Late Fees and Landfills
Sometimes, the grumpy old man is right
In my previous post on Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, I mentioned that the movie was “priced-to-sell” when it hit VHS in 1987. That meant you could actually buy it at Wal-Mart for $20–$30 — cheap enough to tempt regular fans.
Most movies weren’t like that. Studios assumed people wouldn’t buy tapes outright unless it was a beloved Disney title released for a limited time before going “back in the vault.” So video stores paid $70 to $100 per tape for the privilege of renting them. The logic was that VHS tapes could be copied — a scam I figured out pretty quickly — and studios still needed to afford things like paying Jim Carrey $20 million to talk out of his ass.
I bring this up because I worked one of those video stores, a small hometown shop called Video Showplace. We had a customer who came in every week and asked about upcoming releases. If he liked something, he requested that we order an extra copy for him — at the $70–$100 wholesale price. He paid in literal wads of cash from his dry-cleaning business. When I started there in the mid-’90s, I was told he was basically covering my salary. Over the years, he must have spent thousands on VHS tapes. I sometimes wonder which landfill they’re resting in now.
If you’re under thirty, the whole concept probably sounds absurd: people left their homes, walked into a store, browsed shelves, chose a movie, then returned it a day or two later — rewound, ideally.
At the risk of sounding like Dana Carvey’s grumpy old man on SNL: that’s the way it was, and we loved it.
Well — mostly. The returning part was less beloved. And late fees were just as miserable from behind the counter. I was nineteen, making $5.25 an hour, and it wasn’t fun telling someone who already knew they’d kept Titanic three extra days that they now owed ten dollars. The only upside of being that young was that I could always say, “You’ll have to talk to the manager.” That part, admittedly, was sometimes fun — especially when the manager wasn’t there.
Once, a guy returned a movie late and gave me a sob story about his kids kicking it under the car seat. Against my boss’s orders, I cut his late fee in half. We’re probably talking under twenty bucks. He kept pushing, clearly hoping I would say, “Eh, don’t worry about it. Life happens.” Or maybe even, “Fine! Just shut up!” He paid the half — and a few days later I got called into the owner’s office for a lecture on why we don’t cut late fees. Lesson learned: being the nice guy doesn’t always pay.
Video Showplace wasn’t part of a rental empire. It was a mom-and-pop operation, and the pop — Mike — insisted the only thing separating us from Blockbuster was customer service. He believed people came to us for recommendations and conversation.
One of my coworkers had a strategy to avoid that entirely. No matter the movie, he’d say, “I haven’t seen it, but I’ve heard it’s very good.” Some customers caught on and started asking why he even worked there since he apparently never watched movies.
Mike wasn’t wrong, though. Some customers just wanted the hot new release, but others genuinely liked hearing our opinions. As the resident film guy, I loved recommending favorites — even when they didn’t land. I once suggested Pulp Fiction to a customer. When he returned it, he told me he wasn’t a fan because he needed “a good story” and didn’t like “killin’ for the sake of killin’” Then he asked for our porn book.
Yes, that was the other thing separating us from Blockbuster: we rented porn. Nasty, low budget, 80’s (70’s?) porn. I assume, anyway. Honestly, I never rented one. But we have several customers who did, and if you wanted an “adult title,” you’d quietly ask for “the book.” We’d hand over a binder of titles, you’d pick a number, and we’d retrieve the corresponding tape from behind the counter — all stored in plain brown boxes. Occasionally a kid would ask what was in the boxes, and you’d have to invent an answer.
Some customers weren’t picky. “Just grab me any one,” they’d say. I respected that honesty. Each clerk had a method. My coworker who never watched movies just reached back and grabbed whatever box his hand touched. My friend John tried to match titles to personalities (“Hmmm, you look like you might enjoy Backside to the Future.”) I always chose my favorite title: Mean Little Bitches. I never watched it. I just loved the name.
It’s probably even harder now for someone under thirty to imagine renting a porno from a store — and then returning it. We had a regular who came in with a portable oxygen tank, which made those rentals feel risky. Another customer we called the Man-Child looked about twelve. When he asked for “the book,” I laughed — until he showed me his ID. Twenty-one. I apologized. Mostly because I was a little jealous. I wonder if he still looks as youthful all these years later, or if our bad porn aged him.
We had nicknames for our customers — usually the difficult ones. (“The Drooler” was not a favorite.) But there were plenty we genuinely liked. Sometimes we’d rig the weekly drawing so one of them would win and we could chat more. If someone was nice, we’d occasionally hold a new release for them, although that was against store policy. John and I made it a goal to “cross over” socially with certain regulars. We even got invited to a Halloween party once.
The job was a strange portal into people’s lives. One regular surprised me when he returned a movie and called it “one for MST,” referencing Mystery Science Theater 3000. I had no idea there was a fellow bad-movie connoisseur hiding in plain sight.
Another couple came in together constantly — one of those pairs who looked oddly alike. One day she came in alone to remove him from the account. Soon after, he returned with a new girl and had to open his own. I think they even asked for the book.
I have another memory of a child who would come in regularly with his parents named Colin. I only knew his name because his Dad would constantly be admonishing him, “Colin, stop bothering the man” when he would ask me questions. One time Colin brought an R-rated movie up to the counter and asked me if it was rated that “because of the lady parts. Because I’ve seen the lady parts.” Honestly, that day, Colin wasn’t bothering me.
I sometimes miss that job. At the time, I complained constantly about customers. Now I see it differently. I loved talking movies, even when my tastes didn’t line up with theirs (one of my favorite movies at the time was Natural Born Killers.) Back then, I took it personally if someone disliked something I loved — or loved something I didn’t. Working that counter cured me of that. People like what they like. You can’t charge them a late fee for it.
There aren’t many places left where you can stand around and argue about movies with strangers for $5.25 an hour. The stores are gone. The tapes are gone. Most of them probably are sitting in the same landfill as that guy’s thousand-dollar VHS collection.
But for a few years, they were ours. And we loved them.
Thanks for reading. If you were forewarded this, maybe because you’re Colin, please subscribe to get all my posts straight to your Inbox. And if you’re a subscriber already, consider becoming a paid subscriber, for less than what I got paid to work at the Showplace. Also, you can check out my podcast, and lend your support by purchasing some nostalgic T-shirts and such from my store here. And remember, “Be kind. Rewind.”
I definitely rented the Rush and Neil Young concert videos from you and pirated them. Pretty sure I still have them.
And the great thing about video stores versus streaming is that video stores theoretically could stock anything. Which streaming service has the rights to RoboCop this year? Damned if I know. Imagine going into Stone’s and being told to go to Abington Video because they had the rights to Touchstone Films?
Good point. We have the convenience of not having to leave the house, but is it worth it for not having access to anything we want?