Free Smells

One evening Fernando is eating his dinner when a semiregular customer and her daughter come into the store. He is unable to greet them immediately because his mouth is full of deliciousness at that moment, but the mother fortunately takes initiative in the conversation.

“What's that smell?” she asks, waiting patiently on Fernando's response as he works his jaws frenetically.

Fernando swallows his mouthful and says, “Jambalaya.”

“It smells really good.”

“I should hope so,” says Fernando, who is somewhat surprised it can be smelled in the first place, “I made it myself.”

At this point the daughter, who's eighteen or thereabouts, chimes in. “Wait. You cook?”

“Of course I do.”

She looks doubtful, no doubt because Fernando is male and stereotyping exists in the world. “Is that from a box?”

“Absolutely not!” Fernando exclaims in mock affront. “I cook from scratch whenever possible.”

The young woman cocks her head. “Could you give me the recipe?”

“What? Uh, sure. Yeah. Let me type it up right quick for you and print it off, since you'd never be able to read my scrawl.” So the two of them browse the store and select a few movies to rent while Fernando types up his jambalaya recipe and prints it off for them before they leave. Due to the way Fernando does his cooking, the recipe is not the most precise set of instructions ever created, and he made this fact clear when he turned it over.

A few days later the daughter returns to the store to rent again, and informs Fernando that her family had prepared jambalaya according to his recipe and found it quite delectable. Fernando will take compliments wherever he finds them.

And, for the curious:

2ish teaspoons olive oil

1 lb. chicken breast

8 oz. spicy sausage

1 large onion, chopped

1 bell pepper, chopped

2-3 stalks of celery, sliced

~3 teaspoons minced garlic

~2 teaspoons crushed red pepper

Cayanne pepper to taste

1 28 oz can of crushed tomatoes

2 cups of brown rice

4 cups of water

Heat oil in large pot and saute chicken and sausage for about 5 minutes. Stir in onion, pepper, celery, garlic, and crushed peppers. Saute for about 5 more minutes until onion is translucent. Add cayenne pepper, tomatoes, rice, and water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and cover; and cook for about 40 minutes until rice is done.

Go forth and prepare!

Valentine's Day

Fernando's most-loathed time of year is the month-long stretch that falls between the middle of January and mid-February. The movie releases are horrible crap; all the good summer flicks come out mid-November through December, while all the Christmastime films don't begin appearing on home video until March. The only releases that had any real box office presence are the romantic comedies that must, by necessity, be released at this time and, without fail, perform spectacularly poorly because they were rushed out to meet the release date in question. So business is somewhat slow in this time despite the generally horrible weather encouraging people to stay indoors at every opportunity.

The other thing that raises Fernando's ire beyond the norm are the jewelry commercials. They appear everywhere with slowly increasing frequency until they peak during the week before February 14^th. They consist of idiot men handing over useless, overpriced baubles to women while spouting pithy, meaningless declarations of “love” from their word-holes (thanks to Mister Half Face for creating this turn of phrase). Then, without fail, the two collapse into some horrific singularity of hand-holding and saliva exchanging as the jewelry company's catchphrase reverberates through all five senses simultaneously. Yes, five. Not only do you hear it and see words of it dancing across the television screen, but the world, for a brief moment, smells like poop spun into cotton candy as the selfsame taste fills one's mouth and every nerve suffers the tactile torture of giant isopods' spindly legs crawling everywhere. While covered in said poopy cotton candy.

The biggest problem Fernando has with those commercials is that they paint human relationships as things of immutable stasis, that they shall forever remain exactly as they always have been. Anybody who has even the slightest bit of worldliness should realize this is not the case. People are shallow, fickle creatures. Their proclivities flux, sometimes sooner, sometimes later. Dropping a not insignificant amount of money onto a shiny object made from metal and rocks people arbitrarily have decided are of value is, well, dumb: twisty bits of metal that sit there like a paralyzed apple snail. Fernando could make some from old coat hangers and they'd be just as functional and half the time look less stupid.

The prices on gems are truly outrageous. They're truly, truly, truly outrageous. One could get a bunch of right fancy meals for the price of one hoop of silver. So here's an idea: how about, instead of wasting cash on a silly charm bracelet, these gallant men shell out the dough for a nice dinner. Hell, they'd get additional bonus points for cooking it themselves. Or buy something with better cost-value than a piece of jewelry, like clothing or a book. But taking those options would make sense and wouldn't fuel that queer and relentless competition for material comeuppance that exists in this day and age.

In the end, though, Fernando will remain derided by silly love freaks as a bitter misanthrope who can't understand the obvious, inherent beauty specific to the fourteenth of February, and who knows even less about little things like loyalty and commitment. And he will sit back and laugh and watch when, inevitably, said love freaks' lives are upended because they put childish faith in the inherent goodness of humanity.

But, man, having bought that platinum necklace encrusted with tanzanite will make it all have been worthwhile.

Technical Difficulties

The day after the story of the car that won't start....

“Hello, Dominion of Movies?”

“Hi, My name is Morgana and I was in yesterday to rent a movie. I didn't have a chance to watch it last night because our DVD player broke, and we had to go to town to buy a new one. I was wondering if I could have the movie for an extra night.”

“Sure, no problem. It'll just be an extra $1.50. You can pay that next time you're in or just leave the money in the case when you drop it off.”

“Well, I was hoping to have it for another night for free.”

Ye gods, not again. “Um....”

“Because I didn't get a chance to watch it, so I didn't get what I paid for.”

“I'm sorry?”

“I didn't have a chance to watch the movie at all.” Fernando was thinking to himself, and desperately wanted to say, that it would be silly for him to charge by the viewing instead of by the rental of the physical disc. There would be no way for him to ascertain if people were telling the truth when they would claim, upon returning the movie, that they had seen it zero times.

Instead, he took the somewhat tactful way out. “Right. But you'd still have the movie out an extra night.”

“That's why I'm calling to let you know what happened.”

“I mean, you'll have the movie out an extra night. It's like...like renting a...a jet ski for a day and not bringing it back because the car you're using to transport it won't start. You're still going to be charged the extra amount. It's not the full daily rate, it's not the full late fee rate. It's just the extra amount you would have needed to pay to have rented the movie two nights in the first place.” It overall seemed like an apt analogy to make.

At this juncture she starts getting snippy. “I didn't know I wouldn't be able to watch the movie!”

Fernando feels about done with facile attempts at good customer service now, as he's dealing with someone who clearly is making minimal efforts at being a good customer. “Neither did I. That doesn't change the fact you'll have it out for an extra night. Things happen. Life gets in the way. If I let everyone have movies out for indefinite periods of time for every excuse under the sun, I would quickly find myself without movies to rent. Fact of the matter is, you have the only copy of this movie that I haven't already rented out today. It could well be the case that someone else would want to rent it, but can't.”

“Well. Ok. Bye.” And she hangs up, as some people don't like being faced with facts.

Fifteen minutes later the movie appears in Fernando's drop box, and it is promptly rented out within twenty minutes of placing the rental tag back on the floor.

Car Troubles

One January evening, the phone rings.

“Hello, Dominion of Movies.”

“Hi, this is Harry Dresden. I was in yesterday and rented some movies. I won't be able to return them because my car won't start. I was wondering if I could have them for no charge for another night.”

“Um--”

“I really wanted to get them back tonight, but my car just won't start,” the man interrupts, apparently holding the belief that repetition equals force in argumentation.

“As I was about to say,” Fernando says, “these things happen. Life gets in the way. That's why the first night's late fee is the extra-night rental instead of the full shebang. Let's see here...you had out four movies, so it'd come to $5 altogether.”

“Well, I don't think that's fair. I can't get out there. I would return them if I could.”

“You realize, right, that if I gave you free rentals this time because of your car troubles—which, by the way, I am not contesting in any way—that there would be precedent set for other people to claim 'car troubles' as a legitimate reason to avoid returning my property?”

“I--”

“That would be a bad precedent to set, wouldn't you agree? But it would also be dumb of me to ruthlessly punish people for the things that pop up unexpectedly in life. So the first night's late fee is actually just the difference that would have been paid on a two-night rental to begin with.”

“So no free rental?”

“No, no free rental.”

Pop Quiz

Assume for a moment you rent a movie, in this case a singularly generic schlocky horror film like My Bloody Valentine in 3D.

Question 1: The movie does not appear to be functioning in your DVD player. Do you

A) Phone up the business immediately to let them know they may have given you faulty goods

OR

B) wait until the following day at 6 PM, when you return it, to inform them of its malfeasance.

Question 2: Assuming you choose option (B) above, do you then

A) Take the owner's offer of store credit equal in value to the rental, even as the supposedly nonfunctional disc is tested in the store's player before you and shown to work just fine

OR

B) demand your money back on top of a free rental and grow petulant when the owner informs you that he already did more than he by all rights should have in offering credit because his establishment does not bear a sign reading “Movie library: Donations appreciated!”

Those who fail the quiz by choosing Option 2B win nothing.

Alpha Male

One of Fernando's regulars calls him one New Release Tuesday and asks him to hold a pair of movies for her, as she is unable to come in for a few hours. Fernando does what she asks and she arrives as promised. With her is a young man Fernando has never seen before, but he can tell right away that this is some new guy-pal she has attained for two reasons.

One, he did that silly and obsessive touching/wrestling of her body about the shoulders, stomach, and lower back.

Two, he immediately went into high-octane alpha male jackass mode as soon as he entered the store.

“So how much does it cost to rent here?” he asks initially, grasping her about the waist from behind and rocking her from side to side before the counter. He glares at Fernando for some reason during his gratuitous frottage of her backside.

“Um, $3.50 a movie,” she responds while attempting to sign the rental form.

“Jesus, really? You know you can get movies on Netflix for way cheaper?” Again, instead of looking at her during his statement, he passive-aggressively addressed Fernando with his comment, as evidenced by the direction his visage faced.

Fernando remains silent in the face of this young man's statement and instead goes about fetching the movies.

“How long do you get them for?” he continues inquiring.

“Just one night. But you can rent them for more then one if you want, or if you change your mind you can just pay a little bit extra when you bring them back,” she replies astonishingly accurately.

“Netflix doesn't have late fees,” the gentleman retorts. “It's stupid that people pay late fees for movies. But I guess the guy needs to find a way to rip people off for more money.”

At this juncture Fernando decides to step in. “If late fees were genuinely a way to rip people off—which is to say a way of perpetrating fraud—why is it then that charging them remains legal?”

The man ceases his shameless sexual gratification and stares daggers at Fernando silently as Fernando sets the cases upon the counter and takes the young lady's money.

But Fernando does not leave things unsaid, not when he has an advantage in a conversation. “Furthermore, if you think Netflix is a better deal why is it that you're renting these movies from me, here, today?”

This time he has an answer. “Well, she wanted to see them today,” he pouts.

“But Netflix is an omniscient home entertainment supplier. Surely you can ask them to have gotten you the movies in question—oh wait, you can't. Is it because there's a mailing delay on the discs—especially once one considers the throttling placed on new-new releases—or because they lack streaming of these selfsame movies? Could that be why you came to an actual brick-and-mortar retailer to rent these movies today? Because Netflix isn't perfect?”

The young man ceased his self-aggrandizement after that. He also stopped his incessant copping of feels. Double win!

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.