See, it’s your own goddam fault.

Everybody figures we're all snobs. After all, we must be so in love with pop culture that we chose to seek employment at places where we'd be surrounded by it, and by some sort of cognitive proxy that makes us elitists. Know-it-alls. Slackers who are too good for "real work." And that's fine with me. If someone who knows nothing about me has already made up his mind about the type of person I am, naturally I don't want to dash their expectations.

Humans love to suffer imaginary abuses, they practically ask for it. I mean, they come back for more, don't they? It's not like working at a restaurant, where you have to be nice to everyone otherwise they won't come back. People always need to rent movies and it’s either deal with the punks here or with the punks there. People expect video store employees to be condescending and superior, and I'm not that exactly, but I do know the difference between a shitty movie and a good one, and if someone asks me if Wild Wild West is any good, I'm not going to bullshit them with that "I haven't seen it" or "it's a really hot renter this month" dodge line we're supposed to give people if we don't like a particular movie. Fuck that. If a customer asks for something and I hated it, I'd rather be honest and lose the four dollars than subject one more person to a piece of crap. Think of it as a critical prophylactic.

See—a lot of the times when people rent lousy movies they come back to the store expecting us to reimburse them, as if it's our fault it sucked, and yeah right, let me get Sonnenfeld on the phone so you can take it up with him. But if they don't see it, or if I advised against it to begin with, they can't raise a stink about it later and I won't have to deal with it. If it's crap, I'll let them know.

And I must be right, after all, I work in a video store.