It's a slow Sunday afternoon at the Dominion. The conditions outside lend themselves to optimal grilling weather, so people have countless better things to do than sit inside watching movies. This leaves Fernando trapped not unlike a caged ferret, looking out onto a beautiful world through the front windows of his store.
Then a van pulls up, and out pile a middle-aged woman and three kids. The van, by the way, has a great abundance of Support the Troops magnet ribbons and church-related paraphernalia on the back doors. All of the guests are unknown to Fernando and, yup, they start grabbing cases and rearranging the store as a favor to Fernando as soon as they enter.
Eventually they gather in a herd before the counter and throw down five movie cases from disparate corners of the store. The woman standing before Fernando glares at him.
“Can I get your name?” Fernando asks.
“Luxanna,” she answers in a flat, angry monotone.
“Last name?”
“That is my last name.”
Cue the awkward pause. But since no further information is forthcoming, Fernando has to goad her to the next stage of the conversation. “Can I get your first name, then?”
“Roselia.”
“Do you have an account here?”
“No.”
“Easily fixed,” says Fernando, retrieving the membership application he'd placed on the nearby shelf about a week previous. “I just need you to fill this out for me.”
“I don't want to be a member. I just want to rent these for one night. We'll bring them back tomorrow.”
“Er. Right, that's why I need you to fill this out.”
“We don't live around here,” she says, death glare deepening. “We're only up here for a few days.”
“All the more reason for you to fill one out then, wouldn't you say?”
“No. I don't see why we should have to. I don't want to get a bunch of junk mail or to have you have my information.”
Fernando shrugs. “Okay. Then I won't rent to you.” Her kids, by the way, have been absolutely silent and motionless, dare Fernando say “cowed,” through this whole exchange.
That sets her off and she goes into spoiled fundamentalist mode. “You can't treat us like this! We're paying customers!”
“Well, no. You're kind of being the opposite of a customer right now. You're raging incredibly hard over something that doesn't give anyone else on the planet pause. Fact of the matter is you have about a hundred dollars in stuff that you want to take into your temporary possession and you yourself admitted to being out of town and only up here 'for a few days,'” Fernando says with air quotes aplenty. “Comprehend that I am protecting a sizable inventory investment and that I have no reason to hand off said hundred dollars in stuff to someone I've never seen before and who's making something of an ass of herself to me in front of her kids. If that means I lose ten dollars, so be it. I think I'll manage just fine.”
“Just who do you think you are to treat us like this?” she demands.
“Fernando H. Stevens, Keeper of the Dominion of Movies. Who do you think you are to treat me like this?” Fernando rebuts.
Thankfully someone else pulls into the parking lot at this time, prompting Roselia and her brood to exit posthaste, lest their recent idiocy be made known to the world outside the Dominion's bounds.
...
Whoops.
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