The DVD Curse
You would think that working in a video store would be a pretty easy, low-stress job, right? Sure. Until you hit management, just like in many other professions. From now on, you will only see customers once they have a problem that the CSR (Customer Service Representative) could not solve.
You must remember that video rental is unlike any other "retail" field. There are late fees, and it's ugly. People will fight you tooth-and-nail over a $2.00 late fee. The first thing you learn is to not even use the words "late fee." It's a "balance." "There's a balance on your account of..."
Secondly, as a manager in a video store, you get to make the overdue calls. You get to call people up and tell them that their movies are still out, they're way overdue, and you want them back. It's one of the only times in my life I ever called someone praying that they wouldn't pick up the phone. If you get a real person, or if one should call you back after you leave a message, more than half the time they will tell you that they brought those movies back ages ago. This is amazing, because a part of your opening routine every day is searching the store for missing movies. There are only so many places a DVD can hide. You check the shelves, you check the damaged drawers, in case they wound up there accidentally. You look amongst the PVs. All you can say is that it's not in the store, and that the last place it was known to have been was with this person, who denies having seen it for days now.
The next thing to hate about being the manager on duty (or MOD) at a video store is calling people to tell them that they have returned an empty DVD case. This happens constantly, and most of the time, the customer will start yelling before they've even bothered to look in their DVD player. "It was in there when I brought it back! One of your employees must have taken it!", etc. Alot of the time, they will come in later with it, humbled, saying that it was in another case, or in the player, or next to it, but it doesn't ease the throbbing headache they gave you earlier.
And lastly, my favorite...someone will come in with two DVDs, one a brand new release, and the other an ancient category movie, claim that neither of them would play, but he/she doesn't feel like seeing them anymore. They want to exchange them for two different movies. As rough as all that sounds, the hardest thing is pretending to believe them.