Adult Responsibilities

A man enters the store one evening with three early-teenage children in tow. He shouts that they have thirty seconds to decide what movie they're renting because Mom is waiting in the car. The young ones scuffle and argue a bit about what to get but they come to a rather quick consensus and bring the tag to the counter.

“Can I get your name?” Fernando asks as he prepares to fill out the rental slip.

“Put it under his name,” the man says, gesturing to the oldest son. “I don't want to be responsible for it in case they don't return it.”

Fernando takes those words in and mulls them over. Then he says, “The reason you just described, the one in which people don't return the movie, is precisely why an adult's name needs to be attached to the slip.”

Queerly enough, the man took it in stride and provided the requisite information without further complaint.

For Your Information

Continuing a train of thought from the previous update, Fernando's distribution company underwent some “internal restructuring” at the beginning of the year. Part of this restructuring was firing Fernando's old account manager, a wonderfully genial lady who'd been working there for at least fifteen years, and replacing her (and a number of others) with “new blood” in order to save money on salary and benefits, Fernando's cynicism presumes.

He's become convinced that they're doing it wrong because Fernando has suffered at least one semi-major fuck-up every month since February. Little things like competence go a long way to finding oneself in Fernando's good graces, and likewise failing at one's responsibilities goes a long way to finding oneself on Fernando's shit list. Perhaps the company is still being quite competently run, but Fernando's not seeing it from where he is situated. If he is being shunted to the bottom of the importance barrel because some more profitable location needs the copies Fernando would otherwise possess, that's fine; he owns a podunk video store in Podunksville, Podunkia. He doesn't for one second fault a company for trying to make money. That's what they're intended to do.

But he does fault a company when it completely ignores the needs of its patrons (provided, of course, they aren't deserving of such derision in the first place. Fernando can't think of anything he has done that might offend their sensibilities...except of course for this and other chronicles that he has shared with the world). Fernando likes making money just as much as his distributor, and if his means of income generation is negatively impacted to too great a degree he won't hesitate for one moment to seek out a way to recoup those financial losses. And if that requires no longer ordering Universal Studios videos from his distributor, so be it. One reaps what one sows.

Moral of the story: don't fail, and Fernando will have no problems with you.

Back-Order Woes

Fernando receives his ordered movies for May 3^rd, 2011, and sees listed on the invoice The Dilemma. Unfortunately for him, there are zero copies in the box and there is a big, fat 0 in the shipped items column. So Fernando does the business-responsible thing and fires off an email asking when he could expect to receive the copies he needs in order to appear competent at procuring inventory for his business.

“You should be getting them end of the week,” is the response Fernando received. Fernando is okay with this, and more importantly he is able to shunt the responsibility of film absence up onto the distributor's shoulders with promises of the film's arrival by Friday.

Friday arrives to a distinct lack of The Dilemma. Fernando shoots off another, somewhat less-polite email asking what the deal is. He receives an apologetic response promising—promising--that he'll have his movies come Tuesday. The blame for a lack of movies was placed upon Universal Studios' apparent inability to duplicate enough product to meet demand.

Well, whatever. Except, come the following Tuesday (today, by odd coincidence) when Fernando receives his movies for that week, there's still no The Dilemma. It is, however, listed and marked as still on back-order. So Fernando sends a third email, this one chock-full of snark, inquiring as to the status of his order and whether or not his Universal movies are still on perpetual back-order. He receives a prompt answer, and opens the email with bated breath to read...an automated response. Apparently his account manager at the distribution company decided to not be in the office today, but don't worry! She'll be back tomorrow!

It's cool, though. Fernando is probably going to start going out of his way to pick up Universal comedy releases from Wal-Mart so he can ensure he has the movies that he needs when he needs them.

Mistaken

It's a Saturday afternoon and a self-righteous semiregular lady enters. She browses for a bit but soon approaches the counter with her tags in hand. Fernando does what he does best and retrieves the movies she's requisitioned: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Dawn Trader, The Hangover, and The King's Speech.

While this is happening she's pawing through Fernando's stamp card box in search of her card, claiming that she has a free rental coming.

“You don't, actually, so it comes to nine dollars,” says Fernando.
“I just want to make sure.”
“I mean, I'm sure. If you had a full card, it would be on my list of full cards. Your name is not on the list.”
“You could have forgotten or made a mistake.”

But, no, Fernando did not make a mistake, and as he is sifting through his card box for her unfilled card, she scowls at the movies before her.

“I didn't want The King's Speech. I wanted Harry Potter.”
“Er...I got the tag for The King's Speech.”
“Well, I didn't want that. You must have mixed up the tags.”
“Actually,” says Fernando without too much of his usual snark, “yesterday was a really slow day for The King's Speech. None of them were rented. I did, however, rent out most of my copies of Harry Potter. I sorted through those returns earlier today. There is no way or reason I would have moved one of the tags for The King's Speech onto Harry Potter arbitrarily.”

He wanted so very badly to say, “You must have made a mistake,” but restrained himself. Fernando is all about self-control.

Content Priorities

“Hey, is this movie any good?” The film in question is Black Swan.

“Actually, it is,” replies Fernando. “I don't think you can go wrong renting it.”

“Yeah, but do you think I would like it?” The speaker in this case is a young adult male regular customer of Fernando's.

“Well, it's a wonderfully twisted psychological thriller type movie, if you're into those. It also has a scene where Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis go down on each other.”

The man plucks a tag off the case without further hesitation.

Inventory Expansion

“Hey, do you have the movie Friday?”

“I think I did at one point, but let me check to make sure it wasn't sold or stolen at some juncture.” So Fernando heads into his computer and does a quick search. “Nope, sorry. Doesn't look like I have it.”

“You should get it, man. Have you seen it?”

“I have. It's fairly decent. The sequels are nothing to write home about though.”

“Dude, you should pick it up. I'd totally come in to rent it.”

“Well, that would go a small way towards recouping my initial investment in a decade-old movie.”

Gust of Wind Dance

One weekend in late April consisted of nothing but wind and sleet and occasional rain. It proved very good for business (people are loath to head outdoors into hateful weather) but when it all died down Fernando saw that a portion of his roof had been deshingled and damaged. That's no good. That requires Fernando to spend money, and he has ever been a miser par excelance.

So Fernando heads over to his insurance people to inform them of his desire to invest in a new roof. Sure, the damage was only to a part of it, but Fernando realized that the whole thing may as well be replaced because, except a portion where some shingle repair had been done five, six years before, it kinda looked old and nasty. “It would be preventative,” he argued to Nice Insurance Lady. “Else the parts that need repairing would get repaired but six months, a year down the road some other little piece would get damaged and that would be no good for either of us because we'd need to shell out more money to fix that little problem.”

Nice Insurance Lady accepted Fernando's argument and asked when he could get an estimate in to her. He told her that he called up a local roofer who would come by “soon(tm)” to measure and give Fernando price estimates on reshingling the roof versus throwing up a metal one. Nice Insurance Lady said she would pass the claim on up her bureaucratic line and that Fernando would receive a call from an adjustor within the next few days.

The very next day, Fernando was awoken at 7.48 A.M. Central Standard Time as his cell phone went berserk. Who could be calling what gaaaaaah, were the thoughts seeping through his sleep-addled consciousness. Fernando missed answering the phone with all the grace and serenity that could be expected of him at 7.45 in the morning, and it went to voicemail.

Fuck this. I'll deal with it later, grouched Fernando as he collapsed back into blissful slumber.

He awoke some hours later and checked his voicemail. As he listened to the message, he seethed:

“Hello, Fernando. This is Magic Man Potion, your adjuster from Magic Man Insurance. I am trying to reach you regarding your claim status. Your claim number is 11111, and you can reach me at 555-555-5555 if you have any questions or concerns. Once you get an estimate, you can fax that to us at 555-555-5556, extension 5335. Thank you.”

FAX?

God, it's like these people have never heard of emails, email attachments, or .pdf files. Or printer/scanner combos. Or any one of the gaggle of technologies that aren't fax machines but do everything a fax machine can do, and more, and easier, and by all rights better.

Fernando wonders if they would like the estimate produced on a typewriter, as well.