Keys to My Heart

A lady comes into the store one afternoon and has in tow three children. She meanders to the new releases while setting the offspring free to spread woe all across the Dominion. One of them, in particular, takes it upon himself to screech and run like a peyote-addict howler monkey. Fernando sighs and closes his eyes and prays for it all to end.

The child begins shrieking even more loudly and Fernando hears a whup-skrah, the sound of something whipping through the air and then scraping against wood or plaster. He emerges from his lair in a great tsunami of righteous ire and checks out what exactly transpires in his store. The mother chooses this moment to take a renewed interest in her brood and hurries to block Fernando's path, but he can still see the thing which transpires.

The shrieking child gibbers and points beneath the racks which house his sci-fi and fantasy movies. The mother shouts, “What's going on!” but the kid just hops skyward, turns, and runs further down the aisle. The other two children, not having failed their Wisdom checks, huddle close to Mom.

“Where are my keys?” she demands of her less-scurrilous kids. One of them points in the direction of the racks.

Fernando strides past the woman and peers into the dark chasms from which no explorer returns unscarred. A lanyard keychain is slung over one of the crossbars, just out of easy reach.

Fernando puffs a short sigh. “Hang on, I'll get a broom.” He retrieves the item from his back room, maneuvers it awkwardly, and at last hooks the lanyard. He lifts it up and out of the fell pit, depositing it in the woman's hands.

The woman has the good sense to look somewhat abashed. “Thanks. I'm so sorry.”

“My only question is, why would you give him your keys.”

“He likes to play with them.”

“I can see that.”

And lawn darts are the recreational items banned because they were supposedly unsafe for kids?

Shovelware

Fernando is enjoying himself one evening. He'd dug out his DVDs of The It Crowd earlier in the day and had spent it in a cozy bubble of proper nerdish mirth and awkwardness. That program (or perhaps “programme”) has a great many important life lessons to impart upon the ignorant who seek enlightenment.

A lady enters the store with three kids in tow, between the ages of three and six. Fernando pauses the DVD and greets her. She reciprocates and then turns to her children. “You kids stay right here by me, okay?” She leads them into the Dominion's main aisle and begins to browse the new releases.

Valiant effort, Mom. All for naught, but props are given when deserved. She did her damndest to adhere to Fernando's sign, and for this he cannot fault her.

For her children do the exact opposite of obeying her commands. They promptly evade her grasp and split up into three unbridled mini-cyclones of destruction determined to rearrange the shelves. They giggle and cavort and sow despair within the Dominion's walls. The mother tries reigning in the loin-beasts, but she only possesses two arms and so one member of the fell triumvirate is always able to roam freely.

When at last she herds the trio of children into the Dominion's foyer, she commands them to remain there. “Don't touch anything!” she says. She gives Fernando a sheepish look. “I'm so sorry.”

Fernando shrugs. “Kids happen.”

The lady returns to her browsing. The kids stay in place for a blissful fifteen seconds before one of them has come across a new toy.

Fernando has a very nice, ergonomic, bright orange plastic snow shovel which he inherited along with the rest of the Dominion when he became Keeper. In winter, he leans it on wall separating the office from the entry foyer, between his New Releases whiteboard and the switch controlling the Dominion's interior lighting.

Whunngg goes the shovel's plastic scoop against the wood of Fernando's sales rack. One of the kids squeals and shortly thereafter a second fff-whunngg fills the store. The sound is not one which has much power behind it, but it portended foul misdeeds.

Fernando rises from his seat and walks over to the counter. At the same time, the mother has dropped the case she was reading directly to the floor and bolts into the foyer. She snatches the shovel away from two of her three offspring and leans it against the wall. “Okay, we're leaving now!” she says, gathering her brood and forcing them into the chilly outdoors, whereupon she packs them into her minivan and drives away.

Fernando walks out into the main aisle and replaces Taken 2 in its rightful place. He wanders the rest of the store and rights the wrongs he encounters. He then inspects his foyer. His bag of salt had been tipped over and a small dusting of crystals were mounded around the opening at the bag's top. He rights the bag, sweeps up the spilled salt, and nods.

Then he reenters his office and resumes his journey to a more mirthful place.

Biological Warfare

A young woman and her offspring enter the store one evening. She is a couple of years Fernando's junior and possesses a male child aged three or four, certainly old enough to put together coherent sentences. Said boy escapes his mother's grasp and heads up the aisle which opens on a direct course towards the office and just comes on in. The kid runs up next to Fernando's file cabinet, looks him square in the eyes, and proudly announces, “I just farted!”

His weaponized methane payload delivered, the boy gambols out of the Dominion's office and rejoins his mother. Fernando thinks nothing of it, then a short while later thinks everything of it.

Small things like cats, dogs, and children do not seem like they should have the physical capability to create such otherworldly stenches, but they nevertheless issue violations of all that is good and just in the world from their anuses.

The Parenting Trap

The day on which Fernando rebuked the cultist seemed to be going fairly well. After all, he had salvaged his sanity and it had cost him relatively little. The day could only snowball to the better.

All momentum the joy-ball had gained was lost come around 6 PM.

A lady came into the store. She bore a toddler in her arms. After a short while, the toddler began to cry. Rather than try to soothe it or perhaps to remove it from the store because it might irk the other customers present (to say nothing of the Keeper of the Dominion), she did the super-smart and super-responsible thing: she let it run loose.

Oh, good.

Rather than quieting the child down, the new-found freedom goaded it to new and ever more annoying heights. It thought the areas under Fernando's rental racks were fine places to explore. They are, in truth, the opposite. Gazing beneath one of them is akin to visiting the murky jungles of Borneo. One second you're safe and secure and the next an arthropod the size of your forearm has injected its descendants beneath your epidermis while you've just contracted no fewer than three incredibly uncomfortable tropical diseases.

“Please get your child out from under there,” Fernando says once he hears the unmistakable ker-thump-tump-tump of a toddler bounding off the inside surfaces of the racks like it's the ball in an Arkanoid game.

“Oh, he's fine,” says Mother of the Year.

“I would prefer that he remain that way, actually. I'd rather not have my racks fall in on him.”

As if on cue, Satan chooses this moment to channel the ambient noise filling the deepest bowels of Hell through the young child's vocal tract. Fernando had never in all his years experienced an unearthly, ear-shattering wail. The other patrons in the store stopped what they were doing to stare in mixed awe and despair at the source of the noise, for they realized just as Fernando did that the foul denizens of the underworld had left the imprint of a goat's hoof on their awareness that would never, ever fade.

The newly formed gateway to Hell crawls out from under the rack in a shrieking, gibbering frenzy. Tears stream down its face and it paws frantically at the hair on its head as it spins in place, a gyrating puppet possessed by the lords of the deep. It gives another scream which portends nothing but eternal suffering and collapses. The mother rushes over, picks it up, and murmurs soothing words in its ear.

It seems the lad had trespassed in the domain of one of Fernando's Guardian Spiders. Even Fernando is careful in dealing with them.

Now that the fit has passed, awkward silence blooms. Fernando shifts in his chair and the other customers cautiously go back to perusing Fernando's wares. They find movies in suspiciously short order, pay, and leave. The transactions are carried out with a minimum of banter. This leaves Fernando alone with the mother and her offspring.

“You shouldn't allow kids down there,” she says to Fernando once the store is empty.

“I don't, actually.”

“You have it so they can get down there.”

Fernando looks up at the “THIS IS NOT A DAYCARE. KEEP YOUR CHILDREN UNDER CONTROL” sign that the woman cannot see from her current position. “Auto repair places have lifts and stuff that kids are able to get under, too.”

“And?”

“Well, if your kid runs out underneath one of them, is that the store's fault?”

“That's not what I'm saying.”

Fernando flicks his eyes back up to his sign. “But it's what I'm saying. If I had put a leash on your kid to keep him from going under those racks you would have rightfully raised holy hell because, last I checked, I can't decide to raise other people's kids on a whim. Besides, you're the one who told me he was fine under there.”

The woman's mouth gapes and she stares at Fernando. Then she closes it and says, “Okay, we're leaving.”

Fernando shrugs, inwardly relieved. “Have a nice evening.”

Parenting licenses. They need to happen.

Price Schemes

A lady and her two kids come into the store one evening. The girl child is quiet and well-behaved, but the boy child is a busybody who insists up and down on renting a particular movie. This irks his mother, who commands him in no uncertain terms to put it back.

“But I really want to see it!” he says to her.

Fernando glances over at them in response to the shout. The mother had placed whatever case she was looking it back on the rack and looks down sternly at her offspring. “Use your brain for one second. Why would I pay four dollars for a movie you could watch for less?”

“It's not on there!” insists the boy.

“I'm not paying four dollars for it, and that's final.”

So the boy comes up to the counter and puts the case down upon it. “Hey, how much is this?” Well-played, son.

Fernando gets up and crosses the office as the mother darts over and snatches the case up. Fernando can't make out the title, but he's familiar enough with the visuals of his inventory to know that she holds The Corpse Bride. “He doesn't need to--” she says to the child.

“That one is two bucks,” says Fernando in response to the lad's question. The boy turns to his mother with a smug grin on his face.

“We're still not getting it.”

“Why not? I want to see it and it's not four dollars!”

At this point the father, who had remained outside with his truck parked in an annoying position directly in the middle of Fernando's parking lot before the door, enters the store, maybe in response to having seen the spat brewing in Fernando's foyer. “What's going on?” he asks.

“I want to rent this movie but Mom won't let me!” says the boy.

Mother chimes in. “I won't pay for an overpriced movie like that.”

Father takes the case from the child. “You heard her. We're not getting this if they charge too much for it.”

“It's two dollars,” Fernando says, hoping to forestall any potential rumors that he's out to fleece the population of their hard-earned money by pricing his wares at an unreasonable rate. This doesn't work. The father just gives Fernando a death stare for daring to interrupt a rhetorical tirade with facts.

The mother takes the case from the father and looks at the son. “Where did you get this?”

The boy doesn't answer. His father hauls on his forearm and pulls him out of the store. The silent little girl meekly follows.

The mother takes one last look of disdain around the Dominion before she throws the case up on the sales rack. Because, apparently, asking the owner of the store where it should go, or even saying to him, “Hey, could you put this back for me? Sorry for all the trouble,” is asking too much.

Fernando bids her a good evening as she walks out the door. She doesn't answer.

Environmentalist

Fernando speaks with Ronaldo one Saturday at the Dominion about topics great and small. The current subject was how Ronaldo knows a man named Sean Connery who plays on the sports teams at a nearby school and how his parents are certified awesome for giving their son that name. Then a vehicle pulls up and a child aged eight or ten clambers out of the passenger's side door. "Clambered" because his shape somewhat resembles a panda bear if panda bears were pasty and rust-colored instead of white and black. That boy will have diabetes issues down the road. He holds in his hands a paper cup bearing the Coca-Cola brand.

“God, I hope he doesn't bring that in here,” says Fernando.

Ronaldo is confused for a moment, since this statement is quite unrelated to the current conversational thread. He turns and notices the lad, who stands in the parking lot and leans into the minivan to speak with his parental unit. “Doesn't look like it. I think he was just holding it--”

The boy then turns and pitches the cup out into the snow next to Fernando's building. “Or he's going to do that,” says Fernando, striding around the counter and out the door as Ronaldo watches. The boy has leaned into the van again and so does not notice Fernando wading into the two feet of snow where the cup lay. Our protagonist picks it up and finds that it is still half-filled with some variety of the sweet, dark liquid for which the Coca-Cola company is famous.

The boy and his mother, by this point, have passed behind Fernando and near the entrance to the Dominion. Fernando calls out to the young litterbug, “I think you dropped something,” and waggles the snow-encrusted cup.

The boy does not show any remorse for being caught in the act and the mother is profoundly apathetic towards her offspring's maltreatment of the world. “Oh,” he says, and takes the container back from Fernando. He opens the passenger-side door and replaces the cup inside the minivan, where it does not deface the earth nor Fernando's property, then rejoins his mother inside.

They rent some movies and depart. Fernando watches to make sure a redux of what just happened does not occur out of a prepubescent boy's spite, but it does not.

Fools and Babes

Two girls, a boy, and their father are in the store one evening. The kids are in the kids/family section; Dad is browsing on the other end of the store in horror.

“Hey, watch this!” says one of the children. These three words have never been the preface to something good in the history of language.

Fernando hears the sound of running feet and toppling cases, followed by childish giggling. The patter of footsteps recedes and the giggling intensifies. Fernando comes out of the office and, yup, one of the little bastards had just run full tilt along one of the rows of movies. She's preparing for Round 2, arm outstretched and fingertips snaked around the edge of Enchanted, which lies at the end of that row. The row above...well, which used to be above anyway, is now on the floor. The entire row. Dad hasn't deigned to focus on anything outside his favored lair in horror.

“Please stop,” Fernando says.

Dad hears that no problem and is goaded into immediate action, naturally enough. “What're you doing with my kids?” he thunders, swinging around the back end of the store.

“Some movies fell down,” says the other girl.

“Oh yeah?” Dad does not inflect it as a question, and he leers at Fernando as though he is the bad guy in this situation.

Fernando could not gainsay the little brat. Parents believe in the perfection of their crotchfruit and Dad is already ill-disposed towards Fernando for daring to chastise the kids' behavior. The last thing Fernando needs is for a grown man to throw a tantrum over the believed mistreatment of his children. Fernando decides to act diplomatically (for once). “Yeah. I was about to pick them up but they have to go back in the right order. If you guys are ready I can get you on your way before I start, though.”

This seems to satisfy Dad. They rent four movies but it wasn't worth it, not in the slightest, for Fernando had to pretend he was not in a foul mood to customers for the rest of the night.

They Are Our Future

A semi-regular enters the store with a man and a child of four or five in tow. Apparently she had begun seeing this gent at some nebulous point and they've decided that Saturday will be kickass movie night. Fernando has never had any trouble with this semi-regular before.

But this time a child is involved.

The first thing which sets off Fernando's annoyance radar is that the kid is running around the store like he just downed three liters of energy drink. He crashes into one of Fernando's racks and sends DVD cases tumbling to the ground. The semi-regular barks at the child to behave while the parent (there's a distinct familial resemblance between the man and the boy) keeps doing his own thing. Well, okay, he made half-assed noises of chastisement but his waggling of the finger carried no threat and so was disregarded by the little demonspawn.

The kid gets bored of running up and down the aisles before long and reaches the conclusion that Fernando's life needs a bit of boundless joy added. He makes a sound like a revving engine and makes a running leap into the office area, then pivots on his heel and sprints out, straight down the aisle between the racks directly in line with the door leading to Fernando's sacrosanct back room. He doesn't let the door deter him, no sir. He twists that knob and opens that fucker right up and vanishes into the room which had just been partially renovated and recently cleaned.

“I'm sorry, nobody's allowed back there,” says Fernando, moved to action at last. He tries honey on these annoying flies. “Please could you get your son out of there?”

“Why? It's no problem. I'll make sure he doesn't get into anything.” Dad says this while not paying attention to his offspring's hijinks

Well, that didn't work. Time to transition to dick mode. “Okay, well, nobody is allowed back there. That's just the way things are.”

This makes sense to him, so Dad flails parental authority about ineffectually by offering inducements for the kid to come out (yeah, sure, reward your kid's shitty behavior by promising them ice cream if they stop acting like hellions). The kid gets bored of the amazing sights back there, like giant tubs of drywall compound and stepstools, and returns to the front of the store of his own accord. Semi-Regular Customer, meanwhile, has apologized profusely about this behavior, but “you know how kids are.”

Maybe it's time to set up a D&D-style trap on that thing. It can only serve for the betterment of our species.

Creepypasta

Fernando is processing the rental slips from a glut of customers into the computer when one of his regulars pulls in. He enters the store along with a young boy two, three years old, the sort people might find cute and endearing with his tousled blond hair and little red coat. Fernando never knew this customer had a child.

The alluring pull of Open Office Base is just slightly less powerful than the force of gravity at a black hole's event horizon, so Fernando is sucked into his work and dead to the world for a few minutes. When he finishes up and whirls the chair about to see what else is happening in life, he sees the young boy standing in the office, behind the counter, staring at Fernando in absolute silence. The boy holds in his hands a small plastic pumpkin. The father is somewhere browsing, out of Fernando's line of sight.

Fernando blinks. “Um.” He's crappy with children, for he usually treats them like fun-sized adults and society does not approve of acting towards children in that way.

The boy looks on, motionless.

“I'm sorry, but you can't be back here.”

Still no response.

“Um...please go back to your dad?”

The boy takes a step forward and extends the hands clasping the orange pumpkin in Fernando's direction. Fernando at this point wonders if maybe he'd pissed off an Elder God who instigated this and was now watching the show.

“Oh. Um. Okay. Is that for me? Because, thanks, but you should keep it. You'd get more out of it than me.”

The boy continues staring, but his father, a glowing bastion of safety and sanity amidst chaos and despair, comes up to the counter just then with his tags. He sees his son on the other side. “Get up here!”

The boy lowers his hands like an automaton and joins his dad. The rental process completes as usual.

That boy ate Fernando's soul on that day, and he sleeps with a nightlight now.

Chill

A group of four kids ranging in age from 14ish to 7ish meander into the store one afternoon. They might've been siblings; Fernando doesn't know. He's never seen any of them before, in the company of parents or otherwise.

They stand in the store's entrance foyer. One of them says, “Cool, fridge!” and opens the door. Then closes the door. Then opens the door. Then closes the door with greater force. Then opens the door. Then slams the door. Some of Fernando's sodey pops topple over at that one. After a little while, a second round of sodey tumblings ensues when gravity does its nefarious work on the ones presumably leaning at an angle. The four of them break into a cascade of giggles at the devastation.

'Kay. “Hi. Do you guys plan on buying or renting anything today?”

The eldest says, “I don't know. We're just here to chill I think.”

“Alright then. You should probably go chill somewhere else.”

The four leave. Kids these days.

Naming Confusions

A couple of kids, maybe aged eleven or so, enter the store one afternoon. One of them is awed by Fernando's kickass Avatar poster.

“Is that Avatar?” he asks after reading the poster.

“Absolutely it is. Pretty neat, huh?”

“Yeah, I that show is awesome. I really want to see the next one that's coming out!”

“You'll have to wait a little while. Last I heard it was gonna come out in 2014.”

“Nuh-uh!” the kid objects. “They said it's gonna come out next year! I heard one of my friends tell me!”

“I think your friend was mistaken. But, then again, I could be wrong myself. Maybe they moved it up on me since last I checked.” At any rate, the kid doesn't follow up on the conversation so Fernando goes back to doing his own thing.

Anyhow, the kids browse the store for a bit and eventually a tag is thrown up on the countertop. As Fernando fills out the rental slip, he sees the tag is labeled “The Last Airbender.” So the other one.

“Well, that was silly of me before,” Fernando admits to the kids when he sees precisely which Avatar he was supposed to have been discussing. “And you were a hundred percent right.” The kid beams at Fernando. “Cartoon's still better, though. Legend of...well, whatever it is [Korra, Fernando finds out after researching it once the conversation had ended] will be better, too.”

The kids gasp. “You watched it?” the one asks in awe.

“Well, yeah. I own a video rental store. That obligates me to be a silly, socially inept, introvert nerd. Well, that, or the fact that I'm a silly, socially inept, introvert nerd obligates me to own some sort of geekly business. Hard to tell which is the cause and which is the effect.”

Thus does Fernando propagate his rapport.

Socratic Methods

Fernando is enjoying a splendid dinner one evening when a large group of schoolkids enters the store, led by the son of one of Fernando's regulars. All of them are carrying cups of sodey pop from the nearby gas station and some of them have candy bars they munch upon. One of the members of this gaggle who lacks such solid sustenance sniffs audibly. “What're you eating there?” he asks.

“Asopao de pollo,” Fernando responds after clearing his mouth of food.

“Asa-what-what?” the lad repeats.

“Asopao de pollo. It's a Puerto Rican chicken dish with rice, hot peppers, tomatoes, oregano, and paprika. Quite delectable.”

“It smells good.”

“It is good. How can I help you gents tonight?”

The young man Fernando recognizes pipes up. “What's a good funny movie?”

Fernando rises from his seat and marches to the comedy section, the boys trailing him. “That depends on what you personally find humorous. My opinion on the subject very well could be different from your guys'. Point out a movie you guys have already seen and we'll go from there.”

The group of five breaks into debate for a short while and the film they decide upon at the end as their epitome of comedy is Zombieland.

“Is it the zombies that do it for you guys or something unrelated to zombies?”

Fernando is answered with echoed cries of “the zombies.”

Fernando smiles. “Great. Howsabout Shaun of the Dead? Zombies, comedy, Simon Pegg. Pretty fine movie overall.” The five young men agree with Fernando's suggestion, but a small argument breaks out again. Apparently some of their number want a horror movie.

“Well, this one's only two bucks. I'm sure you guys could fit another older horror flick in if you split the cost among the five of you. Plus I actually think you've got a free one coming, so you could get another one on top of that if you wanted something else.”

The young men begin gibbering and writhing at this news. “Oh, man! We have like ten bucks!” they shout before splitting up and combing the store for rental tags. Fernando returns to his seat as they haggle among themselves as to which ones they'll be keeping.

They eventually decide to go with “only” four titles. One was free, but it's still all good.

Child Proxies

One evening Fernando is minding his own business and reading Fark when a beat-up truck pulls up. Normally this does not arouse Fernando's focus overmuch, since most vehicles hereabouts are beaten up to a greater or lesser degree, but this one piqued his interest because he espied the driver.

This particular driver owes Fernando a total of $18.50 in late fees on six different rental slips. He was one of those people who would rack up eight dollars, pay off three, and then gain eight more when the newly-rented movies went unreturned. The last time he'd come in to rent, Fernando asked for more to be put down than the paltry $1.50 he offered so that headway could perhaps be made. If that for some reason sounds unreasonable, he was paying for about $7 in rentals with a twenty.

He returned those movies late, and ended up with $18.50 in late fees total. Fernando was going to put his foot down most firmly this time, oh yes.

So when the chimes on the door tinkled, what did Fernando see but the man's 13ish-year-old son, who has always come in with him before and was, put charitably, a brat. He saunters in like he owns the place and grabs a pair of rental tags and throws them down on the counter. Then he places his palms on the glass countertop and pulses his body up and down in some vague mockery of a push-up. “Do you have any popcorn?” he asks.

“I'm afraid not. Today is Thursday. Popcorn's on weekends,” Fernando says. He selects one of the pens resting upon the countertop and asks, “How much did you guys want to put on your late fee?”

“Nothing. My dad sent me in here to rent for him because he doesn't want to pay his late fees.”

Well, at least he's forthright. But still a moron.

“Huh,” says Fernando, who has stopped writing because he is about to have fun now that this guy has made it crystal clear he has no intentions of dealing with his late fee.

“What?” asks the lad upon noticing, except in the tone of voice that makes it more a demand.

“I'm sorry. I can't rent these to you.”

“What?” Now his voice is getting high-pitched and whiny. “Why not?”

“These movies are rated R and I can't let you have those without explicit parental consent. You're not seventeen, are you?”

Now he's becoming petulant and starts babbling. "You rent those to other people!"

"Well, their parents have given me the okay before. Tell you what,” says Fernando, “howsabout you go get him and bring him in and we'll hammer out the problem with renting these movies. This way I'm not legally at fault for allowing restricted material to come into the hands of a minor.” And Fernando flashes a big grin.

The kid leaves and opens the passenger side of the truck, and Fernando can clearly see an argument brewing. Then he climbs in before the truck peels out in a final, feeble, act of defiance.

Signage

Fernando is helping a customer one evening and goes to retrieve the movies she has requested. When he collects them and brings them to the counter, the woman says, “I just wanted to tell you that I love your sign.”

“Sign?” asks Fernando, “Which one?” Fernando has a number of signs proclaiming different things, for example the rules for his weekly drawing or his Name Your Price shelf, strewn throughout the store.

“That one.” She points at a printed notice affixed to the archway leading from the foyer at the front of the store to the area housing all the rental cases. The sign reads “THIS IS NOT A DAYCARE. KEEP YOUR CHILDREN UNDER CONTROL,” in crimson ink.

Fernando chuckles. “Oh, yeah. Thanks. Yeah, that one got put up after an unfortunate incident about a year and a half ago.”

The woman produces a dainty and nevertheless impressive snort. “You're telling me. I used to work for the state. You wouldn't believe the 'parenting' some of these kids had,” she says, utilizing the awesome power of air quotes in full.

“Definitely,” Fernando agrees. “One or two at a time are reasonable, but piles of kids tend to increase chaos exponentially instead of merely multiplicatively.”

The woman laughs. “So, what happened?”

Fernando sighs as he travels down a trite metaphor to recollect. “There were two different groups of kids in the store with their parents. At one point, they started wrestling among themselves. It ended with about two-thirds of the kids-slash-family section on the floor.”

The woman winces. “Ouch.”

“Yeah. Ouch. So, same day, I put up the sign because the parents just stood there while this was happening.”

“I could never have gotten away with that at my old job,” she says with regret.

Fernando barks a short laugh. “It's one of the perks of being your own boss. Sure, the signs aren't exactly professional quality, but I get to be my sarcastic self upon them. Makes it all worthwhile.”

The woman laughs again, gathers her movies, bids Fernando a good night, and departs.

Guilt Trips

A few weeks after a previous incident, a man comes in with his child and tries to rent, and Fernando has to be “the bad guy” because, fortunately, he is not an idiot and does not rent to people whose accounts exist in Limbo. He explains to the man why things stand as they do: namely a pair of movies were rented and never returned, and now there's $108 in fees looming overhead that need rectifying.

The father was a right perfect gentleman afterward. He had Fernando explain to the 4ish year old why Daddy couldn't rent. So, quite candidly but with a heavy heart, Fernando did, and the child was made very sad.

Sometimes the job sucks. Fernando placed the man on his personal shit list for that one because what was forced to transpire was not business at all.