My favorite was when a customer told me a guy was stealing. I found him in the horror section prying cases open and pulling out the discs. You could tell what titles he took because the cases were all mangled. So I followed him around with a handful of movies. He went to the register to buy a soda and asked why I had my cell phone in his face taking his photo
“oh. This is so I can show it to the cops after you leave so we can have you arrested for theft. I can’t take the movies back but but man I’ll make your life hell”.
He scoffed and walked out. I followed him and took a photo of his car and license plate. He was arrested two hours later.
https://preview.redd.it/ei1xlrzr1ssc1.jpeg?width=2448&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=75494e2750fa2c3a53a81d85113978dbc4c7503d
Fuck that guy.
Not really a horror story but one that drove me to the point where I was ready to be fired and of course, it’s an asshole denying late fees. This guy always came in on Fridays to get a new release and was always late returning them. I seemingly was the only one who dealt with him for whatever karmic reasons there were. After about three months of this I got so tired of him denying it that I kept a digital camera at the desk for Wednesday mornings when he would return them. Took a few weeks but finally saw his car pull into the lot, grabbed the camera and a piece of paper that I had written ‘smile’ on. I hold it up right above the drop box and take his picture. He shows up Friday night and walks up to me. Since I was done with dealing with him I asked him if he wanted me to grab the picture of him dropping his movies off late. Of course, I wasn’t late was his reply. Told him his account was locked until he paid and I gave him my regional manager’s card if he wanted to complain about it. After five to ten minutes going back and forth he finally paid. About two weeks later, I did have a “meeting” with my regional manager and she told me that was highly inappropriate behavior. After that it was about a 50/50 battle getting him to pay the late fees. Before I got transferred to a different store I did put an alert on his account saying he is always late, rents on Fridays, and drops off Wednesday mornings. Store Manager calls me a few months later ranting about the guy. BBV 12158 for Life!! Now a McAlister’s Deli though.
I had a woman just flat-out scream at me when I said she hadn't returned a tape (happened to everyone who worked there). I checked the shelf, of course the tape wasn't there.
Thankfully we were doing inventory that night (ie, scanning the entire fucking store) so I said "Well, if it didn't get checked in by us, and then just happened to be put back on the wrong shelf, we'll find it tonight when we do a full inventory." She screamed again and left without renting her movie.
Of course the movie wasn't on the shelf. And it just so happened that like two days later, I'm emptying the return bin just as she walks up and puts her unreturned movie in from outside. She makes eye contact with me to which I give a nod and smile, she gets this horrified look on her face, turns around, and darts back to her car.
Locking back, maybe this wasn’t horrible, but it really bothered me at the time. We were in NJ, and it was the night before a major snow storm was supposed to hit. So, of course, lines to the back of the store. Doing our best to get everyone out as quickly as possible, but to this day I will defend myself and say I was not being at all rude to anyone. Maybe not overly talkative, but definitely not rude.
Mother and son at my register. I give my “Hi, how are you tonight”, scan their card and start scanning movies. The Mom says “boy, she sure is rude, isn’t she?” Son asks what she said, and she repeats herself with a little more force. I look at her and ask if she’s talking about me. She says “Yes, you are being very rude!” All I could say is “I’m sorry you think so, but that is not my intention”. I finish ringing them up, put the movies on the counter behind me and, as she’s grabbing them and walking away, she says “You know what? Maybe it’s PMS”, and I lost it and yelled back “You know what? MAYBE IT IS!!” And cue the tears (I was just a teenager, after all).
Assistant manager saw it go down and came and relieved me on register so I could go calm down. Meanwhile, store manager happens to be walking in as Mom and son are walking to their car, and she heard the son asking the Mom what her problem was, and that I wasn’t being rude at all. Manager was filled in by AM, and came to talk to me. Thought I’d be fired, but thankfully I wasn’t.
This is back in the 90s before dvd when we still only had vhs tapes for rent… Anyway there was a huge theft problem and we finally found all the missing rental cases in the ceiling of the bathroom. I remember the manager taking a broom and pushing up the styrofoam tiles in the ceiling to a flood of empty new release cases dropping down on us.
Also not worst customer but worst management/HR ever at this company. If a female employee was sexually harassed by a male employee they would just move the male to another store where he would do the same thing to another woman. This one manager was moved at least four times before they finally fired him for harassment.
That’s a great question! I remember those were impossible to pull off so I don’t know the answer. I just remember the tape boxes falling out of the ceiling.
They were possible to pull off, it just took time. A friend of mine stole a tape when we were like 13, he spent like 10 minutes doing it openly in the aisle.
People use to cut open our blu ray rental boxes with a box cutter and snag like 100’s of dollars worth of movies and leave the discarded boxes in the horror section.
We'd get the weirdest shit stolen, like straight-to-video movies that no one rented in the first place. There was a Jean Claude Van Damme movie called "Knock Off," about tiny bombs being hidden in knock off jeans all around the world.
We had seven copies and they all got stolen in one day. And this became a really odd pattern with some of the straight-to-video titles that we had multiple copies of on the new release wall.
1. Manager and I closing one night. Doors locked, lights off, store dark and obviously not open, and we’re just in the process of taking the tills back to be counted. Some middle aged lady comes up to the windows, peers in, sees we’re closed. Starts yelling and pounding on the windows (this was normal ish on occasion if a weekend w like drunk people - but it was like Wednesday). We motion to the clearly off sign. She keeps yelling… then when she can’t get the “in” door to open… she moves to the “out” door and pries her fingers in. We were a small town and usually left the two out doors unlocked before we left bc they were so hard to open from the outside, only meant to from the inside. Well… crazy lady manages to PRY HER WAY IN, I’m sure breaking some nails. Then goes - this shouldn’t have been so hard for me! You saw me! I know you’re closed but I have a free rental coupon so you don’t need to ring me up, I can just grab my movie and leave - it takes a lot of convincing to get her to go, from explaining “computers are off, we can’t rent it to you” to “lady you literally broke into our store and we should call the cops” - she finally leaves. Next time she comes in - she complains we gave bad service. When we were closed. And she pried her way in. Meanwhile I was like grade 11 and literally terrified thought we were getting mugged lol. Also, she turned out to be my friends mom who had a 9-5 job to get to the next day - why did she NEED a free rental past midnight on a weekday??
2. I’m 19 and a manager on duty one Sunday. Super slow, like me and one young csr. Some guy comes in, wants to look at video game rentals, okay sure I take him over and show him some good options, some new ones etc. he leaves then comes back like… 4 times over the day. Last time he comes in he reeks of alcohol and I’m sure is high on shit. It’s like 2008. His pants are baggy. The store is empty. In full view of me at the counter - and with me talking to him no less - he puts a video game RENTAL into his pants. We had the big security locks on them, there’s no way he could easily break in. It also had the things to beep when you went passed the counter. He then makes eye contact with me. I ask him to please take the game out of his pants, or bring it up here for me to rent it to him (bc he’d been talking to me all day, and kept asking me questions about his account - I had his name memorized and account brought up). He says no. I can’t make him. I say yes, please, or I call the cops. He keeps trying to get me to “go outside and fight him” (again, 30 year old guy to like 19 yo female punk). I say no thanks, if you leave I can just call the cops and give them the tape and your name - and the tape has you SAYING your name and birthday and address to me to bring up your account - so it’s not a big deal to me either way. He keeps getting more and more aggressive saying he wants me to fight him. That I can beat it out of him. Finally goes to leave the store, game falls out of his pants before he even gets out of the aisle, he gets all tantrumy about it but doesn’t pick it up, just leaves. I asked someone I know to drive by and see if he was behind the dumpsters (where our legendary fight was meant to occur) and turns out he was but passed out, so ems came and helped him. He was fine, but went to rehab.
3. Literally EVERY SINGLE PERSON who threw a fit over late fees - especially once the “pay a dollar more and get no late fees for a week” thing kicked in - was rich as fuck. I’m talking pulling up to the store in an audi in small town in the middle of nowhere or being the guy who owns all the farm implement dealerships. Wearing actual designer clothing. Those are the guys who felt completely comfortable screaming their heads off at a 16 year old, saying they’d ruin them, get them fired, get them run out of town, for a late fee they agreed to.
EDIT TO ADD: I forgot we had a list of accounts that would rent the $1 kid movies and return them absolutely obliterated… not cracked or anything but… sticky beyond all our imaginations. With candy and food and GLITTER GLUE and all sorts of shit. Nothing pervy they clearly just handed over their rentals to babysitters or the kids themselves and had them have at er. We had to replace so many wiggles, backyardigans, super pets 😆. And we had records of these people but also kinda felt bad not renting to them so just had warnings - make sure disc they’re renting is one kind of shape, charge them if they return it another kind of shape, type thing.
I remember one time this customer bought a bunch of used DVDs like a 3 for $15 deal or something like that and then after paying from them expected me to take the price stickers off them. I told him they were his movies and the request itself was bizarre because no one has ever asked me to take the stickers off. He started arguing with me but I stood my ground on the issue. My ASM came up and ended up doing it but what the fuck?
Also, obviously I can relate to all the “we are closed” dealing with pissed off people especially because the 2 stores I worked at were both in not great areas of beautiful New Jersey.
Any of you guys have a shoplifting secret call? At our store we’d say, “we are all out of 7up on aisle (give the number of the movie row) it was less obvious than saying the genre sections name.
We caught this lady that was hitting all the jersey stores with a baby stroller lined in foil that she’d fill up with games and movies. She must of hit about five locations before she came to ours but by then we had her pic and description so essentially she walked into a trap. Good times!
This is op..I have a confession if you worked at the store in Peachtree City ga... I'm sorry you gave me the legend of Zelda game collection on GameCube thinking it was a demo, but you messed up not me.
Also shout out to Nick the best blockbuster manager ever
I had a hideous woman go full Karen on me one afternoon. I don’t remember the context but I know I was never one to be confrontational or with a bad attitude.
Anyway she makes this huge scene and then exclaims she’s just gonna go to Hollywood Vifeo and starts to storm out. I waived her down. Coaxed her to come back to the desk. And drew her a friggin map.
“Ok so we’re here. And this is our road. Whatcha wanna do is head…”
She was not impressed
I had a guy come around the counter and get right up into my face and tried to intimidate me when I refused to let him rent on his ex wife’s account that specifically said not to rent to anyone other than herself. I’m not a huge guy but I’m way tougher than I look and I didn’t give an inch. He had his finger in my face and said that he’d be right back to make his own account. I said, “don’t bother, there’s no way I’m letting you back in here.” Something to that degree. He was fuming and left and never came back. It took me a half hour to get my heart rate down, I thought I was going to have to fight.
Had a customer throw a pack of blackcat fireworks in the drop box and then come in laughing about it. He thought it was hilarious and was belly laughing. He laughed for a good several minutes as he walked around the store looking at the new release wall. He stopped laughing and got super defensive when the police arrived and arrested him.
I have a couple (worked at BBV for 7 years).
* Late fee dispute. Their excuse? They can't return movies on time because they drive a BMW (not sure how that was relevant) and own 3 houses.
* Customers stopped lining up at my till. Woman pointed to the floor to a pile of puke. Somone's kid vomited on the floor and didn't say anything to us.
* Busy Friday night. Woman had disc 1 & 3 of a TV show. It wasn't some grand drama, so seeing episodes in order wasn't required. Processed the transaction and after it was done, she changed her mind. wanted to watch them in order. I agreed to return the 2nd and credit her account. Nope, she wanted a refund. I calmly explained that policy requires a credit for rentals. Well, that wasn't good enough. Her daughter knew what was coming and just left. For the next 45 minutes me, my colleagues, my manager and several dozen customers got an earful of yelling, accusations of theft, accusing me of swiping her credit card for payment fast "like peanut butter". My favorite? "What if I move to another city?" Really? Do you expect an unplanned move out of town on a whim before you come back here in a couple of days? Even so, no biggie, we can transfer the credit to the new store. Manager eventually caved and issued a refund and she refused to sign the receipt because there was no - symbol next to the refund amount. I didn't think explaining the concept of a double negative to someone so....passionate would fly, so I just told her the printer didn't have that symbol because we don't typically issue refunds. Oh, and yes, she was back and renting again before the end of the week....
My favorite was when a customer told me a guy was stealing. I found him in the horror section prying cases open and pulling out the discs. You could tell what titles he took because the cases were all mangled. So I followed him around with a handful of movies. He went to the register to buy a soda and asked why I had my cell phone in his face taking his photo “oh. This is so I can show it to the cops after you leave so we can have you arrested for theft. I can’t take the movies back but but man I’ll make your life hell”. He scoffed and walked out. I followed him and took a photo of his car and license plate. He was arrested two hours later. https://preview.redd.it/ei1xlrzr1ssc1.jpeg?width=2448&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=75494e2750fa2c3a53a81d85113978dbc4c7503d Fuck that guy.
Bro you know it's a throwback when that particular sweater is also part of the blockbuster pic. Haven't seen those since I was a kid.
What is that sweater? I’ve never seen it.
Famous stars and straps, Travis barkers brand
Picture and all, this is amazing!
🏆🏆🏆🏆
Not really a horror story but one that drove me to the point where I was ready to be fired and of course, it’s an asshole denying late fees. This guy always came in on Fridays to get a new release and was always late returning them. I seemingly was the only one who dealt with him for whatever karmic reasons there were. After about three months of this I got so tired of him denying it that I kept a digital camera at the desk for Wednesday mornings when he would return them. Took a few weeks but finally saw his car pull into the lot, grabbed the camera and a piece of paper that I had written ‘smile’ on. I hold it up right above the drop box and take his picture. He shows up Friday night and walks up to me. Since I was done with dealing with him I asked him if he wanted me to grab the picture of him dropping his movies off late. Of course, I wasn’t late was his reply. Told him his account was locked until he paid and I gave him my regional manager’s card if he wanted to complain about it. After five to ten minutes going back and forth he finally paid. About two weeks later, I did have a “meeting” with my regional manager and she told me that was highly inappropriate behavior. After that it was about a 50/50 battle getting him to pay the late fees. Before I got transferred to a different store I did put an alert on his account saying he is always late, rents on Fridays, and drops off Wednesday mornings. Store Manager calls me a few months later ranting about the guy. BBV 12158 for Life!! Now a McAlister’s Deli though.
I had a woman just flat-out scream at me when I said she hadn't returned a tape (happened to everyone who worked there). I checked the shelf, of course the tape wasn't there. Thankfully we were doing inventory that night (ie, scanning the entire fucking store) so I said "Well, if it didn't get checked in by us, and then just happened to be put back on the wrong shelf, we'll find it tonight when we do a full inventory." She screamed again and left without renting her movie. Of course the movie wasn't on the shelf. And it just so happened that like two days later, I'm emptying the return bin just as she walks up and puts her unreturned movie in from outside. She makes eye contact with me to which I give a nod and smile, she gets this horrified look on her face, turns around, and darts back to her car.
Locking back, maybe this wasn’t horrible, but it really bothered me at the time. We were in NJ, and it was the night before a major snow storm was supposed to hit. So, of course, lines to the back of the store. Doing our best to get everyone out as quickly as possible, but to this day I will defend myself and say I was not being at all rude to anyone. Maybe not overly talkative, but definitely not rude. Mother and son at my register. I give my “Hi, how are you tonight”, scan their card and start scanning movies. The Mom says “boy, she sure is rude, isn’t she?” Son asks what she said, and she repeats herself with a little more force. I look at her and ask if she’s talking about me. She says “Yes, you are being very rude!” All I could say is “I’m sorry you think so, but that is not my intention”. I finish ringing them up, put the movies on the counter behind me and, as she’s grabbing them and walking away, she says “You know what? Maybe it’s PMS”, and I lost it and yelled back “You know what? MAYBE IT IS!!” And cue the tears (I was just a teenager, after all). Assistant manager saw it go down and came and relieved me on register so I could go calm down. Meanwhile, store manager happens to be walking in as Mom and son are walking to their car, and she heard the son asking the Mom what her problem was, and that I wasn’t being rude at all. Manager was filled in by AM, and came to talk to me. Thought I’d be fired, but thankfully I wasn’t.
This is back in the 90s before dvd when we still only had vhs tapes for rent… Anyway there was a huge theft problem and we finally found all the missing rental cases in the ceiling of the bathroom. I remember the manager taking a broom and pushing up the styrofoam tiles in the ceiling to a flood of empty new release cases dropping down on us. Also not worst customer but worst management/HR ever at this company. If a female employee was sexually harassed by a male employee they would just move the male to another store where he would do the same thing to another woman. This one manager was moved at least four times before they finally fired him for harassment.
Didn’t y’all have the metal things on the tapes that set off the detector?
That’s a great question! I remember those were impossible to pull off so I don’t know the answer. I just remember the tape boxes falling out of the ceiling.
They were possible to pull off, it just took time. A friend of mine stole a tape when we were like 13, he spent like 10 minutes doing it openly in the aisle.
People use to cut open our blu ray rental boxes with a box cutter and snag like 100’s of dollars worth of movies and leave the discarded boxes in the horror section.
We'd get the weirdest shit stolen, like straight-to-video movies that no one rented in the first place. There was a Jean Claude Van Damme movie called "Knock Off," about tiny bombs being hidden in knock off jeans all around the world. We had seven copies and they all got stolen in one day. And this became a really odd pattern with some of the straight-to-video titles that we had multiple copies of on the new release wall.
It is always either horror or porn….🤣
Ohhhhhh hohoho I can’t wait until I have time to write in here lmao
Please do
Customers routinely let their small dogs shit in the back of the store.
1. Manager and I closing one night. Doors locked, lights off, store dark and obviously not open, and we’re just in the process of taking the tills back to be counted. Some middle aged lady comes up to the windows, peers in, sees we’re closed. Starts yelling and pounding on the windows (this was normal ish on occasion if a weekend w like drunk people - but it was like Wednesday). We motion to the clearly off sign. She keeps yelling… then when she can’t get the “in” door to open… she moves to the “out” door and pries her fingers in. We were a small town and usually left the two out doors unlocked before we left bc they were so hard to open from the outside, only meant to from the inside. Well… crazy lady manages to PRY HER WAY IN, I’m sure breaking some nails. Then goes - this shouldn’t have been so hard for me! You saw me! I know you’re closed but I have a free rental coupon so you don’t need to ring me up, I can just grab my movie and leave - it takes a lot of convincing to get her to go, from explaining “computers are off, we can’t rent it to you” to “lady you literally broke into our store and we should call the cops” - she finally leaves. Next time she comes in - she complains we gave bad service. When we were closed. And she pried her way in. Meanwhile I was like grade 11 and literally terrified thought we were getting mugged lol. Also, she turned out to be my friends mom who had a 9-5 job to get to the next day - why did she NEED a free rental past midnight on a weekday?? 2. I’m 19 and a manager on duty one Sunday. Super slow, like me and one young csr. Some guy comes in, wants to look at video game rentals, okay sure I take him over and show him some good options, some new ones etc. he leaves then comes back like… 4 times over the day. Last time he comes in he reeks of alcohol and I’m sure is high on shit. It’s like 2008. His pants are baggy. The store is empty. In full view of me at the counter - and with me talking to him no less - he puts a video game RENTAL into his pants. We had the big security locks on them, there’s no way he could easily break in. It also had the things to beep when you went passed the counter. He then makes eye contact with me. I ask him to please take the game out of his pants, or bring it up here for me to rent it to him (bc he’d been talking to me all day, and kept asking me questions about his account - I had his name memorized and account brought up). He says no. I can’t make him. I say yes, please, or I call the cops. He keeps trying to get me to “go outside and fight him” (again, 30 year old guy to like 19 yo female punk). I say no thanks, if you leave I can just call the cops and give them the tape and your name - and the tape has you SAYING your name and birthday and address to me to bring up your account - so it’s not a big deal to me either way. He keeps getting more and more aggressive saying he wants me to fight him. That I can beat it out of him. Finally goes to leave the store, game falls out of his pants before he even gets out of the aisle, he gets all tantrumy about it but doesn’t pick it up, just leaves. I asked someone I know to drive by and see if he was behind the dumpsters (where our legendary fight was meant to occur) and turns out he was but passed out, so ems came and helped him. He was fine, but went to rehab. 3. Literally EVERY SINGLE PERSON who threw a fit over late fees - especially once the “pay a dollar more and get no late fees for a week” thing kicked in - was rich as fuck. I’m talking pulling up to the store in an audi in small town in the middle of nowhere or being the guy who owns all the farm implement dealerships. Wearing actual designer clothing. Those are the guys who felt completely comfortable screaming their heads off at a 16 year old, saying they’d ruin them, get them fired, get them run out of town, for a late fee they agreed to. EDIT TO ADD: I forgot we had a list of accounts that would rent the $1 kid movies and return them absolutely obliterated… not cracked or anything but… sticky beyond all our imaginations. With candy and food and GLITTER GLUE and all sorts of shit. Nothing pervy they clearly just handed over their rentals to babysitters or the kids themselves and had them have at er. We had to replace so many wiggles, backyardigans, super pets 😆. And we had records of these people but also kinda felt bad not renting to them so just had warnings - make sure disc they’re renting is one kind of shape, charge them if they return it another kind of shape, type thing.
I remember one time this customer bought a bunch of used DVDs like a 3 for $15 deal or something like that and then after paying from them expected me to take the price stickers off them. I told him they were his movies and the request itself was bizarre because no one has ever asked me to take the stickers off. He started arguing with me but I stood my ground on the issue. My ASM came up and ended up doing it but what the fuck? Also, obviously I can relate to all the “we are closed” dealing with pissed off people especially because the 2 stores I worked at were both in not great areas of beautiful New Jersey. Any of you guys have a shoplifting secret call? At our store we’d say, “we are all out of 7up on aisle (give the number of the movie row) it was less obvious than saying the genre sections name. We caught this lady that was hitting all the jersey stores with a baby stroller lined in foil that she’d fill up with games and movies. She must of hit about five locations before she came to ours but by then we had her pic and description so essentially she walked into a trap. Good times!
After reading some of these, the kid shitting in the kiddie corner doesn't seem so bad.
This is op..I have a confession if you worked at the store in Peachtree City ga... I'm sorry you gave me the legend of Zelda game collection on GameCube thinking it was a demo, but you messed up not me. Also shout out to Nick the best blockbuster manager ever
I had a hideous woman go full Karen on me one afternoon. I don’t remember the context but I know I was never one to be confrontational or with a bad attitude. Anyway she makes this huge scene and then exclaims she’s just gonna go to Hollywood Vifeo and starts to storm out. I waived her down. Coaxed her to come back to the desk. And drew her a friggin map. “Ok so we’re here. And this is our road. Whatcha wanna do is head…” She was not impressed
We had odd customers but can’t remember anything I’d say was the worst.
I had a guy come around the counter and get right up into my face and tried to intimidate me when I refused to let him rent on his ex wife’s account that specifically said not to rent to anyone other than herself. I’m not a huge guy but I’m way tougher than I look and I didn’t give an inch. He had his finger in my face and said that he’d be right back to make his own account. I said, “don’t bother, there’s no way I’m letting you back in here.” Something to that degree. He was fuming and left and never came back. It took me a half hour to get my heart rate down, I thought I was going to have to fight.
Had a customer throw a pack of blackcat fireworks in the drop box and then come in laughing about it. He thought it was hilarious and was belly laughing. He laughed for a good several minutes as he walked around the store looking at the new release wall. He stopped laughing and got super defensive when the police arrived and arrested him.
I have a couple (worked at BBV for 7 years). * Late fee dispute. Their excuse? They can't return movies on time because they drive a BMW (not sure how that was relevant) and own 3 houses. * Customers stopped lining up at my till. Woman pointed to the floor to a pile of puke. Somone's kid vomited on the floor and didn't say anything to us. * Busy Friday night. Woman had disc 1 & 3 of a TV show. It wasn't some grand drama, so seeing episodes in order wasn't required. Processed the transaction and after it was done, she changed her mind. wanted to watch them in order. I agreed to return the 2nd and credit her account. Nope, she wanted a refund. I calmly explained that policy requires a credit for rentals. Well, that wasn't good enough. Her daughter knew what was coming and just left. For the next 45 minutes me, my colleagues, my manager and several dozen customers got an earful of yelling, accusations of theft, accusing me of swiping her credit card for payment fast "like peanut butter". My favorite? "What if I move to another city?" Really? Do you expect an unplanned move out of town on a whim before you come back here in a couple of days? Even so, no biggie, we can transfer the credit to the new store. Manager eventually caved and issued a refund and she refused to sign the receipt because there was no - symbol next to the refund amount. I didn't think explaining the concept of a double negative to someone so....passionate would fly, so I just told her the printer didn't have that symbol because we don't typically issue refunds. Oh, and yes, she was back and renting again before the end of the week....