Tales from the Video Store: An Introduction

Hello all, I am so happy to be here on CineTV! My Hive name is caulderfreeman and I have been around Hive for the last 6 months or so. I wish I had found it sooner! I first came to Hive through Splinterlands, found the game Rising Star and made some great friends through Twitch streams and Discord.

I want to give a huge shout out to @stickupboys for encouraging me to write on CineTV about my experiences working at a video store. So this will be a series called, “Tales from the Video Store” and I have a lot of memories to share!

Let me take you back...back to the mid to late 90's when the VHS tape was king and video stores were the main source of entertainment for just about everyone. I was fresh out of high school (insert the old man joke here) and looking for a part-time job while I was studying in college. Luckily, I knew the manager's son and I was given a shot working at my local, hometown, small chain video store.

The store I worked in was HUGE! Rows and rows of video tapes, filled with obscure titles from decades of movie magic, surrounded by walls of new releases. I can't tell you how many times I was asked the question: "Do you the name of that movie with that one guy, when he did that thing that was so funny?" Remember these were the days before smart phones and easy Google searches. The customer relied on the knowledge of the staff to try and locate a movie. Needless to say, I learned a lot about actors and actresses and the movies they were in.

The Video Store I worked in was much like the one Randall visited in Clerks:

Working in the video store was not a glamorous job. Some of the worst things were the teal and neon pink, low quality work provided shirts, very odd hours, holidays were some of the busiest times of the year for the store and the staff turnover was amazingly high. The job did come with some obvious perks. Workers got free rentals, discounts on purchasing movies and games, I met almost everyone in town and it was a mostly relaxed atmosphere.

As I mentioned, I have plenty of memories to share about my first real job at the video store! But, I want to know what questions you have about that time. Let me know, what are your memories of the video store era are and what questions or memories of mine would you like to hear?

Thanks for reading and have an awesome rest of your day!