CREDITS: When a $1.00 is fed into the booth money slot you get 100 Credits, $5.00 gets you 500 Credits and so on, so 1 Credit = about 1.5 to 2 seconds. Which means roughly $.30 a minute to watch movies in the shop booths. The local movie theater prices don't seem so steep compared to that.
BOOTHER: The word I use to label the customers who use the booths.
THE BOOT: The Boot is more than just asking the customer/s to leave for the evening or whatever. The Boot is for customers who have really crossed the line. The Boot means get the hell out now. The Boot is always loud. The Boot treats any attempt to argue or explain by the customer/s with contempt and more The Boot. The Boot never fails to leave a lasting impression.
LEFTOVERS: Frequently, Boothers will exit a booth they still have Credits in for whatever reason. Generally, the Credits left, are only in the double digits, maybe a minute or two. But there is the occasional Leftovers jackpot and the Credits are in the 100's. 750ish is the highest I've seen.
SCAVENGER: A Boother, who skulks around the booth hall waiting for a chance at any Leftovers that may become available. On a busy night, Leftovers are common. If the Scavenger is smart, they feed the booth money slot when the Leftover credits run out. The ones that don't spend money, walking around brandishing a fist full of $1.00's but never spending a single one, they get The Boot. The optimal time to spring The Boot on a Scavenger is when they have opened the door of a booth with Leftovers and are stepping into the booth.
So before I start, this isn't some attempt to suck up, it's observation based on my interactions with him. If it were not for the Manager, I would not be working at the porn shop. Besides the obvious fact that he's the one who hired me, what I meant is that I would have quit after a week if the Manager was not so uber. He's an old Marine Vet, a little shorter than me with a slightly heavier build. But still tough as nails and twice as animated, especially when he's into one of his stories. He's got lots of stories, most if not all are pretty interesting. He is an awesome salesman with superior product knowledge. He takes no shit from bad customers at all and doesn't expect us to either. He's a good teacher, not that there is a whole lot to learn about the jobs basic duties but like I stated, he has a superior product knowledge. He treats his employees like equals and acts as one too by participating in all work duties on his shifts. He always goes to bat for us whenever the Owner accuses us of stealing money the Owner misplaced. He sets processes in place that prevent the Owner from following through on his threats to dock pay. He regularly does battle with the Owner over changes he wants to implement and wins. So that he can innovate and drag the shop kicking and screaming into this century.
Even though I have depicted the Manager and Owner as being in a constant stream of conflicts, they are good friends. When it comes down to it the Owner has the Manager run all aspects of the shop, as well as caving to the wisdom of the changes the Manager wants to implement.
The guy that owns the porn shop is a grouchy old money grubber. He is devoid of the innovation gene and is vehemently opposed to any change in the way things are done at the shop, even things he has no interaction with. He assumes all employee's, besides the Manager, are either stealing or not cleaning enough. When he comes in on the weekdays before open and processes the money from the previous days sales. He has a habit of just grabbing bills larger than a $5.00 in the register then promptly forgets that he just made the register short for the count he will do later or not collecting all the money from the booths before he checks the totals readout for booth usage and compares it to the booth money he has collected. At which point he accuses the previous nights shift of being short and threatens to dock their pay by the amount "missing", until the Manager shows him how he's wrong. I don't say any of this out of malice or ill will towards him, it's just a description ,based on all of my interactions with him.
So here's how it works. The booth doors have locks, as well there is a Red "occupied" and a Green "vacant" light above each door. When a boother goes into a booth they are sappossed to lock the door. When money is fed into the booth money slot the Red "occupied" light turns on, otherwise the Green "vacant" light is on. Only one person is aloud in a booth at any one time. When I catch two in a booth I have to boot them from the store for the rest of the day/night. But, the boss doesn't want us watching them too closely, cause the boothers get all nervous and leave without feeding the booth money slot. This means I can only boot those that are really obvious about it (most are) or the ones with bad timing, i.e. leaving the booth while I'm in the booth hall for whatever reason. When I say really obvious, I mean it, they come complete with nervous looks and wandering around the booth hall to all the "occupied" booths and trying the doors. I honestly think they believe they are being descreet and or sneaky. It's almost like watching a crook in an old silent movie with the exaggerated sneaking around. True some are just looking for leftovers (leftovers are when someone has finished up before their credits have run out and leaves the booth, more on leftovers and credits later), but most are looking to Double Booth it. I've taken a sort of Darwinian approach to the whole thing. If they are so obvious that I can tell they are Double Boothing while I'm reading at the front counter they get the boot. Now I gotz nothing against anyones lifestyle choice, but it's against the law for two or more to be in the same booth. I mean come on, they aren't called "Buddy Booths" because they want people to double up in the booths, I'll explain "Buddy Booth" later.
So, for the last month or so I have been working at a porn shop. I'm the night shift guy, which means I get to deal with a lot of...well you know the song. If my job description was the one thing I do most at work, it would be Change Machine. What I do more than anything at work, besides maybe read, is change large bills into small bills. I handle lots of $1.00's, new $1.00's, old $1.00's, clean $1.00's, dirty $1.00's, filthy $1.00's, $1.00's with that asinine www.trackthismoneyyoudrone.com stamp on them (which I always obliterate with a Sharpy. Yea thats right,I do my part to subvert that tracking program). Cause we gotz the movie booths, 115 channels, well really it's 115 different repeating DVD's to choose from and it's all porn. Even though the booth money feed slot apparently takes 1's, 5's, 10's, 20's, 50's and 100's, most of the clientele want ones to feed one at a time into the money feed slot. We sell Porn DVD and VHS as well as the usual assortment of adult toys and novelties too. But it's the booths that bring in the money well not the $1.00's though. They go round and round, from change bank to the customer to the booth to the change bank and round and round. I marked a few once to see how long it would take to see any of them again. I saw all three the very next night spread out over a few hundred $1.00's. I'm so tired of seeing that Dope growing Tax evader.
My friend Trevor, who owns the house that I live in, keeps promising to review the various choices of internet broadband providers (there's one, Trevor, ONE) and decide if he wants to split the costs with me. Up until about two weeks ago we all (chris, Donald, Trevor) were perfectly happy STEALING our next door neighbors signal (I know its called piggybacking, but that doesn't strongly imply THEFT, which in the eyes of the law is what it is). Then a Geek Squad VW Bug showed up one day, and the free signal is no more.
Trevor is not the type to do anything quickly. At least three times a week I have occasion to say "Damn, Trevor, you're a lazy motherfucker." Broadband internet is at his sufference.
Anyway, I now I have to keep my internet activity mobile, hanging out in various cafes and such (I'm at my Dads house now), so my participation in this blog thing, for what its worth and such as it is, will be intermittent AT BEST as soon as my vacation week ends on the 30th. It might be a week or more in between logins. Like anyone is reading this anyway.
And you wont fucking believe what I found. All of those great song lyrics you've loved by all of your favorite bands over the years have all been a lie. I'm really not kidding here, folkes. Here's an example: "Policy of Truth" by Depeche Mode, according to this file, was originally entitled "Policy of Fruit" by the band. I cant get into what the original lyrics were, but they involved carnal relations with various and exotic pieces of citrus fruit.
There are many other examples, but most I am hesitant to write down for the whole entire world to see, as many of them are scatological, racist, sexist, antidisestablishmentarianist, and all of the other bad "-ists" you can think of.
Here's another fairly tame example(by comparison, anyway), from the BEATLES: "Taxman" was originally titled "Axeman", and contained lyrics like "If you drive your car I'll AXE your feet" and the like. Apparenly
this was an early attempt by Lennon and McCartney to try and speak out against pollution caused by cars. According to the top secret file, McCartney had a job in a slaughterhouse when he was in grade school, and was responsible for chopping the heads off of chickens, which he did with untrammeled glee. In fact, he made a necklace out of still dripping chicken heads to give to an early romantic interest. The girl, 12 years old, was not pleased, as you can well imagine.
It goes on and on. Bob Dylan was actually a frothing pro-war republican type. Donovan was (sit down if you aren't already and take a deep breath) a PRO NAZI FASCIST and, in 1969, collaborated with noted author Ira Levin and the RAND Corporation to try and make a clone of Hitler. Nothing ever came of it, of course, but a few years later Levin went on to write "The Boys from Brazil", a fictional (?) novel about cloning Hitler.
So who put the stops to all of these "actual" lyrics? Record distribution companies. No lyric changes, no money to buy fast cars and reefer. All bands up to this point who wanted to make the big bucks have fallen in line. Its why G.G Allin died flat broke but Lionel Richie hasn't aged a day in 25 years.
Anyway, if anyone wants examples of the more heinous variety, I'll email you personally--I don't want this stuff sitting around on a public forum.
Well, I was GOING to share my current plight using pictures, but for some reason I have yet to determine I cant upload them here. The picture I wanted to upload shows the spacecraft I'm in being PULLED into a BLACK HOLE. Yes, I'm stuck somewhere near NGC 11538X-2, slowly inching towards the singularity that once was S48-1158-b, a nice little G4 yellow star. Damn!
Stuff like this always happens when I go on vacation. Hey now--I hear the engine overheat klaxon going off. Gotta go. More to follow.