Electronics Boutique!
Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2003 5:15 pm
In celebration of Matedire's newfound employment at the Electronics Boutique, I present a little thing I wrote up a few months back but never posted. It's the Top Ten Worst Things About My Employment With EB.
Confidential to J. Matedire, Glendale, AZ: don't let any of this dissuade you. You're gonna have a blast.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
ICJ vs EB Employment
From February of 1995 until May of 1996 I worked as a "Sales Associate" for the Electronics Boutique in Rochester, New York at $5.51 an hour. After a line like that I'm not going to try to come off as Indiana Jones here or anything, but I've done enough things (or at least, have enough crazy friends who have done enough things and detailed their adventures to me) where the only recurring nightmare I have ought to be something other than finding myself back at the mall at some time between Thanksgiving and Christmas doing the humiliating work of a monkey. But to get into specifics, here are the ten worst experiences I had working at an EB:
10. Answering the Phone
EB has a crack marketing team operating out of the home office in Pennsylvania. No one there has ever set foot in an actual Electronics Boutique store, of course, much less been forced to follow through with any of the ridiculous and humiliating requests that their filthy den of scoundrels have chuckled up their sleeves about mandating. Every time I had to answer the phone -- five or six times an hour, usually -- I was expected to say, "Electronics Boutique, your video game trade-in specialist. Ask me how to receive a free Nintendo 64!" The system changed while I was there, but the sentiment didn't. The simple act of picking up the phone was this OMG chance to pique the interest of a would-be customer and get him hunched over his phone, quivering like a discharge of ochre jelly on just how to receive FREE hardware! A good many calls that I received were of my friends, trying to figure out what time I got out of work so that we could go shoot pool or whatnot, and they delighted in cutting me off before I could get to the end of my designated snappy patter. This served to only generate "warnings" from my manager, as I was expected to not have personal calls at work, but to also finish my script no matter who was calling. You could probably make it through this job with your sanity intact, ordinarily -- the job is still talking about video games, after all. But the constant reminder that some wriggling little shit with a degree in "advertising" or "marketing" thought you couldn't answer phones correctly without their say-so slowly ate away at your soul.
9. Toilet Duty
As the new guy, I was expected to mop up the toilet during each one of my shifts. The only plausible scenario regarding the sheer volume of pubic hair found on that toilet that I could allow myself to believe was one where Oscar Gamble, Bob Ross and Art Garfunkle all got haircuts right before I was slated to begin work, and the hairdresser simply did a lousy job of cleaning up. To this day I'm not sure if one of the guys working the morning shift kept his pet mammoth in there during shedding season or what.
8. Retorts to Practiced Salesmanship
I had no talent for retail. EB's warranty policy was actually pretty good back then (I guess it still is: I bought a warranty last summer when I grabbed a PS2, and sure enough when I went to return a controller that had split wide open due simply to Maximo being one of the most unfair "games" on the planet and, right, the controller being hurled repeatedly against my living room wall they exchanged it for a new one with no fuss) but I couldn't even get immigrants to splurge for one. Which is kind of odd, as they'd buy anything else. At one point, after I had gone through the motions of trying to sell one for a Saturn and been denied, the assistant manager stepped in, said basically what I said but with charisma and enthusiasm, and actually got the customer in question to change their mind and buy one after all. At any rate, though I did okay at the job through, I suppose, knowing at least a little something about all the games there, I'd occasionally get encouraged to go make the hard sell for a shift or two. One such time, I was told that I had to go to every customer in the store and ask them an opening question that could not be answered "yes" or "no." This usually leaves something like, "Hi, what can I help you with today, sir?" At the home office, the thought that a customer could answer, "Oh, hey, I'm fine, thanks" was some sort of rousing success story, because that's infinitely more dialogue than a "Can I help you" / "No" exchange. Anyway, during one such shift there was a guy in his late twenties taking a look at the new release rack in the far corner of the store. Like a good little monkey henchman, I confidently strode up to him and said, "Hi! How can I help you?" Without turning around, without even momentarily moving his eyes away from the Civ II and Cyberia boxes, he replied in the most arrogant, condescending tone I had ever (and have ever) heard, "...You can't." That response, from a self-important motherfucker that I would have loved to have socked in the fucking gob for being such a miserable piece of human garbage, is what has single handedly given me sympathy for the poor slobs working in retail today, and why I still find myself tipping thirty percent for average or mediocre service at a restaurant. The worst part is, of course, that while working in retail you have to swallow the dozens of barbs and comebacks that you'd love to retort with, as you're pretty much disposable parts and expected to play the part of a doormat.
7. Oversleeping, or, Fixing a Tire in a White Dress Shirt
I was going to college while working this job, and my hours would change based on what day it was, what classes I had, which employees recently had enough and quit, and so forth. One Sunday I was scheduled to come in at 11:00am, whereas I would usually only arrive at one in the afternoon. I woke up with enough time to shower, get dressed, and get to the mall, when it occurred to me that my hours on this day were different. I had taken to writing them down on index cards and then shoving the time table into my wallet. I dug around and fished out the card, and sure enough, I was an hour and a half late.
I took the next exit off the highway and hopped over to a gas station. I called into work (the shitty connection that I had gave a certain air of authenticity to the whole production) and said that I had a flat and would be there ASAP. My manager said "cool," and that was that. I realized, though, that he knew what my truck looked like and that it would be a bit suspicious if I showed up without the donut being on one of the wheels. Back then, EB employees had to wear button-down dress shirts, and I didn't have any other clothes in my truck. Sure enough, I jacked up my truck and slapped the donut on one of the back wheels. Covered in grease, I showed up for work a good two hours late (but, right on time for when I thought I had to be there, oddly enough) and took some Lava soap to my forearms and hands.
The worst part is, I was too lazy to go change the tire back at the end of my shift, and drove around on the donut for a week.
6. The Gamer Grrl
I'd had a few girlfriends before working at EB, and none of them were particularly interested in video games. Certainly not like I was, at least. (One of them, in fact, left me at least in part due to my obsession, but we'll get to that later.) So when I started working shifts with the lone girl at our store, who we'll call "Killcreek," here, I was like a Jewish guy who grew up and lived in downtown Beirut for twenty-five years before someone casually introduced to him the concept, country, and location of Israel. I mean, I was shocked that girls existed who could talk tactics for Worms: Armageddon. The long-term relationship that I was in failed miserably during my stay at EB, but it failed only after this girl quit. I thought I'd never see her again, but I ran into her one night at a "Rocky Horror Picture Show" viewing. Brimming with concepts like "fate" and... well, just "fate," really, I looked up her phone number through the dorm directory of the college I recalled her attending (in a store with dozens of Thief and Metal Gear : Solid boxes, I was somehow doing the worst stalking out of anyone) and asked her out on a date. She said that she had a boyfriend, but for what I was bringing to the table in all this she showed superhuman restraint in not launching into an alphabetized list on just what the fuck was wrong with me. This is probably the one on the list I wish I could "do over," and by "do over," I mean like in "War Games," where I win by not playing.
5. Shrink Wrap Machine vs My Tie
We had a shrink wrap machine that we used after we extracted the contents of the "last" Playstation or Saturn game on the shelf. Basically, the last game would be up on display, away from the cabinet that was behind the register. So if a customer was to take a jewel case off the rack and scurry off with it, well, they only had the jewel case. We had a bunch of discs to wrap, then, each day depending on what we got in the shipment boxes. Anyway, I mention all of this because after I had been working there for almost a year, I managed to burn the end of my tie off with the fucking thing. I was putting wrap on some wretched Gameboy box or something -- Wario Racers, Luigi Kart, who the fuck knows -- and was doing so in a barely-awake, robotic state. I placed the game on the machine, pulled off a section of wrap, closed the device to heat seal the wrap... and noticed that I had melted a nice section of my tie that was utterly noticeable in the process. It looked like EB had taken a look at the handicapped programs that McDonalds is famous for and spontaneously decided to initiate a program of their own, starting with some retard fuckup that couldn't even dress himself properly, i.e., me.
4. Scammed by the NBA Live Guys
Most of the customers were exactly the same -- pudgy white guys whose time was better spent in the gym than playing a King's Field sequel. Looks can be deceiving, however, as their brains could still contain a web of potential lies and/or several lumpy chunks of wrinkly cunning. A few months in, I had grown a bit complacent with my customers, thinking that, since I wasn't above signing a game out and taking it straight to my roommate's CD burner, that they wouldn't dream of trying to screw me by simply leaving the mall with a game -- they'd at least have the common courtesy to buy, burn, and return it all the same. After NBA Live '96 came out, I had a guy taking a solid look at the jewel case. The cases didn't contain games or anything (as noted above) and this guy had the audacity to ask to see the disc itself. "I just want to see it," he said. He did so in a manner that did not scream "shoplifter," so what the hey. In an embarrassing display of stupidity, I gave it to him to look at. As soon as my attention was directed to a different customer, the guy left -- jewel case, CD, everything. I was so shocked (read: humbled) that I didn't even call security. What was I going to say? That I was too stupid to do my job? I was too stupid to do my job that day. The copy of the game was eventually written off as loss. (Game publishers love to tell you that piracy is what has kept video game prices so high, even though the cost of media has done nothing but free fall over the years, but I am here to tell you that at least some of the time, it's the plain moronic, spastic pantomiming of the idiot help behind the register that isn't helping things, either.)
3. The Ex-Girlfriend Visit
The girl, who I'll refer to as "Lady MOI," that I was dating before I started working at EB left me before I could leave the store and get my life in order. There were a few reasons why we broke up, one of which was that she found somebody else, but certainly my blowing off a fireworks date that we had agreed to on a 4th of July because I was too addicted to NHL Powerplay '96 didn't exactly get her wet with lust for me. Having a Civ II expansion in my tote-bag the day after I told her that I would cut down on gaming hurt my cause as well, especially when I brought the bag into her house rather than burying it in the back of my truck where it would have remained safely out of view. We had been broken up for a couple months when she casually dropped by the mall with her best friend. I hadn't seen the movie "Mallrats" at that time, but the sentiment that Brodie Bruce expressed when it came to visitation rights with the mall would have made a lot of sense to me. Ms. MOI there and her friend casually worked there way over to my wing of the mall, and casually stepped in to say "Hi!" You know how it is when you get dumped: you inevitably have this fantasy, the next time you see your girl, that you'll have a model or whoever draped along your arm, that you'll be in one of those charming, outgoing moods, that you'll fill her up with envy and jealousy and all that. I hope that such a scenario worked out for you, my droogs, because in my case I was saying "hey" to the ex while one guy was asking me which fucking "Batman" game he should get for the SNES (and the fucking cuntpunch had the nerve to argue with me regarding which games appeared on the system, and which didn't -- I let it go and said he was right because arguing as to whether frigging Two-Face had appeared on the system or not in front of a girl that I had slept with would have caused us both to slash our wrists the long way) while another was trying to trade in every NES game ever made (and stacking them on the counter, accordingly) for $15 worth of store trade-in credit so he could get a few extra packs of Homelands Expansion cards. Having to explain to a guy why A Boy and His Motherfucking Blob only has fifty cents worth of trade in value while your ex looks on? Yeah, that pretty much fucking blew.
I did get her friend naked a few years later though, so I hope I don't totally come off as Comic Book Guy here.
2. Pat Hentgen vs Howard Lincoln
Nintendo was going to make the N64 launch pure hell for retailers. They faked a shortage in order to drive up demand. While I liked to consider myself pretty "neutral" when it comes to which console at a given time is the best, when it comes right down to it the sleazy tactics that Nintendo employed to move a few extra pieces of that piece of shit still bugs the fuck out of me to this day. I don't have any kids, but the looks on the parents who came in a few months before Christmas time after I told them that -- to my knowledge -- Nintendo probably isn't going to make enough units for me to guarantee that they'll get one was pretty disheartening. I know that you should have your brood better trained than to have Christmas be made or broken by whether or not some ratty piece of junk hardware shows up, but that's not how it works, that's not how Nintendo would let it work.
The actual initial launch was at the end of September. I was supposed to work launch day. The day before I was in Toronto with a couple friends of mine watching the Orioles kick the snot of the Blue Jays at the Skydome. We were supposed to drive back the night before launch, but Pat Hentgen was coming up on 20 wins (which I cared about) and Brady Anderson was one home run away from fifty (which my friend -- and those people who are fans of unexplainable phenomenon and shows narrated by Jonathan Frakes -- cared about) the next day. I could either go back to Rochester and put in an honest day's work, or play what amounted to "hooky."
I decided on hooky, of course. This was way before I had a cell phone, but not before caller ID or call return, so I had a bit of a problem. I had to essentially make the "I am sick" call from home somehow. I ended up calling my mother, and asking her to call into work and say that her first born was down with the flu. I still kind of feel pretty bad about this one after all these years, especially since when I returned I got a lot of sympathy from everybody because they assumed that I must have been on death's door if mommy was calling for Jonsey there at age 23.
On the other hand, Brady led off with a home run, and Hentgen shut down the Orioles the rest of the way. Hentgen went on to win the Cy Young that year, which pretty cool.
1. My Confession to Stealing a Promotional Wing Commander III Shirt
I still wince at this one. My first week on the job. There were a stash of shirts that Origin had given out to promote Wing Commander III. I was told that I could bring home any of the gaming mags that I wanted, and I figured that the same was in order for extra shirts or whatnot. I should explain at the time, WC3 was just this huge fucking release. In the present, everyone is kind of down on it because the first two really were better games, but FMV hadn't quite established its reputation for ruining games back then. My manager, after counting how many shirts were around and comparing that number to how many should have been around, ordered this investigation like the government does when a shuttle goes down. I had no idea any of this was going on, as I had a few days off after I innocently scarfed one of the shirts. When I returned and heard the scuttlebutt, I considered keeping my mouth shut, but eventually came correct to everyone's relief. Apparently they had thought that someone had broken into the back room, or that a guy who had recently quit had made off with the gear somehow. Or ninjas did it, who knows. I should have known what I was in for with this job when I said words to the effect of, "Oh, hey, I grabbed that missing shirt -- I was under the impression that it was first come, first serve on that. Sorry about that... won't happen again." I mean, Jesus Christ, what the hell was wrong with me? I was reacting like I got caught trying to nick the fucking Hope Diamond or something. I expected a number of "demerits" that would have made Lt. Blather from Planetfall cough a bit, but nothing happened. I was able to continue working in peace or something, I guess, but it tainted how management perceived me from then on, which was way too much.
Ultimately, we had some fun at that store. It could have been a lot better if we were able to cut ourselves off from the chain, I suppose, but that's probably true everywhere. Nevertheless, the reason that this economy scares the hell out of me is not due to images like personal starvation, or having to sell my car or blood in order to buy a new pair of pants or something, but that things get so bad that the only job I can find and get is back at that store. This, in part, explains why I moved 1,100 miles west the first chance I got. We at least still have a thriving cadre of Babbages franchises out here in Colorado.
Confidential to J. Matedire, Glendale, AZ: don't let any of this dissuade you. You're gonna have a blast.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
ICJ vs EB Employment
From February of 1995 until May of 1996 I worked as a "Sales Associate" for the Electronics Boutique in Rochester, New York at $5.51 an hour. After a line like that I'm not going to try to come off as Indiana Jones here or anything, but I've done enough things (or at least, have enough crazy friends who have done enough things and detailed their adventures to me) where the only recurring nightmare I have ought to be something other than finding myself back at the mall at some time between Thanksgiving and Christmas doing the humiliating work of a monkey. But to get into specifics, here are the ten worst experiences I had working at an EB:
10. Answering the Phone
EB has a crack marketing team operating out of the home office in Pennsylvania. No one there has ever set foot in an actual Electronics Boutique store, of course, much less been forced to follow through with any of the ridiculous and humiliating requests that their filthy den of scoundrels have chuckled up their sleeves about mandating. Every time I had to answer the phone -- five or six times an hour, usually -- I was expected to say, "Electronics Boutique, your video game trade-in specialist. Ask me how to receive a free Nintendo 64!" The system changed while I was there, but the sentiment didn't. The simple act of picking up the phone was this OMG chance to pique the interest of a would-be customer and get him hunched over his phone, quivering like a discharge of ochre jelly on just how to receive FREE hardware! A good many calls that I received were of my friends, trying to figure out what time I got out of work so that we could go shoot pool or whatnot, and they delighted in cutting me off before I could get to the end of my designated snappy patter. This served to only generate "warnings" from my manager, as I was expected to not have personal calls at work, but to also finish my script no matter who was calling. You could probably make it through this job with your sanity intact, ordinarily -- the job is still talking about video games, after all. But the constant reminder that some wriggling little shit with a degree in "advertising" or "marketing" thought you couldn't answer phones correctly without their say-so slowly ate away at your soul.
9. Toilet Duty
As the new guy, I was expected to mop up the toilet during each one of my shifts. The only plausible scenario regarding the sheer volume of pubic hair found on that toilet that I could allow myself to believe was one where Oscar Gamble, Bob Ross and Art Garfunkle all got haircuts right before I was slated to begin work, and the hairdresser simply did a lousy job of cleaning up. To this day I'm not sure if one of the guys working the morning shift kept his pet mammoth in there during shedding season or what.
8. Retorts to Practiced Salesmanship
I had no talent for retail. EB's warranty policy was actually pretty good back then (I guess it still is: I bought a warranty last summer when I grabbed a PS2, and sure enough when I went to return a controller that had split wide open due simply to Maximo being one of the most unfair "games" on the planet and, right, the controller being hurled repeatedly against my living room wall they exchanged it for a new one with no fuss) but I couldn't even get immigrants to splurge for one. Which is kind of odd, as they'd buy anything else. At one point, after I had gone through the motions of trying to sell one for a Saturn and been denied, the assistant manager stepped in, said basically what I said but with charisma and enthusiasm, and actually got the customer in question to change their mind and buy one after all. At any rate, though I did okay at the job through, I suppose, knowing at least a little something about all the games there, I'd occasionally get encouraged to go make the hard sell for a shift or two. One such time, I was told that I had to go to every customer in the store and ask them an opening question that could not be answered "yes" or "no." This usually leaves something like, "Hi, what can I help you with today, sir?" At the home office, the thought that a customer could answer, "Oh, hey, I'm fine, thanks" was some sort of rousing success story, because that's infinitely more dialogue than a "Can I help you" / "No" exchange. Anyway, during one such shift there was a guy in his late twenties taking a look at the new release rack in the far corner of the store. Like a good little monkey henchman, I confidently strode up to him and said, "Hi! How can I help you?" Without turning around, without even momentarily moving his eyes away from the Civ II and Cyberia boxes, he replied in the most arrogant, condescending tone I had ever (and have ever) heard, "...You can't." That response, from a self-important motherfucker that I would have loved to have socked in the fucking gob for being such a miserable piece of human garbage, is what has single handedly given me sympathy for the poor slobs working in retail today, and why I still find myself tipping thirty percent for average or mediocre service at a restaurant. The worst part is, of course, that while working in retail you have to swallow the dozens of barbs and comebacks that you'd love to retort with, as you're pretty much disposable parts and expected to play the part of a doormat.
7. Oversleeping, or, Fixing a Tire in a White Dress Shirt
I was going to college while working this job, and my hours would change based on what day it was, what classes I had, which employees recently had enough and quit, and so forth. One Sunday I was scheduled to come in at 11:00am, whereas I would usually only arrive at one in the afternoon. I woke up with enough time to shower, get dressed, and get to the mall, when it occurred to me that my hours on this day were different. I had taken to writing them down on index cards and then shoving the time table into my wallet. I dug around and fished out the card, and sure enough, I was an hour and a half late.
I took the next exit off the highway and hopped over to a gas station. I called into work (the shitty connection that I had gave a certain air of authenticity to the whole production) and said that I had a flat and would be there ASAP. My manager said "cool," and that was that. I realized, though, that he knew what my truck looked like and that it would be a bit suspicious if I showed up without the donut being on one of the wheels. Back then, EB employees had to wear button-down dress shirts, and I didn't have any other clothes in my truck. Sure enough, I jacked up my truck and slapped the donut on one of the back wheels. Covered in grease, I showed up for work a good two hours late (but, right on time for when I thought I had to be there, oddly enough) and took some Lava soap to my forearms and hands.
The worst part is, I was too lazy to go change the tire back at the end of my shift, and drove around on the donut for a week.
6. The Gamer Grrl
I'd had a few girlfriends before working at EB, and none of them were particularly interested in video games. Certainly not like I was, at least. (One of them, in fact, left me at least in part due to my obsession, but we'll get to that later.) So when I started working shifts with the lone girl at our store, who we'll call "Killcreek," here, I was like a Jewish guy who grew up and lived in downtown Beirut for twenty-five years before someone casually introduced to him the concept, country, and location of Israel. I mean, I was shocked that girls existed who could talk tactics for Worms: Armageddon. The long-term relationship that I was in failed miserably during my stay at EB, but it failed only after this girl quit. I thought I'd never see her again, but I ran into her one night at a "Rocky Horror Picture Show" viewing. Brimming with concepts like "fate" and... well, just "fate," really, I looked up her phone number through the dorm directory of the college I recalled her attending (in a store with dozens of Thief and Metal Gear : Solid boxes, I was somehow doing the worst stalking out of anyone) and asked her out on a date. She said that she had a boyfriend, but for what I was bringing to the table in all this she showed superhuman restraint in not launching into an alphabetized list on just what the fuck was wrong with me. This is probably the one on the list I wish I could "do over," and by "do over," I mean like in "War Games," where I win by not playing.
5. Shrink Wrap Machine vs My Tie
We had a shrink wrap machine that we used after we extracted the contents of the "last" Playstation or Saturn game on the shelf. Basically, the last game would be up on display, away from the cabinet that was behind the register. So if a customer was to take a jewel case off the rack and scurry off with it, well, they only had the jewel case. We had a bunch of discs to wrap, then, each day depending on what we got in the shipment boxes. Anyway, I mention all of this because after I had been working there for almost a year, I managed to burn the end of my tie off with the fucking thing. I was putting wrap on some wretched Gameboy box or something -- Wario Racers, Luigi Kart, who the fuck knows -- and was doing so in a barely-awake, robotic state. I placed the game on the machine, pulled off a section of wrap, closed the device to heat seal the wrap... and noticed that I had melted a nice section of my tie that was utterly noticeable in the process. It looked like EB had taken a look at the handicapped programs that McDonalds is famous for and spontaneously decided to initiate a program of their own, starting with some retard fuckup that couldn't even dress himself properly, i.e., me.
4. Scammed by the NBA Live Guys
Most of the customers were exactly the same -- pudgy white guys whose time was better spent in the gym than playing a King's Field sequel. Looks can be deceiving, however, as their brains could still contain a web of potential lies and/or several lumpy chunks of wrinkly cunning. A few months in, I had grown a bit complacent with my customers, thinking that, since I wasn't above signing a game out and taking it straight to my roommate's CD burner, that they wouldn't dream of trying to screw me by simply leaving the mall with a game -- they'd at least have the common courtesy to buy, burn, and return it all the same. After NBA Live '96 came out, I had a guy taking a solid look at the jewel case. The cases didn't contain games or anything (as noted above) and this guy had the audacity to ask to see the disc itself. "I just want to see it," he said. He did so in a manner that did not scream "shoplifter," so what the hey. In an embarrassing display of stupidity, I gave it to him to look at. As soon as my attention was directed to a different customer, the guy left -- jewel case, CD, everything. I was so shocked (read: humbled) that I didn't even call security. What was I going to say? That I was too stupid to do my job? I was too stupid to do my job that day. The copy of the game was eventually written off as loss. (Game publishers love to tell you that piracy is what has kept video game prices so high, even though the cost of media has done nothing but free fall over the years, but I am here to tell you that at least some of the time, it's the plain moronic, spastic pantomiming of the idiot help behind the register that isn't helping things, either.)
3. The Ex-Girlfriend Visit
The girl, who I'll refer to as "Lady MOI," that I was dating before I started working at EB left me before I could leave the store and get my life in order. There were a few reasons why we broke up, one of which was that she found somebody else, but certainly my blowing off a fireworks date that we had agreed to on a 4th of July because I was too addicted to NHL Powerplay '96 didn't exactly get her wet with lust for me. Having a Civ II expansion in my tote-bag the day after I told her that I would cut down on gaming hurt my cause as well, especially when I brought the bag into her house rather than burying it in the back of my truck where it would have remained safely out of view. We had been broken up for a couple months when she casually dropped by the mall with her best friend. I hadn't seen the movie "Mallrats" at that time, but the sentiment that Brodie Bruce expressed when it came to visitation rights with the mall would have made a lot of sense to me. Ms. MOI there and her friend casually worked there way over to my wing of the mall, and casually stepped in to say "Hi!" You know how it is when you get dumped: you inevitably have this fantasy, the next time you see your girl, that you'll have a model or whoever draped along your arm, that you'll be in one of those charming, outgoing moods, that you'll fill her up with envy and jealousy and all that. I hope that such a scenario worked out for you, my droogs, because in my case I was saying "hey" to the ex while one guy was asking me which fucking "Batman" game he should get for the SNES (and the fucking cuntpunch had the nerve to argue with me regarding which games appeared on the system, and which didn't -- I let it go and said he was right because arguing as to whether frigging Two-Face had appeared on the system or not in front of a girl that I had slept with would have caused us both to slash our wrists the long way) while another was trying to trade in every NES game ever made (and stacking them on the counter, accordingly) for $15 worth of store trade-in credit so he could get a few extra packs of Homelands Expansion cards. Having to explain to a guy why A Boy and His Motherfucking Blob only has fifty cents worth of trade in value while your ex looks on? Yeah, that pretty much fucking blew.
I did get her friend naked a few years later though, so I hope I don't totally come off as Comic Book Guy here.
2. Pat Hentgen vs Howard Lincoln
Nintendo was going to make the N64 launch pure hell for retailers. They faked a shortage in order to drive up demand. While I liked to consider myself pretty "neutral" when it comes to which console at a given time is the best, when it comes right down to it the sleazy tactics that Nintendo employed to move a few extra pieces of that piece of shit still bugs the fuck out of me to this day. I don't have any kids, but the looks on the parents who came in a few months before Christmas time after I told them that -- to my knowledge -- Nintendo probably isn't going to make enough units for me to guarantee that they'll get one was pretty disheartening. I know that you should have your brood better trained than to have Christmas be made or broken by whether or not some ratty piece of junk hardware shows up, but that's not how it works, that's not how Nintendo would let it work.
The actual initial launch was at the end of September. I was supposed to work launch day. The day before I was in Toronto with a couple friends of mine watching the Orioles kick the snot of the Blue Jays at the Skydome. We were supposed to drive back the night before launch, but Pat Hentgen was coming up on 20 wins (which I cared about) and Brady Anderson was one home run away from fifty (which my friend -- and those people who are fans of unexplainable phenomenon and shows narrated by Jonathan Frakes -- cared about) the next day. I could either go back to Rochester and put in an honest day's work, or play what amounted to "hooky."
I decided on hooky, of course. This was way before I had a cell phone, but not before caller ID or call return, so I had a bit of a problem. I had to essentially make the "I am sick" call from home somehow. I ended up calling my mother, and asking her to call into work and say that her first born was down with the flu. I still kind of feel pretty bad about this one after all these years, especially since when I returned I got a lot of sympathy from everybody because they assumed that I must have been on death's door if mommy was calling for Jonsey there at age 23.
On the other hand, Brady led off with a home run, and Hentgen shut down the Orioles the rest of the way. Hentgen went on to win the Cy Young that year, which pretty cool.
1. My Confession to Stealing a Promotional Wing Commander III Shirt
I still wince at this one. My first week on the job. There were a stash of shirts that Origin had given out to promote Wing Commander III. I was told that I could bring home any of the gaming mags that I wanted, and I figured that the same was in order for extra shirts or whatnot. I should explain at the time, WC3 was just this huge fucking release. In the present, everyone is kind of down on it because the first two really were better games, but FMV hadn't quite established its reputation for ruining games back then. My manager, after counting how many shirts were around and comparing that number to how many should have been around, ordered this investigation like the government does when a shuttle goes down. I had no idea any of this was going on, as I had a few days off after I innocently scarfed one of the shirts. When I returned and heard the scuttlebutt, I considered keeping my mouth shut, but eventually came correct to everyone's relief. Apparently they had thought that someone had broken into the back room, or that a guy who had recently quit had made off with the gear somehow. Or ninjas did it, who knows. I should have known what I was in for with this job when I said words to the effect of, "Oh, hey, I grabbed that missing shirt -- I was under the impression that it was first come, first serve on that. Sorry about that... won't happen again." I mean, Jesus Christ, what the hell was wrong with me? I was reacting like I got caught trying to nick the fucking Hope Diamond or something. I expected a number of "demerits" that would have made Lt. Blather from Planetfall cough a bit, but nothing happened. I was able to continue working in peace or something, I guess, but it tainted how management perceived me from then on, which was way too much.
Ultimately, we had some fun at that store. It could have been a lot better if we were able to cut ourselves off from the chain, I suppose, but that's probably true everywhere. Nevertheless, the reason that this economy scares the hell out of me is not due to images like personal starvation, or having to sell my car or blood in order to buy a new pair of pants or something, but that things get so bad that the only job I can find and get is back at that store. This, in part, explains why I moved 1,100 miles west the first chance I got. We at least still have a thriving cadre of Babbages franchises out here in Colorado.