Double Flee A

I took two movies back today.

As I was checking them in, I asked if they were late. The girl behind the counter said yep, looks like they were one day late each. That comes to eight bucks and change in late fees. You only have to pay late fees every five days, so it's as if you rented them again. Makes sense. So I said I paid for an extra four days apiece and didn't get to take them home again, which seems messed up. She agreed. I said you owe me eight movie-days. She agreed but couldn't do anything about it what with the movies being checked back in and all. I left thinking I should get credit for those days, and was contemplating asking for a freebie rental to call it even (I still come out behind on the deal on a single five-day rental) until I ran into an old friend who told me a little story.

My friend works at a local restaurant, where an ex-manager of this same video store had come to work as a dishwasher after he quit pimping secondhand celluloid. The guy makes more washing dishes, and he also doesn't get pistol-whipped. Yeah. When he was working at the video store he got pistol-whipped twice for money by some of our less friendly dark-complected neighbors. Not to be a burden, he didn't press charges or anything, and I hope the company paid for the emergency medical care, but damn, the last thing I want to do to these poor bastards at the video store is ask them to kick the service up a notch when they come to work wondering if they're leaving with all their teeth once their shift is over. It stinks because the circumstances affect the ethics. It stinks because some waste of skin pulls up and beats up on people who work for a living, and it stinks because I'm aware of the fact that they deal with this danger every day and I can't bring myself to disrupt them with my trifles, even though my trifles are supposed to be their business. Once again, some jerk-off is fucking up the program for the honest people.

posted by dale @ 1:29 AM