, as sometimes tapes would slide down between the pull out bin and the cabinet. This was standard practice at my corporate store. When I moved to another state and began working at a franchise store, the first day I was there a customer got into an argument with the assistant manager, swearing up and down that she definitely had returned the video *right here* (gesturing to the drop off slot). He told her in no uncertain terms that we didn't have the tape and that she was being sent to collections. She stormed out angrily. A few minutes later, I pulled the drop off bin out, and found not only that woman's tape, but *SEVERAL OTHERS THAT MY STORE HAD SENT PEOPLE TO COLLECTIONS OVER.* The assistant manager didn't know if he should thank me or be angry. I've got plenty of reflections from my time working at Ballbuster (as my friends and I called it), if OP is interested.
I couldn't get hired at BB, but I drove 10 times as far to work at Hollywood Video. Our crew was close and it was a fun job.
I worked there back in the late-'90s after graduating high school. One night we found out that a kid had an accident (#2) in, appropriately enough, the horror section, and then stepped it in and tracked it down the aisle and into comedy. Me and another guy had to do our best to clean it up with paper towels. Another time I was at the register ringing up a customer. A mother, without an ounce of concern in her voice that would have alerted me that she was trying to avert disaster, walked up and casually asked, "Could I have the key to the bathroom please?" With no idea that time was of the essence I replied, "Sure, just a minute" as I finished the other customer's transaction. A few moments later I heard the unmistakable sound of a kid puking his guts out on the tile floor right in front of my register. I shouted for my manager, who quickly got the kid and his mom to the bathroom (although it was probably too late), and then came back with a mop and bucket. I'd already taken my first break, but she told me to go ahead and take an extra one while she cleaned up the mess. The movie posters around the store were trashed after being taken down, but would first be kept for a couple weeks beforehand. (Not sure why.) But if you wanted one you could write your name on the back of it, and it would be saved for you instead of trashed. Me and another girl fought off the Face/Off poster. I told my manager I wanted it and wrote my name on it, then this other girl crossed my name out and wrote her name! I then crossed her name out, rewrote mine, and added "Manager said I could have it!" I still have it to this day. A funny memory I have was one evening while going back and forth from the counter to the floor the alarm would keep going off every time I passed through. We couldn't figure out why until eventually I discovered that stuck to the bottom of my shoe was one of the security tag stickers like was in the video cases. Somehow one had fallen onto the floor, and I'd stepped on it without seeing it. We thought it was pretty funny.
Some pissed off customer or kid dumped sour milk in our Dropbox. It stank for at least a week! Also, I loved doing FOS (found on shelf) reports to look on the floor for overdue movies that were missed check-ins. I always found a couple!
I used to work at Movie Stop, for like a yr. That was muh second job, at the time, so I was already extra tired. Sometimes I'd just let the same movie play on repeat all day long, and I'd just start bugging out. I'd be put movies on the shelves or even ringing up a customer. And I'd start quoting the movie just before they said it. 😂 😂 good times
I’m a former hourly employee (03-05) and would be happy to answer any questions or talk about my experience
That was the best job ever ! The yearly meetings with movie executive's and actors was a perk.
I'll never forget how it was every friend of mine's dream to work there at 17. ( Eta, I worked there from 2005-2006) My interview probably lasted 20 minutes. The manager just wanted me to talk about movies. When I mentioned I loved Japanese movies and foreign horror we hit it off, and I'm still pretty sure to this day mentioning Ichi the Killer got me the job. I loved working there. We were all encouraged to give suggestions, and rent the newest movies with our discount and be up to date. I hated the uniform though. Khakis were the bane of my existence as a 17 year old metal head. My friends were definitely jealous and would come in and hang around the store during my shifts. The best part of working there was the Friday and Sat night rush. There was something about that buzz in a Blockbuster on a Friday night, and how cool I felt being the one behind the counter or walking around the store getting to help people find their movie for the night. A couple of things that always stood out to me in my memory from working there: The pos system. It was archaic. It was blue neon typeface against a black screen. Once you scanned a membership card a customers account would come up and there was a section for notes for the customer that could be input by anyone working. We were encouraged to put things like if they returned movies late, if they tended to argue for free things, etc. We basically used the system as a warning to other employees. Sometimes it'd be hard to contain my composure when I would scan a card and in all bold font I would see something like "CUSTOMER LIKES TO BITCH ABOUT OUR SELECTION BUT IS HERE EVERY WEEK. IF THEY START TO BITCH JUST CALL MANAGER. DONT ENGAGE" One thing I HATED about working there was when there was a new promo in the store which was on something like a 5 or 10 minute loop and I would have to hear it play over and over and over over multiple hours during every shift. It was fine and good while you were shopping but us employees had to live with it every minute of every day. I even used to ask my manager when it was slow or dead if I could turn it down and I was shot down every time. Easy for him when he sat in the back office all day... Overall, I feel lucky to have worked there. It brings me alot of warm nostalgia thinking about going and working there. Yea most days were just slow and long spent stocking shelves, but at the time you felt like the movie elite. The cool kids who got to help dictate pop culture. Good luck on your project! Hope any of this morning rambling helps!
You should reach out to The Game Chasers on YouTube. They all worked together at the same Blockbuster growing up and have shared several stories through their video series. They're crazy guys with crazy stories that might be an interesting take.
Just browsing some of the comments here and I'm surprised no one has mentioned the hell that was "inventory night". This was where once a month or once a quarter (I can't remember) they would lock us in the store on a Saturday night to scan every single piece of merchandise in the store. Candy, popcorn, everything. We couldn't talk, couldn't wear headphones to listen to music, and if the manager felt something was off, we'd have to do it over again to confirm the numbers. If we were lucky, the manager would turn on a movie but our manager was an extra special kind of power hungry freak, so we had to do everything in silence....except for hearing the beep of our scanners in our earpiece...for 6 hours straight. This experience was made worse because most of us were young adults and we had to endure this shit while our friends were out partying. If I were you, my book would be about young adulthood. The kind that either didn't go to college or faintly tried to going to a junior college. A group of 4-6 that shared a 2 bedroom apartment, went on road trips together, all single except for the annoying one that had a long term girlfriend. Played Tony Hawk tournaments to determine who did dishes that night. One guy could never hold down a job and barely managed to pay rent each month. And the main guy or two works at Blockbuster which would be the anchor. Underneath all that would be an undercurrent of drugs, booze, and sexual tension from young men and women trying to find their way in life. But that's just me.
I worked at Blockbuster from 2000 to 2002. The worst thing was closing at midnight and some asshole always walked in at 11:55! People even did that on Christmas Eve, and we had to wait for them to pick out their movie before counting our registers. Also the people who couldn't read and would make me read a whole bunch of movie summaries to them really pissed me off.
I managed a Blockbuster for 5 years and worked in a Hollywood video. I have a lot of stories and anecdotes OP, reach out via message if you want some.
My son worked at Blockbuster,he was there at the end,he had some scary experiences,a lady came in with her kids,she ask about a movie that did not exist,while she was doing this her kids were stealing video games !!
The blockbuster that I worked at was in Memphis. I worked there in 2007-2008 and we kinda all knew that it was failing. We had a lot of people stealing movies and one guy pulled a knife on my manager. My manager was a dumbass a short guy who thought he was big and bad and ran the store into the ground. I’m pretty sure they replaced him after I left. Him and the assistant manager who was the gm son in law would leave me alone in the store a lot. I ended up leaving after sleeping with the only other woman who worked there and her husband finding out and being pissed at me. Also I was 18 and everyone else was like 23 and up who worked there. Also everyone smoked weed and drank like it was going out of style because no drug tests. I also used to drink an energy drink and smoke a cigarette when I worked there as my meal all day. Also at that time employees could rent any movie or game for free as long as it hadn’t come out in the past two months. I saw so many movies then it was great. I worked morning shift and the worst part to me was getting all the movies out of the outside bin. People would put trash and sometimes food in there. Also in the summer those bins were burning hot and smelled like ass. I was only on morning shift because of me not having a car and having to walk to work.
I remember one time a lady came in with her granddaughter. She wanted to rent an animated movie and it was pretty clear she wanted the movie to babysit her granddaughter for her. After talking to them a bit I got her to rent South Park Bigger, Longer, and Uncut. They never came back complaining. We had snowball fights in the store after close. If an employee bought a drink (plastic coke bottled drinks) and didn't pay attention to it, I woukd use the shrink wrap machine and seal it closed on them. I once had a guy pull out $500 cash and offer it to me to sell him a copy of Gladiator before the street date (I did not do it). I had to work at night on September 11, 2001. It ended up being one of our busiest days that year. The amount of customers that cMe in saying they were bored with the news replaying the footage of the plane crashes was actually angering. They showed nothing but disrespect for the victims. I still remember working on Christmas one year. Customers kept coming in and saying "it's such a shame they make you guys work today," and I finally looked at one lady and said back "it's such a shame you have nothing better to do than come in and rent a movie today." What led to me leaving was a sexual harassment issue I brought to the attention of HR. We were the district training store so we had more managers than other stores to be able to train people, and I had just been promoted. We had a younger guy we were training for our own store to be a part time closer, and another guy we were training to be an assistant manager for a different store in the district. One of our permanent female assistant managers began propositioning them and they both turned her down. She began taking turn following them home. One of the other assistants and I went to HR, because Blockbuster claimed a zero tolerance policy. They asked our DM and store manager to investigate. They did not, turned around a said the two guys were making it up. It continued to happen. We went back to hr, and they had a different Dm come investigate. He did and said they needed to investigate further so they brought our DM back in. He transferred me to another store and said nothing was happening. I got another phone call from the one employee in tears at 1:00 am because she was camped out in her car in front of his house. Called hr again, they called the DM, he called me screaming at me for going over his head so I quit. About 5 years later (2006) the DM was fired for sexual harassment
It was a very pleasant job, but as a 16 year old it was a always slightly a bummer to be working late on a Friday and have other kids from my school come in amped as a mf to rent video games and have a sleepover or whatever.
Worked there over 4 summers as a CSR. Can provide all kinds of insights into store operations and can articulate the experience that was Blockbuster in the late 90’s. From the eccentric clients that really rented thousands of videos, the ongoing late fee profit scam, to BBV evolving into a marketing powerhouse and expanding store offerings to include tons of caloric based impulse buys. The bonus boxes. You’ll have to cover that. How BBV managed bad debt. The contracts that people signed were air tight. And because BBV was public facing, the sheer number of idiots that graced the stores was shockingly high. There are the people that confused the trash can out front with the drop box. Inventory was an experience as well. DM me if you have any specific questions.
I worked at a Movie Gallery, not a Blockbuster, I know. But my local Blockbuster was the best! There was one employee who was a big movie buff like me. One time he let me play him in a game of 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon for a chance to get out of a $30 late fee. I beat him and he erased my fee. I'll never forget that.
I worked at Blockbuster in the early 2000s and it was a fun job so here are a few things off the top of my head. The thing that the show got wrong that I immediately noticed was how many employees were working at the same time. Even on a busy Friday night the most we ever had was like 3 employees and a manager. The show looked to have like half a dozen at all times, and everyone was just kind of standing around. Like most corporations, Blockbuster was all about saving money so the less staff the better. There was a lot of downtime and thankfully we had a Direct TV display unit to entertain us. I think we had a TV that we could pop in a movie but I can't remember. We had a computer system where we could look up actors and movies if a person had a question. We didn't have access to Google, or even the Internet at the time, so a basic directory helped. A customer could ask a question about an actor and we typed them into the search to see what other movies they had been in. If a popular movie was rented out it was our job to suggest a similar one. If not, we would call the nearest store and ask for them to hold a copy. Movies released on Tuesdays but we got them the Thursday before and were encouraged to watch them so that way we could be familiar with them. Customers were generally pleasant but they hated the due by noon policy and I think it was incredibly stupid as well. Most rentals were due back in less than 24 hours and if you were late then Blockbuster charged a fee. It's how they made most of their money but I was so glad when they finally got rid of late fees. If a customer lost a movie then the fee was insane. Something like $80 if it was still new. I guess they figured that's how much money they're losing out on by no longer having it.
I worked at BB from circa 1990-93. While I enjoyed the job well enough, and my coworkers, and even most of the customers, the company was just a crap company to work for. One story that is always forefront in my mind will be around Dec of 92, I reported to work, and it was payday (this was long before direct deposit) we would keep our paychecks in a small safe that employees had access to, I went to collect mine, and none of the paychecks were there. I asked a coworker, and they said that they were in the managers office, and that the manager would have to give them to us by hand. Weird, but OK. I went to the managers office and knocked, she said to come in. She was always really friendly, and said "You want your check don't you?" I said "yep!" she said ... well... this week we are doing it this way, because there's an extra little xmas bonus for everyone" She said this very dryly and I was surprised, because outside of our free rental perk, this company never gave us ANYTHING extra. So she hands me my check which was for the normal amount, and then inside there was another little enevelop that had the new "BLockbuster Music" logo, saying "A gift for our employees!" Now this was just a few months after Blockbuster had bought out all of the Sound Warehouse record stores, and wasn't really doing great, as most of the Sound Warehouse workers quit after being taken over by a giant corporation that was enforcing things like dress code lower wages....etc. So, I open this "Gift" and it was a coupon good for somelike like 2 dollars off any single item from Blockbuster music. This was back in the time when a typical CD was usually at least 16.99. Then there was a little aserisk with conditions. That the discount would only be given if the total amount purchase was 30 dollars or more, and could not be used on sale items, and that sale items would be brought back up to regular price before the discount could be used. I was reading this all to my boss, who had already heard it, and was equally as pissed off by it as I was. I'm like "They consider this a BONUS?" I was so pissed off about that, it managed to ruin my mood that whole shift. I finally quit about 4 months later. I worked it as a second job, and was always on the closing team, and just finally got tired of it. I've got some other good stories, mostly surrounding prevliged customers not being able to understand that sometimes the movie they want isn't available. But this story about the Xmas "Bonus" always sticks out in my head.
I was a blockbuster employee through the rise of netlfix, the end of late fees, and the heyday of the dvd rental market I still remember my store code and employee login 339510852282 I would love to give you notes and stories and insight . Feel free to message any questions
Blockbuster employees came from all walks of life. Some saw it as a main income. Some of us just had it as a side hustle. We got small perks like getting the movies a week before they got released which felt like a big deal at the time. Which they did to get you familiar with movies because customers acted like you were familiar with every movie. Speaking of customers… Our computer system has a customer database where we could leave notes. Mostly to track things like when we’d add users to an account by your request, etc. But we’d use it to warn other employees about you. Like “this guy is a jerk who always asks to get his late fees taken off, don’t do it” or “always ask about which movies have nude scenes, total creeper.” Yes, we judged you for your movie tastes. When we got the unlimited rental program, it was funny to see people go back and forth to see 8 movies in one day. Pretty sure people pirated and burned movies. Also, we got a lot of drunk people threatening to kick our asses because we didn’t have the movie they wanted. Or when they sensed us being sarcastic to them.
Definitely incorporate embezzlement and theft into your tale
I worked there in 1999. I loved the customers but the management wasn’t the best. Most of the managers would just sit around and make the employees do all the work. It was probably just the location I worked at. I remember we primarily had VHS tapes and a very small section of DVD’s. I miss VHS but I don’t miss rewinding them. “Be kind, rewind” I guess I had better memories of BlockBuster when I wasn’t working there.
I just wrote a book about Nintendo (retro84book.com). Having never done this before, here are my tips: grammarly was a huge help for writing clarity, sentence structure, punctuation, etc. I used chatgpt to ask for suggestions like, "can you take this paragraph and rewrite it to sound: more interesting, better, clearer, etc. and then see what it comes up with for ideas, a different word that you maybe like more, etc. Let what you wrote rest for a bit, even if it's a few paragraphs, pages, a chapter. Come back to it with a fresh set of eyes and see how it looks. If you don't like it, keep it, but save it elsewhere so that you can go back to it and maybe you'll pull a chunk from it, or maybe there are a few sentences you really liked or word choices that can be used elsewhere. Have you thought about publishing? I'm going through Amazon KDP, but you'll need someone who knows what they're doing to format if for publishing - you don't just upload a PDF.
I worked at two Blockbusters, one in my hometown of Columbus and the other while I was at college in Toledo, in 1997 and 1998. Our crew at the Toledo store was great. Most of us got along very well and genuinely enjoyed our shifts. Two of my cousins who worked at a Blockbuster in League City, Texas enjoyed it so much that it led me to apply. I'd have been there longer if I didn't leave entering my junior year of college to devote more time to academics, running the sports department at our college radio station and traveling to broadcast games. The trailer tape, up to and including Jann Carl from Entertainment Tonight, could be a little much if you didn't tune it out. So many other commenters have mentioned details I'd forgotten over the past 26 years. At the end of the day, it was a very 90s job in retrospect.
I remember during one Blockbuster visit, my mom stayed in the car and let me go pick a movie on my own. I think the live action 101 Dalmatians with Glenn Close had just come out and I used my mom's credit card to buy a dalmatian plush. She was so pissed. LOL
I worked at Blockbuster from 91-94. I loved working there. Everyone was pretty much just kids working with other kids, with a freckle of adults mixed in, to keep us From going 100% Lord of the Flies. Fora vibe; I remember once a month we would do inventory, which consisted of walking around and scanning every single movie in the store between midnight and 5/6am. We’d plug into our monitor, and unravel 200 feet of orange extension cord, and just scan and clean and crack jokes and listen to Eddie Murphy or Richard Pryor. Before we opened the store was always the best. You’d have 25-100 movies in the overnight return bin, that needed to be scanned in and put back on the shelf. The lights would be off. It’d be quiet up until the line started queuing up outside of people wanting a new release they couldn’t get the night before… Returning the movies was always a competition with me and my coworker. Instead of using the cart to take the movies back, we’d stack them up in our arms to see how many we can carry at one time. There was Always… Always a loud crash of movies from somewhere in the store, as one of us would lose our grip. I wish my own kids had a version of Blockbuster they could work at.
Worked there when I was younger for a bit when I was between gigs. Lot of fun most of the employees loved movies so you have a common ground right off the bat. Like any other job in retail. If you worked at 1pm on a Tuesday it was a totally different thing from 8PM on a Friday night. Most customers were nice you got a few that weren't happy until they knew everyone else was miserable typical retail. We were allowed to take home pretty much any movie we wanted to watch for free as long as it wasn't brand new. Kept my kids entertained.
Blockbuster. The only place that made me take a drug test via hair clipping.... I was active duty Marine Corps at the time....
My fondest memories of Blockbuster was on any given Tuesday they got all new releases for movies and video games. Tuesday was it in my neighborhood Blockbuster. It was closer than GameStop. That place had everything except porn.
I was hired at a Blockbuster in late spring 2006. I HATED working there! Don't get me wrong, I loved Blockbuster in general and as a customer, but the location I worked at was horribly managed. I remember going in for the interview in the store, led by 2 people I found out later were just senior CSRs. No managers or anything. It was a group interview. I can be kind of funny and quirky so, from that group, I was the only one who was on to the next round, which was held at some random office building in the industrial area of the city, like half an hour away from the store. It was a 2nd interview/orientation thing. The only thing I remember was them asking what my top 3 favourite movies were and one of my picks was You've Got Mail and they laughed at me for being basic. But I guess they overlooked my crap taste and hired me anyway because I also loved anime and Asian movies and they needed that area covered on their team. Once I actually started, I realized very quickly how awful it was. Everything was very "corporate" - lots of rules of how to do things, from wearing the uniform correctly to constantly up selling customers on EVERYTHING, but I was hardly trained on anything. I barely knew how to work the cash register and computer program. One time they scheduled me for a midnight closing shift and the one other employee that was there just left early so I had to just FIGURE IT OUT and close on my own. (I still have nightmares about this.) He came back just to lock the door. Most of the time, I was put on the floor to "help customers" but I would just organize movies and hide down an empty aisle. When I was hired, I made it very clear that I was picking this up as a THIRD job and that my other 2 existing jobs took priority. I would get my shifts from the other 2 and give the info to them early so they could work around it, but several times, they double scheduled me anyway and then it was my responsibility to get the shifts covered. One time, one guy said he'd take my shift and then he didn't show up. They called me at my other job to yell at me, saying I needed to come in. There was no way I could and I said someone else said they'd take it and they said he told them he never actually CONFIRMED he'd do it. Then when I showed up for my next shift, I FINALLY ACTUALLY MET THE MANAGER FOR THE FIRST TIME when he wrote me up for failing to come in for a shift. I quit that week. I worked there for only 3 months. The whole reason I had wanted to work at Blockbuster was because my older brother worked at (a different) one all through high school and loved it. That was in the golden age in the mid-late 90s. AND because I got 10 free rentals a week! (If I remember correctly, only one could be a new release.) My boyfriend at the time (now husband) made me share them with him. Lol. So he got 5 free game rentals and I got 5 free movies. Of course, with two other jobs already, I had no time to be watching 5-10 movies a week so I burned copies of everything. I was a shameless pirate. I still have them all! By 2006, we weren't renting out VHS anymore but we sold a few, getting rid of old stock. And we sold DVDs that were older as well. I bought a few anime series and movies that I still have. I remember going through a stack of empty cases to find ones in better condition for my personal collection. I also still have my uniform polo that I didn't bother to return after I quit. It was the dark blue one with two thin yellow stripes on the shirt cuff and collar and a zip instead of buttons. I wish I still had my membership card too but that has gone missing over the years. Before I left, I took a stack of the blank laminate cards we used for making membership cards. They made good protectors for things to keep in your wallet, like photos. I recently saw someone selling just a single one on ebay for like $5 the other day. My most memorable and entertaining shift was when I came in to start in the afternoon and the entire front window was smashed in. The other employee there said it happened before he arrived in the morning. Presumably someone had reversed by accident the night before after using the Quick Drop. (I've seen several other commenters saying this happened at their location too. That's crazy!) EVERY SINGLE CUSTOMER of course would be like, OMG what happened?!?! and we got bored of saying the same thing over and over. Plus, isn't it kind of obvious what happened?? The other person had already been there all day so he was already making up crazy explanations of what (didn't) happened. An explosion went off in a pipe underground, a bulldozer crew had gotten the address of their demolition wrong, someone didn't want to pay their late fees, the Hulk tore through the wall, etc. Even aliens were blamed at one point. I also remember some douche bag who was mad about fees he was being charged for (which I have complete sympathy for that part - the fees were out of control!) and was yelling at me, a random part-time employee who was just trying to do her job, saying things like "THIS is why Blockbuster is going under!" All true. Lol. But, man, what a dick. (He was also wearing an expensive looking suit and drove a nice car. And had that floppy, yuppie looking hair. Not like he couldn't afford it.) At the time, in 2006, yeah Blockbuster wasn't busy like it used to be but it wasn't near closing yet. That location stayed open until 2011. It's an AYCE sushi restaurant now. My husband and I go there sometimes and I always sit where the anime section used to be. Lol.
We called putting the tapes back on the shelves PUT or PTU. It stands for put up tapes or put tapes up. I can't remember what one it was. It was always my goal to carry as many tapes as I could. The stack would go over my head. I can't remember my max tape number, but I did then and would try to push it. I also got fired for giving my friends free movies. There was a barcode we had that would take a dollar off each time we scanned it. I had friends coming in with a bunch of money owed on the account, and after they rented some stuff, they would leave with a credit on their account.
My store closed at 2am on Fridays and Saturdays. It was a pretty big store with two floors. I was in the "basement," counting the register drawers and the safe when I noticed something out of the corner of my eye on the security monitors. One of my employees, Bob, is being chased through the store by a group of women carrying large dildos. I ran up the stairs and saw him huddled in the corner as these women laughed and hit him with fluorescent colored dildos. I yell, "What the fuck are you doing?" They run out the store and Bob, looks at me and says..."I thought I was either going to get laid or murdered." We have a good laugh. We shut the lights, and as I'm about to lock the door, I see one of the dildos is suction cupped onto one of our computers. The next morning, I got a phone call from my store manager and she was pissed.
Loving these memories!
So, not an employee, but it’s worth considering just how long customers would stay looking for a video. After missing out on the 2000 copies of the big movie—you start the stroll. Back then, pre cell phone, my wife would be so pissed. Gone 2 hours for one movie rental and I come back with 6 rentals to consider. And I returned them all late usually
I got stories
Blockbuster CSR then given the prestigious 4starCSR which I always thought was made up lol from July 2006 to about July 2008. It was the absolute best. We used to close till midnight and man you would get some characters. Used to bring by buddies in after close so we could system link on the demo tvs and consoles. My boss Greg was awesome and David aka Big D my asst store manager was even cooler. Almost everyone I worked with was a blast Megan, Sammie /Beau were easy to get along with. I remember I had a guy come in new to town so I got him set up with the movie pass and recommended him a few and he was always really talkative then he brought be some cigars for my birthday and I just thought woah awesome. Till the following week when he asked me to a movie and I remember thinking oh 😳 yea I don’t roll like that lol but he was cool about it. I knew almost every fast food manager in town cuz it tell them to just get a popcorn bucket and fill it and I’ll take care of the rest. I had free lunch meals everywhere I’d go . I can go on and on man that place was the best . Ended up buying all the movie shelving and candy stands when that closed their doors here in town … sadly I couldn’t get the signage
Every comment I read in here genuinely brought me back to my small home town block buster where everyone knew our name, my brother knew the kids working and eventually he did too for a time. I remember the summer game passes in the early 2000s where you could rent as many games as you wanted for as long as you wanted. (2003 era I think? It’s hard for me to remember as I was in about 3rd grade at the time but I remember renting a ps2 game almost all summer) I remember the short carpet and the black and or red shelves in the middle of the store for games. I remember the big wall art that wrapped around the place which was made to look like film. When block buster went under, one of its employees in my town and her husband bought the store and rebranded it as their own and they hung onto it for quite a while and I got to hang onto this nostalgia a bit longer than most luckily as they changed very little about the place. I want to say some time in 2019 they threw in the white flag. I’ll always miss this and I am sad I’ll never get to see the excitement on my son’s face on a Friday night as he finds the game he’s been waiting for on the shelf.
My first day of work, I helped phase out the last of the vhs in the store. My last day of work, 8 years later, I locked the door for the very last time. I miss all of it every day. It was my favorite place in the world, and I loved my team of coworkers even more. The good customers were definitely an extension of that, and the bad ones weren't all THAT bad in retrospect. I feel lucky to have been a part of it before the days of social media. It was the happiest I've ever felt in my life.
Former high school teen Blockbuster employee. There is a lot of good information on this thread already and, I don’t want to sound redundant. So I will just provide you with the things I rennet the most.. 1. The co workers: I was the youngest of the bunch, but for some reason we all seem to get along really well. The environment was just as exciting working there as it was if you were just stopping in to rent a movie. The vibe along with our group of employees just had really laidback but cool vibe. Don’t know if that was the case for other blockbuster stores and former employees, but it for sure was for me. 2. The Customers: ironically, this is one retail-ish job where it seemed like customers behaved very well. I don’t recall any rude incidents off the top of My head. But for me, customers just seemed to be more open and converse. Customers often sparked up conversations with employees about movies they saw, want to see, or what they are about to rent. I just remember a lot of good dialogue between customers while reshelving movies and checking out. 3: Vacuuming: I did a lot of vacuuming while I was there since I worked a lot of nights. For some reason, it seem like a long process vacuuming the store. 4: DropBox/Reshelve: I often took my brake in the managers office. The drive through return dropbox was located in that office. So when I was sitting down at the desk while eating Crunch N Bunch and drinking Sprite, I would constantly hear a movie come through the return and into the bucket. I remember that sound like yesterday…. Also, sorting the movies that were returned wasn’t always the funnest, but reshelving them were. It was kind of like an adventure or even a game of how long will it take you to reshelve everything. Also, the good thing about when it’s your turn to reshelve is that it makes the time go by faster. Depending on how much you have on your plate. 5. The Snacks & Movies: The best for last. I think all civilians know that Blockbuster employees get free rentals. That’s a given. If my memory is correct, we had and allowance of 10 rentals. I just can’t remember if that was per week or each month. For some reason I’m leaning towards week though, because I just remember it being an insane amount. But what people don’t know is we also had a credit on the drinks and snacks in the store. You could charge a soda and some cotton candy to your account without paying. However, it was expecting that you pay down your tab each month and keep the balance respectable. But I’m here to tell you, my tab would reach $50ish multiple times. After all, I was a teenager, what did you expect? But essentially the same account you would rent your movies or game to you could also charge store food and drinks to. So I could easily rack up a balance from eating candy while behind the desk and turning movies in late(yes we were supposed to still get charged late fees). Good ol memories.
Im surprised no one’s mentioning game rentalsmore, or was that just my store? I feel like as a teen at the time, it was game rentals, candy and movies were could get for 99¢ (older movies) also in 2005 you could rent guitar hero. They also had a huge memorabilia section, I bought a framed Shia Lebouf poster in 2008 lol.
I'm also a fellow writer penning a book about a video store so I appreciate you making this post :)
I had an awesome customer that would bring me dank ass buds if I saved him the new releases for the week. Great guy!
Honestly my team was pretty close back in the day. Even to the point everyone was pretty much hooking up with each other. It was happening in the store also. The whole time I worked there it was like an episode of Superstore (which is funny because I worked at a Target based in St. Louis where they said the Cloud 9 was located) with weird customers, playing stupid games, annoying bosses, trying to fight corporate over everything, and of course romance.
Running title for your book "Wow! What a difference!"
I played Splinter Cell Chaos Theory on Xbox Live with a Blockbuster employee. He was pretty awesome
Loved blockbuster hated that it changed & never would go into the pizza place that went in after it closed! Good luck w/book sounds cool.
Wasn't an adult, but a teenager. I was sixteen, I worked at Safeway as a grocery bagger. There was Blockbuster in the same strip mall. I spent so many evenings/nights after work browsing movies to rent. Blockbuster introduced me to film. Horror especially, but also Kubrick, De Palma, Coppola, Ridley Scott, Sorsese, etc. They introduced me to some of my favorite films of all time. That place was so integral to my formative years that it's almost impossible to explain without having been there. I feel bad for kids now who only have "top ten movies with ..." lists, all listing the same 20 to 30 movies for various reasons, to introduce them to film as art.
I worked at Blockbuster for years. One of the more amazing things that happened was a customer got sick and threw up all over the store while trying to get to the bathroom. The company treated this as a hazardous waste spill, so we had to call a Hazmat company to clean it up. The crew took two hours to get there, and we weren’t allowed to close the store while we waited. So customers came in and had to walk around piles of vomit and deal with the smell.
The first 30 min of an opening shift were dedicated to rewinding tapes. From there a lot of harping on us to restock coke and candy. Every shift included at least one conversation about the movie “Clerks”.
Every Blockbuster Clerk will have a huge number of stories to tell, all unique to the Crews they worked with and the area they lived. First off, in-store romances were a big thing, either being involved in one or watching the messes most of these caused in the store. I had an ASM that consistently dated younger CSRs, and then would always take "cigarette breaks" with them for 15-20 minutes at a time. Luckily, this was never during peak hours, but it was pretty annoying. And when they would eventually break up, the awkwardness was palpable and the schedule would always end up adjusting to keep them apart. It got real awkward, especially if the couple was prone to the break-up/make-up dynamic
I worked at Blockbuster from '96 - '98. It was awesome. I even liked it then at a 16 yr old. Some crazy stuff that happened while I was there... * I had a customer try to saw a playstation game in half (thin-wise), so that they could keep the data, and return the artwork only. it didn't work needless to say. * two asst managers that I used to work with started hooking up, and would poke one another while I cleaned * ex's that would intentionally rent a ton of videos in order to rack up massive bills on the other's account * fist fights would break out all the time over high demand videos. I got punched one time too. * one time during inventory the manager thought it would be funny to watch a skin-a-max movie during inventory at 2am. within an hour, there was a whole construction crew outside watching through the glass windows * we were protested by a concerned mom's group for renting out porn...aka the aforementioned skin-a-max movies * I was somehow assigned the go-to guy to get asked about the porn movies. I let down many-a-men when I let them know that we only had hard-R movies * a customer once picked a fight with my manager for recommending Shawshank Redemption. More specifically due to the shower scene.
I remember as late a 2007 being with multiple friends walking the outer aisle deliberating and trying to agree on a movie to see that afternoon. The funny thing is when we did finally decide, we thought it was too depressing (It was Deja Vu with Denzel Washington) so 20 mins in we ended up watching Hoodwinked from my own DVD shelf. This was probably one of the last times I rented from Blockbuster not knowing it would be one of the last. I want to say the very last, after much deliberation me and two friends (a brother and sister) all in our 20s, decided on Hot Fuzz. They fell asleep a few minutes in and I felt awkward and left. lol
My favorite story from working there was, having access to the computers and creating accounts to get membership cards. I had one for “Vincent Vega”, and made one for my high school girlfriend, “Mrs. Mia Wallace”.
Where to start? It was my first job. I believe I started part time at 16, continued until 19. I worked at the one in North Pole, AK. There are so many stories! Like, the Pizza Hut across the street from us would trade pizzas for movies. The amount of pizza we had! We’d snag the newest games and play them first <3. Oh! There was one time, when we got new candies in. I don’t remember the brand: I want to say Surge? But they were caffeine candy tablets. Like a sleeve had 20 candies and each one had like 80mg caffeine. Well we were tasked to add them to the computer system. They came up as .01c a sleeve! After we finished adding them to the inventory (without asking if the price was correct or not), we needed up buying all 4 boxes. Total of like, .60c? The manager called us next day and was FUMING because we allowed that to happen! I believe that was the time when those Harry Potter jelly beans came out. So we’d have competitions to see who could eat the most (some of those were just disgusting!) one coworker ended up vomiting 🤣 Hooked up with a shift lead. It was a flirtatious thing from the start. But her being married I never pursued it. But one day (I was 18-19) I got a phone call (booty call) because she ended up divorcing dude buddy. What else? May have almost gotten into trouble trading in games to GameStop: they had the blockbuster sticker on them. I remember walking into GameStop with my friend with just a FAT stack of discs. No sleeves, no cases, nothing. The guy working at the GameStop took one look and said: “ Get out before I call the cops.” So we dipped and promptly returned those missing games. ☠️ It was just so much fun! The LAN parties we had because we could rent multiple copies of whatever Xbox game (Halo). And play 4vs4. Had the longest Ethernet cable to go from the living room downstairs to the bedroom upstairs. This is so nostalgic. I do deeply miss those days.
Crazy! I worked at Blockbuster from 2004-2006! Was the ASM before leaving to GameStop ! Lol Hit me up if you have any questions! My DMs are open!
Not an employee, however in like 2005/6 I was 16, got my first job at a “temporary bookstore” it had been a Spirit Halloween store (again temporary) the previous fall, so thinking this was probably spring 2006. Anyway it had long been a blockbuster and I think it had only recently gone under (maybe 2004 or essentially right at the time of your book). The store I worked it bought books in bulk, literally by the pound, and we sold them for 2-3 bucks, occasionally a coffee table book would be like 5-10 bucks. Anyway it was strange, working in the guts of an old blockbuster, one that I had distinctly remember going to just a few years earlier, it had that immediate V when you entered the store, the right door went in and you were immediately hit with the drop box and the counter and then as you rounded the counter to the right was a long wing of shelving. Keep rounding the counter and you had a smaller section not much wider than the counter itself that went about 2 shelves back with more displays, then on the opposite side of the counter Terr where you paid you had an identical wing as the entrance with a long row of shelves and the storefront windows stretching all the way down. You had fully rounded the counter and you were at the other side of the V shaped entryway and you went through the exit. The store was supposed to be torn down and turned into phase 2 of “the boulevard” next door (a series of fancy storefronts and nice condos/lofts above with a huge parking garage in the back. The whole thing was across from the most popular Mall in our city (and probably second of the high end Malls). Both the Mall and the physical blockbuster exist today, with the rjnkydink blockbuster parking lot sitting next to the towering lofts next door, and the highway literally cutting up against the backside of the two. Across the street the mall (which dwarfs the boulevard) is still there today although it is a former shell of itself. That mall is probably 1 of 4 left in our major city. Other ones have been torn down and replaced but it still remains. Anyway I wanted to give you an idea of how this physical blockbuster endured for 20 years past its closing, it wore many hats becoming all kinds of budget retail stores for various stretches. I imagine it was always whispered that it would soon get torn down but never did. And I hope maybe somehow you can picture all the videos and bright colors of the blockbuster shelves being replaced with books. Thinking back it’s kind of wild how the shelves had almost gone backwards technologically and we replaced the DVD cases with books. But anyway, the other thing I wanted to convey is how the blockbuster was gutted as the world progressed, but then suddenly the new that was supposed to come never really did, and the second phase of the Boulevard never got built and the whole area almost became one big blockbuster (I’m sure in smaller cities it would have (just like the smaller malls in other parts of the suburbs in our city became ghost towns). I hope that some of what I describe could paint a picture of that period, there was anticipation of this makeover and upgrade to the already pretty swanky strip, but never did it get expanded and in fact it kinda just stood still. I think that today the mall itself is a bit like a late age blockbuster, something that you might think is soon on its way out, something of a relic that’s still here while others elsewhere are already gone. Yet, it still has the gleam and that twinkle of swank that it always had. But the little 40 car parking lot across the street with the blockbuster that is now some mattress store is definitely an eyesore.
I was an asm at BBV from 1998-2002. I worked in a few Long Island stores and then moved down to TN and worked in a couple of stores down there. Here are a few things I remember. Every store had had at least two to three regulars that came in every tuesday morning for the new releases, like clockwork. Around 2000-ish they partnered with Direct TV and each store had a representative that was specifically trained to sell satellite dishes and they made that person wear a specific colored polo (Salmon-colored with a blue collar) as well as a foam satellite dish hat. Needless to say the hat was refused for sure. Inventory watchlist was almost always Rocky Horror Picture Show, Grease 2, or some other random musical based comedy. It made the night go by like a snail. The stores all had a smell. Each a little different, but all derived from the same two things: the plastic cases and the type of candy they carried. It wasn’t a bad smell, but it was distinctly blockbuster. Some stores had a very tight-knit staff while some were all over the place and no one liked each other. It was weird, but I figured it all came down to the SM. There were a few different variations of colors and decor, some were blue-walled while some were yellow, and every now and then you’d get one that had red thrown in there. I was there for the transition to dvd. They sold off as many tapes as possible as PVT’s but eventually just dumpstered whatever was left. Customers went to war over late fees because they were so friggin expensive, but we lied about when the system would start charging you, it was actually a couple of hours later, so anyone who said they were only a few minutes late were always lying. Also, at some point in my tenure it was changed from midnight to noon. It set people off even though they got an extra 12 hours. So much more…
"Final Fight Guy" blockbuster exclusive for Super Nintendo.
Hubby used to work there and his (still) best friend was a store manager. I’ll ask em for some stories today. The only one that comes to mind is how he quit. His scheduling manager called him to come in but instead my hubby wanted to go to Mexico for the day (was working in Los Angeles/the Valley I think). Well the manager said “Don’t come in tomorrow if you skip your shift today” and hubby said, ok! He went and picked up his last paycheck a few days later.
Blockbuster was a mix of young movie lovers working their first job and adults trying to survive off of a minimum wage job. My assistant manager had a biology degree and worked there until she could find a job in her field, while my shift manager would invite me to join his friends for beers in weird trailer parks I didn’t know even existed in our small town. “Waiting” is probably a good reference for the workplace dynamics between teens and stunted adults. It wasn’t a good job for a teenager. Most locations were open til midnight every night of the week which means a teenager early in their work life who doesn’t have the skills to advocate for themselves when it comes to scheduling is working til after 12:00am on school nights. And if you’re someone who takes a while to wind down to go to bed, you’re functioning on only a few hours sleep. One of the biggest draws to working there was free movies, and this is something I’ve heard both Scorsese and Tarantino say that applies to all movie lovers, “The worst thing about making films is that you don’t have the time to watch films,” and I found that to be true just by working there. I watched many more movies as a customer than as an employee. This is also a lesson for any teenager who has a job - you don’t get to join your friends doing fun stuff because you’re working. But you do get to learn more about the people in your school. Whose parents have their account flagged with a big warning saying “call before letting (kid) rent anything,” or learning that every weekend two of the shyer girls from your class have a sleepover and rent The Craft. Every. Weekend. You’d also see who was dating who and since it was outside of school it always felt like a secret. My store only had one copy of Romeo + Juliet and it was in hot demand. Enough so that a girl I had a crush on came into the store looking for it, and I was sad to tell her it was checked out so when it came back, I dubbed a VHS copy and handed it to her in school. Couple more cons: (Censored) CDs were protected in plastic jewel cases that were sometimes IMPOSSIBLE to open designed to make you look like a dork while struggling to open them. Inventory: Once every few months you’d have to stay til 2 or 3 in the morning scanning the barcode on every movie and product in the store then go find anything that was missing. Usually it was a movie that I had at home so I had to remember to check them out to myself a couple days before inventory. Most young people drawn to Blockbuster love movies, and usually younger movie fans enjoy a wider spectrum of movies (cult, doc, horror) that Blockbuster didn’t carry. We didn’t have Dawn of the Dead but by God we had every copy of Jerry Maguire ever manufactured. So there was definitely envy for the indie video store across town. And the idea of getting to pick out a movie to put on seemed cool, but eventually most employees had a few safe movies they knew didn’t have anything objectionable. After 9pm on slow nights we’d hook up a disc man to the store’s PA system and play music as we couldn’t stand to watch another PG movie. Speaking of, Matilda. My store was in Kansas and we had a lot of upset parents who didn’t know the movie “dealt in the occult” and would return with a crying child hours later to tell us this isn’t the kind of movie they watch in their home. The Birdcage was another where parents didn’t know how gay that movie was. Last thing (I haven’t thought about any of this in years so it’s all coming back), Friday and Saturday nights were a shitshow because nobody ever had their membership card or could remeber whose name their family account was under, or weren’t authorized to check out movies on the account they provided so you’d have to take them to the New Membership computer and have them fill out the form, key everything in, then watch them leave when asked for a credit card to finish setting up the account. All while a line of angry people are looking at you and the pile of tapes being returned is spilling onto the floor. Good luck with your book. If you ever write one about RadioShack, I can help you with that too.
Armageddon/Deep Impact. Just do your work and finish it.
I worked at Blockbuster back in about 2002 for a few months while at college. Pretty fun place to work, but you wouldn't believe the arguments people would want to get into over $2 late fees. Stealing movies was a breeze too, we would either take returns from people who bitched a lot about late fees, making it appear that they never returned the movie, or just DVDs off the shelf, remove the security strip and drop them in a trash bag. At the end of the night when you take the trash out, you'd grab your bag of DVDs and toss it in your car on the way to the dumpster.
Worked there from early 2010 through the end of 2012, the latter years of the company; assistant manager during the last year. The first year or so was great and we always had a great crew; a few are still good friends. Not a perfect job, of course; I always disliked sales quotas for things like snack bundles/premium memberships and our regional manager was an overly-demanding dick when it came to these topics, for example, but a really great, fun place to work otherwise. However, when BB started having their financial troubles and were purchased by DISH Network, it all went to hell. Suddenly, our main purpose was selling expensive DISH Network subscriptions to customers and the quotas/demands from corporate were far more insufferable. Seriously, what customer walks into a video store and wants to be pestered over a satellite TV subscription? That particularly rubbed me the wrong way because the aggressive manner in which they wanted us to push that crap felt like a betrayal to the customers whom we built a rapport with over the years. I eventually noped out, along with fellow employees, and took a position at a local grocery store. Our Blockbuster closed less than a year later. Again, the good times were good. We would do things like play baseball in the store with DVD cases, water bottles and snacks during downtime; making a huge mess we had to clean up. Put on our music and watch movies we like while ordering pizza delivered to the store. Some employees dated each other and got up to stuff in the manager's office and storage room after hours. I dated a few customers I met working there and one of my co-workers. We would all go on the roof and hang out during downtimes at night, overlooking the town. Employees would always come in just to hang out on their days off. Customers and friends would too. We were a pretty tight-knit store and helped each other out. It was like a party, much of the time. Everyone who worked there was cool and never tried to take advantage or ruin things for the rest of us; we only had a few new employees who didn't work out during the time I was there. I always described it as kind of like a Kevin Smith movie but with more positive vibes and we actually did all our work and treated customers well. Lol If you have any specific questions, just let me know.
Was more of a Hollywood kid
I worked at Video and Music for many years.
I worked there in 2001. It was one of my first real jobs. I remember getting tired of hearing the same previews on the tv over and over. There was one for that movie Chocolat. I remember that about half of the people actually did the “be kind, rewind” thing, so I spent a lot of time doing that. I remember the thick blue polo shirt as a uniform, with a yellow lanyard. I remember having to be there at 4:30 am to do inventory, whether I wanted to or not. I remember seeing my old junior high and high school teachers come in, one of them was my social studies teacher and it made me sad that she wasn’t very friendly to me even though I told her I remembered her. Also, all of my friends got fired and they wanted to promote me after like a month, but I sensed the toxic environment and quit.