Annual Abscondments IV: In Closing

2013 was a busy, busy year for Fernando's more roguish clientele, though the nefarious acts of thievery came in bursts: first late February/early March, then a second wave in July, and finally an end-of-year push in November. It proved Fernando's worst year yet in terms of lost inventory; twenty-one of Fernando's beloved and not-so-beloved movies were torn from his loving embrace and taken into the unexpected custody of a great wide spectrum of ne'er-do-wells.

This is their obituary.

Expendables 2, Wanderlust, The Notebook: A lady comes into the store, one who hadn't been in since the days of the old Keeper. She had some late fees from that elder age, $21. Fernando informed her of this fact and, against all odds, she agreed to pay them off.

So how'd that work out for you, Fernando? You earned $30 only to lose about $60 in inventory. Look on the bright side: if you keep this up there may be room for you on the executive board of a major financial institution. And on the brighter side, you no longer have a copy of The Notebook available to recommend as a dumb-silly romantic chick flick.

I Am Number 4: High school kid comes in and sets up account, rents one movie, never returns it. He came back to the store on one occasion in the company of some of his less-lawbreak-y peers and Fernando shamed him so thoroughly that he actually put down five bucks towards his debt. 

He still owes Fernando $35.

The Greatest Game Ever Played: Because if you're a thirty-something woman setting up an account whose sole purpose, apparently, is to steal something, best make it a mediocre movie about golf that had otherwise never been rented in all the years Fernando worked at and owned the Dominion.

New Year's Eve, War, 24: Redemption: Remember the guy from way, way back who trashed a copy of Ice Age and then visited the store not long after Fernando took over in the misguided hopes that new ownership would erase his debt? Yeah, he, Fernando later learned, at some point hooked up with a gullible young lady who set up an account and, apparently, rented for him by proxy. Three pieces of Fernando's inventory went missing but at least two of those three were uninspiring renters even when they were fresh and new and the third, while a decent, testosterone-laden popcorn flick, was not of any particular importance in the grand scheme of things.

But hey if either of them ever return to the store down the road I can feel justified affixing the "saga" tag to this affair.

Warm Bodies, Cabin in the Woods, 127 Hours: Kind of a twofer with the next entry. See below.

Beautiful Creatures, Real Steel: Okay, so, two guys in their late teens/early twenties come to the store at the same time and both of them set up accounts to rent some movies. One of them is from Happyrock, about thirty miles away; the other is more local and claims an address in Melvinsburg. Fernando checks out the licenses and gets phone numbers from them (one of which is a local land line) and rents to them.

When the movies had been out for three days, Fernando calls them up in turn to request that they bring them back in. The cell phone goes to not-set-up voicemail and Fernando leaves a message. The other one rings and rings and no one picks up. The following day, Fernando tries again. Still voicemail, still no response.

This repeats for a number of additional days until, finally, somebody picks up on the landline, a woman.

Fernando explains the situation to her and asks that she inform the young man that his movies are still out and if he could return them promptly. The woman tells Fernando that he is "out of state for work." Fernando asks that she pass along his request and to check around if, perhaps, the movies were sitting there at home. She agrees to do precisely that.

Buuuuut she never called him back, and Fernando also never did get in contact via cell phone with the guy from Happyrock.

Stand Up Guys, Prometheus: A middle-aged woman comes in to rent a pair of movies and they don't make it back. When he calls her up to find out what is going on, she tells him that she gave them to her son to drop off on his way back to school. Fernando lets her know that her son never did drop them off, and that he would appreciate it if she could double-check with him to make sure they make it back the next time he comes home.

Nope.

Star Trek: Into Darkness, The Muppets: Okay, sometimes people wake up on the stupid side of life. This pair of customers set up an account back in April, after having just moved into the area, and had been absolutely exemplary renters up til then. They were genial, treated Fernando like an actual person, and almost never late; when they were, they killed off their late fees immediately.

Then, one afternoon, they rented the above movies and they didn't make it back over the next three days. Fernando found this peculiar, so he called them up. One of them answered and told him that their car had taken a dump on them and that they were terribly sorry about everything, and that they would bring them back promptly once they found someone to give them a ride down to the Dominion, for they resided well into the boonies. This sounded good to Fernando, so he wished them the best and told them they could hash out everyone once the movies got back in.

Alas, they never did, and all of Fernando's subsequent calls went unanswered. What a pity, what a waste.

Now You See Me, Despicable Me: The girl who'd gotten a sorta-but-not-really divorce from her boyfriend a few years back dropped by and rented these movies, which never came back. She ignored Fernando's requests to return them, and now Fernando's sympathies lie with her jilted ex, wherever he may be.

The most embarrassing part is that she used a full stamp card for a free rental on Despicable Me. Would she have had it if Fernando had been less kind when she initially asked him to divvy up their communal stamps?

The Purge, Disaster Movie: Fernando tries not to judge people based on their last names and familial relations, but sometimes circumstances make it so incredibly hard to do. The young lady who rented this, by all appearances, comes from a family of thieves: her parents rented some things back under the Old Keeper's watch and never returned them. Then her older sister rented some things a few years back and never returned them.

Now, of course, she has rented some things and never returned them.

Fuck it, the next time somebody with that last name stops in, Fernando is going to be King Dick and let his prejudices run their fullest course.

Not a day goes by on which Fernando does not lament the passing of every one of these unfortunate abductees. Yes, even you, The Greatest Game Ever Played, even you. In fact, your loss is felt most keenly of all.

The question remains: What promises does 2014 hold? This Fernando cannot say. Truth be told, he seems to have driven away most of the assholes and recent weeks down at the Dominion have been, well, enjoyable. No entitled women coming to manipulate him into free things. No characters from days gone by stopping by to put into motion their inscrutable goals. No curious and random new faces with wretched spatial judgment.

Just the normal, genial customer base who rents movies, returns them mostly on time, and clears up any small late fees with a humble apology.

In short, the Chronicles seem to have wound down. Like in every closed system, the occurrence of random and interesting things decays as entropy increases and said system approaches a uniform, vacuous state. Rather than continue to draw out the unnecessary by milking a franchise (such as this is) until even its bones have been rendered down and snorted by a dwindling number of consumers (such as it is), as is the case with a certain industry that revolves around the production and distribution of motion pictures, it is time, I feel, to bring this book to a close.

There shall be other happenings, other tales of woe and dread, and even occasional tales of uplifting experience, I'm certain. Entropy is almost inevitably stalled out in the short term by random occurrences. Perhaps a fluctuation in fate will jar a new wave of content appropriate for the Chronicles of Fernando H. Stevens.

But until and unless there is such a time, let me tell you of a man who, in the late summer of 2010, made the lifechanging decision to cast his lot into the realm of weblogging through the collation and recording of happenings of great intrigue and of possible interest to souls other than himself. The wrangling with irate word processing programs, the mostly-kept rigor of deadlines, and the random acts of God which threatened the stability and structural integrity of his Chronicles did not daunt him. 

That man was one Fernando H. Stevens.

He had a blast, and he hopes you did too.

Reckoning

A reedy guy who'd been to the store only maybe five times over three or so years comes in one day and rents a couple of movies. His modus operandi over previous visits was as follows: return the films a day late and take the three or so dollar late fee. Fernando diligently adds the tally to the late fee list and it sits there, a toady blemish, until Fernando reaches the point where he wants to trim the damn thing down to below four or five pages, whereupon he culls the late fees under ten bucks attached to people who hadn't come to the store in roughly a decade. Soon thereafter, through a combination psychic resonance, word on the street, and confirmation bias on Fernando's part, Timely Tim returns to the store with a clean slate and this phoenixesque degeneration starts anew.

The second-to-last time Fernando culled the late fee list, he had once again purged this debtor's history, and Timely Tim made his reappearance. This happened around October of 2012. He rented a couple of movies and they were, again, dropped off a day late. This time, though, Tim came in the following day and rented again. The conversation went roughly like so:

Fernando: “You have three bucks in late fees from yesterday. Did you want to kill them off?”

T.T.: “Oh...I only got enough money for these. I'll hit you up next time?”

Fernando: “That's fine.”

Those movies, too, were returned late. Now, though, T.T.'s late fees had no real reason or excuse on Fernando's part to be swept away, so when Fernando most recently cropped his late list T.T.'s six dollar debt remained intact.

Now it's June, 2013. Timely Tim had made like the cicada he somewhat resembles and stands in the Dominion's foyer. Fernando says to him, “You've got six bucks in late fees, if you wanted to put something down on them.”

“I do?”

“Yeah, from October of last year.”

T.T. screws up his face in concentration. “Are you sure?”

“Fairly sure. We had a talk last time. You returned some movies a little late and said you'd pay the late fees next time you were in.”

“You said that was three bucks.”

“You rented again that day and returned those late too.”

“Well, that one wasn't my fault. My friend was s'pposed to drop them off.”

“But your friend didn't. Perhaps if you ask you will be reimbursed for your troubles.”

“How much does it come to altogether?”

“Thirteen bucks.”

T.T.'s expression is momentarily cunning, then resigned. “'Kay, fine.” He squares up with Fernando and takes his movies out.

They are returned four days late. Eighteen is many more dollars than six, and Fernando looks forward to T.T.'s next visit a year down the road.

Mix-and-Match Critter

A couple of people Fernando had never seen before come into the store. The male half is one of those ratty-looking guys who enjoys placing an abundance of metal bits in his head while the female half is one of those Fernando-aged people who nonetheless look far older than their years.

They browse about and eventually decide on Season of the Witch. The guy plucks the tag and brings it to the counter.

“This is that one with the ghost-devil-demon-zombie-monster, right?”

Holy 3E added templates, Vecna! “Uh, yes,” answers Fernando, since the man is partially right and Fernando didn't feel like arguing the point. “Can I get your name?”

“Bobby Strong.”

“Do you have an account here?”

“Yeah, I should. Haven't been here in three years or something.”

Fernando takes a gander at his records and, hey, what do you know? “It seems you have some late fees, actually. Nineteen dollars, back from '06. Did you want to pay them off?”

“Uh...do I have to?”

“Well, you haven't been to the store in five years and you racked up nineteen bucks before. Put down say six bucks and we can trickle the rest out no problem.”

Instead of bitching and getting upset like the usual ornery customer, he puts down ten dollars upon the late fee. Marvelous!

Oh, except for the fact that the movie is now sort of...absent. Shame on you! That's what you get for seeing goodness in people, Fernando H. Stevens!

More Late Fee Madness

A lady Fernando doesn't recognize enters the store one day and selects five movies to rent. When she approaches the counter, Fernando goes through his usual routine of asking her name and if she has an account.

“Yeah, but I haven't been in for a while,” she responds. “My name's Janna F.”

Ah-ha. Ms. Janna once rented a single movie from here back in 2007 and it failed to be returned. It was an older one, so she “only” owed $29 in late and replacement fees. Fernando informed her of this, and that she would need to pay them off before he considered renting to her. She made a valiant attempt at arguing.

“You can't do that! You're the new owner so you can't collect on those!”

“That's an interesting premise. Where do you work?”

“Huh?”

“Where do you work?” Fernando repeats.

“Why?” she asks.

“This will all become clear in a few seconds, so bear with me. Where do you work?”

Thrice said and done, to use the parlance of The Dresden Files. “The Shinra Corporation.” (Note: Not actually the actual fictional Shinra Corporation)

“Oh, awesome. You guys do billing. Let's say your billing cycle goes from month to month and you take over the business as its head, and this transaction goes through on the twenty-first. According to your logic, you would forfeit on collecting money for all the services the company provided to customers for the first through twentieth, to say nothing about possible collections on late or delinquent accounts, all because ownership of the company changed hands.”

“But--” she attempts to interrupt.

“But,” interjects Fernando, “you wouldn't actually do that, would you? Because that would be stupid.”

She decides at this point she has been outmaneuvered and leaves.

Late Fee Negotiations

One snowy day a gentleman enters the store. Fernando does not recognize him at first, but then he speaks and all comes back. This gent is on Fernando's ban list because a great many movies were rented by him years ago and never returned, and they were inherited by Fernando when he took over the store. And by “great many” I mean like $154 worth of late and replacement fees.

There are other customers in the store at the time and Fernando does not feel it fitting to embarrass the chap in front of everyone else, so he is free to browse the store for a while before coming up to the counter with eight rental tags in his hands.

“You've got $154 in late fees,” Fernando states before anything else is done.

“What? Really? I don't remember this.”

“You wouldn't arbitrarily be on that list, trust me.”

“So?” he asks after letting it sink in.

“So, you have $154 in late fees. That's kind of my argument in its entirety. Would you like to pay it off?”

“I don't have that much on me. I have only enough to rent these movies.”

Fernando takes a brief glance at the avalanche of tags. “You have twenty-eight dollars in rentals there.”

“Really? Er...that's...um...a lot. How about you let me rent them and then I'll come back soon and square up with you?”

“How about you put down the twenty-eight dollars on the late fee as a gesture of good faith, since you're intending on squaring up with me soon anyhow?”

He gapes at Fernando for a moment, then books for the exit.

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.

Familiarity Breeds ???

One evening a guy comes into the Dominion, and despite him not having been to the store in eons Fernando immediately recognizes him for two reasons. First, the guy attended Fernando's high school a class below him. Second, he owed Fernando money.

The previous time this gentleman had rented, Fernando was but a lowly wage slave instead of Master of the Dominion. The movies went out and were gone for quite a long while, nearly a week. Fernando and the previous owners pulled out all the stops to get the man to return the two movies he had rented and, finally, their efforts bore fruit. They were deposited in the drop box by the young man's parents one day while Fernando was working.

The only problem is that the movies were ruined. Absolutely nonfunctional. The cases, both inner and outer, and the discs themselves were covered in a horrid cocktail of dirt, pine needles and peanut butter, and the whole ensemble absolutely reeked of hemp having been used in a recreational manner. Needless to say, the old keepers were not amused and rightly charged the young man replacement fees. But he had never come back to the Dominion, perhaps out of wisdom, perhaps out of shame.

But today it seems he woke up and felt like doing something futile and stupid.

So he selects a few rental tags and brings them to the counter where Fernando is waiting. The first thing out of Fernando's mouth is, “You have $45.50 in late fees. You can't rent unless you pay that off, and update all of your customer contact information, and provide a credit card number.”

“What? You're serious?” he sputters.

“Deadly.”

“There's no way I owe forty-five bucks. I haven't been here in forever.”

“Ice Age and Quantum of Solace.”

“What?”

“Those are the two movies you rented about three years ago, took out to your camp or whatever, and returned ruined. You've got $45.50 in late and replacement fees. I won't rent to you until they're taken care of and all the other things I ask are provided.”

Outrage did not seem to have worked, so he tried charm. “C'mon, man. You know me, right?”

Fernando nods. “Yep.”

“Come on. You know me. I promise I'll bring them back.”

“You're right.”

A look of surprise crosses his face. Could his plan actually have worked? “Huh?”

“You're right. I do know you. You're the guy who owes $45.50 in late and replacement fees and cannot rent until they are paid, and then some.”

“I don't have that much on me right now.”

“Then perhaps you should come back another day with the money in hand. Excuse me.” And Fernando begins sorting through some movies that had just been returned via the drop box just moments before.

Buddy leaves, and only time will tell if he will make another visit down the road.

∃a(NoRent(a) -> NoRent(a))

Fernando sees a man in his mid-20s come in with his girlfriend. Fernando recognizes this Girlfriend Man because of a past incident involving an unreturned movie, despite him not having come to the store in quite a long time. Fernando's memory is quite good when it comes to people owing him money. Anyhow, Girlfriend Man plucks and brings up a couple of rental tags and Fernando says to him, “You have $56 in late fees. You can’t rent until you pay that off.”

Girlfriend Man decides to get belligerent, as people always do. “From what?”

“Well, you rented a movie over two years ago and failed to return it.”

“And I got $56 in late fees from one movie how?”

“By renting it and not returning it, as I just said. Late fees add up and then it’s about twenty dollars for a replacement. It could have been a lot more, but they were stopped after less than two weeks.”

“I’m not paying $56 in late fees. Tell me what movie it is and I’ll buy a new copy, but that's it.”

“That doesn’t matter because a new copy was already bought. You still owe $56 in late fees.”

“I’m not paying $56.”

“That’s fine. Then you won't be renting.”

“I just won’t rent here anymore.”

Fernando responds, suddenly channeling The Gord, “I believe I said that just now. Door’s to my left.”

Time Assuredly Does Not Heal All Wounds

A man Fernando has never seen enters the store and selects four cases from the rack, bringing them to the counter. This obviates that he has rented here at most one time previously, as any remotely regular customer knows to select the rental tags, so Fernando sets the customer to filling out a membership application while Fernando takes a peek at the ancient-aaaaancient late lists, just to be sure.

It turned out that Mr. Cases had late fees going back over four years, from before Fernando ever set foot in Someone Else's Dominion as the humblest of cashier jockeys. But, as he inherited all accounts payable and receivable when he took over, the fee was his to collect. It was not an extensively, amazingly large one ($26), but one that had lingered for quite a long span of time and that Fernando thought should need to be paid off fully before the individual in question could rent again. When Fernando informed him of this, the man feigned obsequiousness and pleaded to rent his flotilla of movies anyway, promising to bring money to pay off the late fees the next day. Fernando suggested the man bring the money tomorrow to pay off the late fees, and then he could rent.

Unsurprisingly, he never returned.