Alpha Male

One of Fernando's regulars calls him one New Release Tuesday and asks him to hold a pair of movies for her, as she is unable to come in for a few hours. Fernando does what she asks and she arrives as promised. With her is a young man Fernando has never seen before, but he can tell right away that this is some new guy-pal she has attained for two reasons.

One, he did that silly and obsessive touching/wrestling of her body about the shoulders, stomach, and lower back.

Two, he immediately went into high-octane alpha male jackass mode as soon as he entered the store.

“So how much does it cost to rent here?” he asks initially, grasping her about the waist from behind and rocking her from side to side before the counter. He glares at Fernando for some reason during his gratuitous frottage of her backside.

“Um, $3.50 a movie,” she responds while attempting to sign the rental form.

“Jesus, really? You know you can get movies on Netflix for way cheaper?” Again, instead of looking at her during his statement, he passive-aggressively addressed Fernando with his comment, as evidenced by the direction his visage faced.

Fernando remains silent in the face of this young man's statement and instead goes about fetching the movies.

“How long do you get them for?” he continues inquiring.

“Just one night. But you can rent them for more then one if you want, or if you change your mind you can just pay a little bit extra when you bring them back,” she replies astonishingly accurately.

“Netflix doesn't have late fees,” the gentleman retorts. “It's stupid that people pay late fees for movies. But I guess the guy needs to find a way to rip people off for more money.”

At this juncture Fernando decides to step in. “If late fees were genuinely a way to rip people off—which is to say a way of perpetrating fraud—why is it then that charging them remains legal?”

The man ceases his shameless sexual gratification and stares daggers at Fernando silently as Fernando sets the cases upon the counter and takes the young lady's money.

But Fernando does not leave things unsaid, not when he has an advantage in a conversation. “Furthermore, if you think Netflix is a better deal why is it that you're renting these movies from me, here, today?”

This time he has an answer. “Well, she wanted to see them today,” he pouts.

“But Netflix is an omniscient home entertainment supplier. Surely you can ask them to have gotten you the movies in question—oh wait, you can't. Is it because there's a mailing delay on the discs—especially once one considers the throttling placed on new-new releases—or because they lack streaming of these selfsame movies? Could that be why you came to an actual brick-and-mortar retailer to rent these movies today? Because Netflix isn't perfect?”

The young man ceased his self-aggrandizement after that. He also stopped his incessant copping of feels. Double win!