Sunday, August 4, 2013

Suggestion

A strange man enters the store one bright afternoon. It is a Wednesday, and quite possibly he visits Saladolsa to attend the music festival which is slated to begin the following evening. “Hey, what's a good movie?”
Fernando provides the exact same sequence of words he always does when someone asks him that question without greater specificity. “Depends what you're looking for. Action, comedy, horror...?”
When Fernando trails off, it is meant as a rhetorical tool to encourage the listener to continue mulling through film genres and styles internally, to perhaps come to a conclusion which can then be shared with Fernando so that the Keeper can try to do his job by using his expertise to guide his customer to an appropriate title. When the man pauses the conversation, Fernando assumes he is mulling over things of that nature.
Instead, when he speaks again half a minute later, his tone is somewhat confrontational, dare Fernando say offended. “Is that seriously all that you got?”
Fernando had not planned on being a pedant and holding the man's intellectual hand any longer than necessary, but it seems he has no choice. Enter the snark. “No, I also have other genres available. Musicals, dramas, westerns, kids and--”
The man interjects, “Okay, I get it.”
--family films, sci-fi, war, oh, okay, good.” Fernando stows away his staff of snide words and retrieves his carrot. “Good is incredibly subjective. I don't want to recommend, say, Last Exorcism 2 if you think exorcism flicks are a waste of your time and money. If I did that, you would be less likely to take to heart anything I suggest later, because I'd been wrong before. So, what do you like to watch, and we'll go from there.”
The man mentions Taken and Taken 2 as movies he'd recently seen which he really enjoys, so Fernando points out the existence of Snitch with Dwayne “No Longer The Rock” Johnson. The man reads the back of the case and it seems good enough, for he selects the tag and brings it to the counter.

He doesn't even throw a conniption over setting up the account, and the movie is in the drop box when Fernando arrives at the store the following morning.

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