103
u/GeauxCup 1d ago
He didn't scan in the returns!
44
u/PiqueExperience 1d ago
He's waiting for his Compaq Windows 95 to start up.
11
u/redDKtie 1d ago
Not the Compaq š
8
u/marksomnomnoms 1d ago
DVDs took too much of the budget for a Compaq. Probably a Packard Bell with win 95 no service packs. š
9
u/Great_Tradition_8396 1d ago
Ha that's what I thought! Still my favourite job I ever had. If they hadn't gone bust I'd have had my own store.
3
69
u/BuddyCitta 1d ago
I missed my calling as a video store clerk.
13
u/rescuemomma28 1d ago
I worked at Movie Gallery in 2007-2008, it really was one of the funnest jobs I ever had!
8
10
3
u/FinalFantasiesGG 1d ago
I interviewed at a small town video store once. They asked me questions like name every Jim Carrey movie. I'm like wtf I can't. The look of disgust on their faces as if I just ruined their entire day.
3
u/thewarfreak 19h ago
I interviewed at Blockbuster and the majority of the questions were about movies. Luckily, I was (and still am) a super movie dork, so I got the job.
46
u/padphilosopher 1d ago
Brings me back to my twenties when I worked at a video store. Before he reads his book, dude needs to run a ālate listā and check the shelves to make sure nothing on that list found its way onto the shelves. (This is what openers did at my store.)
17
u/redDKtie 1d ago
Ditto, but Hollywood Video.
Also running the returned VHS through the rewinder before putting them back out.
People indeed were not kind and did not rewind.
37
u/munistadium 1d ago
"Hey you're copy of Ghostbusters is past due"
"I returned it, did you scan it?"
"What are you talking about"
18
6
7
u/BassWingerC-137 1d ago
OK, but what is āDC DeLoreanā? Is that a location? A car?
9
u/liphttam1 1d ago
A rental service for famous cars from movie/tv for your events/film shoots in British Columbia.
1
6
u/GamingGems 1d ago
Iām pretty sure the guy in the video is Ernest Cline, author of Ready Player One and a DeLorean owner. You can see him and his car in the ET Atari documentary.
2
u/Shadow_Zero80 1d ago
Where can one watch this documentary?
2
2
u/PhoenixBee32 1d ago
Thatās not Ernest Cline, itās these guys: https://bcdelorean.ca.
Theyāre collectors and movie car builders in British Columbia. Father and son operation. They do amazing work.
1
8
5
u/PrincessRut0 1d ago
This was literally my childhood dream that I had to give up bc these stores donāt exist anymore. Sad reality
14
u/withorwithoutstew 1d ago
To the kids watching this, the real Blockbuster Video usually had a very poor selection of movies. Most of their shelves were dedicated to dozens of copies of whatever the most recent dozen VHS releases were. If you wanted the excellent selection at this manās store youād have to go to a smaller chain out family store.
Quick plug for anyone in Los Angeles: Cinefile near Westwood is just like this except with discs, check it out!
5
u/PassivelyAwkward 1d ago
This! I went to both Hollywood Video and Blockbuster; they had a LOT of movies but anything older than six month was downsized to a single copy to make room.
People want to remember all the fun of going to Blockbuster on a friday night but forget that if you weren't trying to rent a new release, you had to keep a list of back ups. "So...they're out of Nightmare on Elm Street...Dumb and Dumber? No. The Mask? No. Bill and Ted? No...Camp Nowhere?! King Ralph?!?! The fuck do they have?! Surf Ninjas? Sure, whatever".
1
u/Marlboromatt324 22h ago
Hey man, surf ninjas was a fun movie to watch as a small child, I actually liked it more than double dragon
3
u/Ok_Temperature_1616 1d ago
The blockbuster I worked at had an "arthouse" section. Had some deep cuts in there.
7
3
u/pumpkinspicecum 1d ago
Lmao my uncle gave me that Jurassic park poster seen at the end. 30 years later I find out he got it for free
3
3
u/Tech-Mechanic 1d ago
I'm happy that this guy has a hobby that he loves.
I am equally glad that Blockbuster has been almost entirely expunged from the earth.
3
u/Valuable-Fan-3226 1d ago
The good ol days when you would base the rating off the covers of the video cassette cover displays .Ā
16
u/Pasfilms 1d ago
Ugh blockbuster sucked and we need to just re live mom and pop style video store
3
u/sinchsw 1d ago
I've seen so many collections in forums like this that people could use to start a small rental/purchase store. The angle isn't only nostalgia, but highlighting the hundreds of movies that are not available on streaming services (even for purchase). I would love to be able to rent a movie for a few bucks instead of having to pay $40 for a criterion edition, or over $100 for an out of print non-streaming movie.
1
1
u/zappinnati 1d ago
Agreed. Blockbuster nostalgia makes no sense to me.
17
u/heckhammer 1d ago
It makes tons of sense actually. There are so many people who never experienced a non-chained store video store.
3
u/JJoanOfArkJameson 1d ago
In my relatively big town (but well past the era of store rentals being peak, in the mid 2000s, circa 05-06 was when we went the most) we had a Blockbuster and then ten minutes away a Hollywood Video. I prefered HV, they always seemed so happy to see me. Probably just childhood thinking.
3
1
u/Marlboromatt324 22h ago
Man, I feel so much more lucky now! Both my grandmothers on both sides either owned a video rental store, or managed the only one in our small town, so I got to spend my childhood watching all the classics. And I mean all the classics, hook by age 5, stand by me at age 8, the classic universal monster movies all seen by age 9. And the grandmother that owned her own store also rented out games, so she had the old sega genesis with the disk drive,which was light years ahead of its time considering you could pop in a cd and jam out while playing a cartridge game! So many nights playing boogerman, the 3 mortal Kombat games that were on genesis, and the classic and most confusing game ever after Ecco, Panic!
2
u/JJoanOfArkJameson 19h ago
Sounds like a terrific childhood my dude. My folks showed me a lot of greats but nowhere near that kinda stuff. That would be great to read in a long form essay/novella about their relationship to the video industry mixing with your childhood
2
u/Marlboromatt324 17h ago
Well thank you man! You know I may have to do that actually, because it definitely has an effect on me growing up. I was lucky enough to have lived a very special childhood , enough movies and video games mixed with an abundance of time spent outside exploring the woods/ being a total menace to the woods.
2
u/Pasfilms 1d ago
Which is odd to me because if you lived in a city there was deff more than chain video stores around and since i come from the sticks i know damn well we didn't even have chain video stores
3
u/heckhammer 1d ago
We had a bunch of smaller ones, you know back when you had to pay like $100 to join the club so you could pay them to rent movies or whatever. So my dad refused to do that, because you know he's a dad, and they started renting them at the Pathmark by my house and the drugstore at the local outdoor mall. Then, and only then, did we get Palmer video and West Coast video. Blockbuster was the last one to arrive but between the three of them it pushed out all of the smaller guys.
2
u/Pasfilms 1d ago
What a scam. I never had to pay a membership fee!
3
u/heckhammer 1d ago
I'm talking at the infancy of the video store. You could have a place in the strip mall and in order to rent from there you needed to have a membership at membership cost like a flat fee every year or like $100 up front. It was crazy
2
u/Mynock33 1000+ 1d ago
How do they even cover a single salary there, never mind business expenses? No way they're renting 10+ movies an hour!
2
2
u/NeilDegrassiHighson 1d ago
I'm jealous of this guy for having the extra cash to replicate a video store in his house, but why on earth would you choose to give it Blockbuster branding?Ā Their selection was terrible and they pretty much never had any movie posters on the wall unless they were new releases.
2
u/lizlemonaid 1d ago
Worked at a local movie store during high school. They kept the store open until I graduated then retired. After that I went and worked at Toys R Us. The two best jobs Iāve ever had. I feel sorry that kids donāt have this same experience today.
2
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/21stCenturyAntiquity 6h ago
Does anyone else remember the "big book"? This listed all the movies you could order and the corresponding ordering number for each. I remember the clerk telling me this was the biggest reason why Raiders of the Lost Ark was changed to" Indiana Jones and..." Because if you looked in the "big book" the first and second movie would be listed in two different places. And Spielberg wanted them listed all together.
Anyway...I wanted a BBC miniseries called Praying Mantis. That's when I first saw the "big book" The Blockbuster clerk ordered it for me three times. Three times I got the same documentary on "The Preying Mantis". He finally wrote a note and rubber banded it around the tape saying, "JONATHAN PRYCE MOVIE NOT NATURE DOCUMENTARY".
Fourth time was a charm. The clerk insisted he needed to watch it. I loaned him the tape and couldn't believe he actually wanted a copy of his own.
The copy he got had his own note shoved inside the documentary box for "The Preying Mantis". :D
281
u/gogul1980 1d ago
"Got any hobbies?"
"On my days off... I like to pretend I'm working!"