The Bill intervention... I'm made Assistant Manager...

The Rise and Fall of Bill Cook, Part III (I'm made Assistant Manager)

After two months of Bill as manager, the clerks made a solidarity move and expressed our concerns about how poorly Bill was managing the store to the owner. My guess is that the corporate office had their own concerns about this because the owner agreed to meet us at a local restaurant to discuss the situation. This was a huge surprise because any previous communication from the corporate office has been telling us the rules and laying down the law. Now they actually seem to care about what we have to say.

We explained that Bill’s attitude and behavior were making the store an uncomfortable place to work and that his feud with the assistant manager was bordering on the level of harassment. The owner listened politely and explained that he was well aware that Bill was an idiot. He also explained that less intelligent employees, provided they could actually do their job, were some of the most loyal people you can have working for an organization. “He’s the type of guy you could tell to slam his head against the wall before every shift, and although he’d probably ask you to repeat the instructions a few times, he’d actually do it,” he said.

In the end (pun intended), he agreed to replace Bill and promote the current assistant manager to store manager. Furthermore, instead of demoting Bill to assistant manager, which would just result in more fighting, I was promoted to assistant manager. Bill would become a standard clerk and the new manager and myself would slowly take over his duties.

This would all start tomorrow. For the rest of the day, I would have to play ignorant to this new decision as I worked the evening shift with Bill. It ended up being a tricky situation because the group met with the owner over lunch at 1 p.m. and I was supposed to start work at 2 p.m. When I arrived at 2:30 p.m., Bill was absolutely livid. He had called me at home and my cell repeatedly, and called the corporate office twice complaining that I hadn’t arrived and suggested I be fired. He asked me where I was and I lied that I was at a dentist appointment, that the main office knew where I was and that they were supposed to tell him. 

He was suspicious and still really angry, which made for a boring shift without any amusing Billisms, but at least I didn’t have to worry about letting any details slip about the new store management.

Melinda's world...

I’ve written a lot about Bill recently, but I want to make sure I’m giving readers a good representation of the rich tapestry of the bizarre we have running the register at the porn store.

Hiring new employees at a porn store always results in a mixed bag of applicants, but with Bill as manager, the pool of potential clerks is even more depressing.

The owners always encourage hiring older applications. This is stupid because the only person in their 40s who wants to work at an adult bookstore/head shop is either a pervert or a junkie (sometimes both). Bill is obsessed with hiring women because he’s a 500 pound social moron who would never be exposed to women otherwise. Unfortunately for both, we didn’t get any mature women applying to work behind the counter.

The hiring process went like this; Bill had to fax all the applications to the main office in a different city. The owner returned a list of five applicants for Bill to interview. After he interviewed these candidates, he was to fax his “interview notes” back to the main office for the owner to make a final decision. I mention this because Bill writes in barely legible, all-capitals, so each interviewee’s “notes” ended up being 5 pages long with words like, “HAS KID” and, “NOT MARRIED” scrawled on the top of each sheet.

(The owners apparently failed to explain with Bill what the legal factors are you can consider when hiring an employee.)

When Bill was finally told who to hire, he ended up and hiring the wrong woman. (To be fair, when referring to women, Bill has said, “they all look alike to me.” And both female applicants were blonde.) The regional manager noticed the mistake, chewed Bill out, but allowed the wrong person to be hired since she had already planned on starting the following morning.

I really, really try to keep myself from having preconceived notions about people before I meet them. This being said, I had my doubts that a woman who wants to work at a porn store would be particularly intelligent. But I had no idea that the new employee would be (almost) as stupid as Bill.

Melinda has cancer. Or rather, she had cancer. She can’t remember, but her doctor says that she’s okay now. (This exchange happened in the first five minutes of our meeting. There’s nothing like starting conversations with light, comfortable subjects.)

I assumed her cancer diagnosis had something to do with her rotting teeth. She didn’t so much have teeth, but more black nubs that stuck out of her gums. In addition to being a focal point every time I looked at her, it also made her breath smell like rotting meat. She noticed that I kept looking at her mouth and explained that her poor oral hygiene was not the result of her cancer (or past cancer… I’m still not sure if she’s dying).

When she was 17, she got pregnant shortly after dropping out of high school. Her parents were incredibly disappointed and let her know that they had always expected this to happen to their daughter. She also explained that she didn’t even know what sex was before her boyfriend talked her into it. Melinda honestly thought the baby was going to come out of her ass. I said that her parents should have expected her to get pregnant if they never bothered to teach her about sex while growing up. She got really indignant when I said this and replied, “Oh really? Are YOU going to talk to YOUR kids about sex,” and smiled with the smugness of someone who has just won a complex debate.

I wanted to make myself perfectly clear about my thoughts on this matter. I took a deep breath and said, “YES! Teaching your children about sex is one of the greatest and most important responsibilities a parent has, especially when their child is old enough to start having sex. I’d go so far to say that these lessons are just as important as helping your children with their school work and making sure they understand proper nutrition.”

This obviously wasn’t the response she had expected from me and she turned away, a little hurt, before turning back and asking me something about football.

Shortly after she started, the Minnesota Vikings spring training camp had begun at their normal location at Mankato State University. Offensive tackle, Korey Stringer passed out during practice on a particularly hot afternoon and ended up dying from complications of heat stroke. This was a shock to most football fans and the first time something like this had happened during NFL spring training, let alone in Minnesota.

Two days after Stringer’s death, I took the store garbage out to the parking lot dumpster and ended up getting pelted with a huge stack of notebook paper when I opened the top. As I collected the loose sheets that were flying around the empty lot next to the store, I started to notice what was written on them. Melinda had written at least 30 different poems, mourning the death of this beloved Minnesota Vikings player. Over and over, I came across sheets with statements like, “Always a hero, never a zero,” I’m having a hard time dealing with this,” and, “Why god, why?”

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a terrible thing that Korey Stringer died, but it’s hardly the event that should result in anything more than a remark of, “That’s so terrible.” I hope it will make coaches take greater care when practicing during hot days, but it doesn’t affect my life in the slightest. Obviously, Melinda’s life was obviously organized in a way that placed football players very highly in her hierarchy of importance.

Considering this is a woman who believed she was going to “shit out” her baby, I probably shouldn’t be surprised.

What an age we live in… (The Mojowijo)

Thanks to Twitter, I just found out about the Mojowijo, a device that turns your Wii remote into the world’s ultimate sex toy. http://www.mojowijo.com

With the invention of the Fleshlight and a million other sex toys, we should have all expected this was coming (pun intended). I suppose it’s not all that crazy of an idea, but what really impressed me about this product is that you can allow someone else to control your Mojowijo from anywhere else in the world (with an internet connection.)

Also, the website uses the word Teledildonics, which is an awesome new word I’ll now try to incorporate into everyday conversation.

I’ve contacted their main office, offering to test and review this cutting-edge product. I’ll keep you posted with what their response is. (Please, please, please, please….)

Finally, how fitting is it that the Mojowijo connects to a device called the Wii. (I just made myself laugh hysterically… I’m a nerd.)

http://www.mojowijo.com (hint, hint, hint)

Bill decides to lose weight…

(The Rise and Fall of Bill Cook - Part II)

Now that Bill was made manager and making an extra $100 a month, he decided to take a good long look at his health. If you’ll recall, Bill weighs close to 500 pounds and eats like a rabid hog. I expect most medical professionals would agree that taking control of his weight is incredibly important if he wants to live over the age of 40.

Unfortunately, instead of eating less, eating healthier foods and exercising, he decided to go to his doctor for a “magic pill.” His first attempt was with Meridia. This was a bad strategy for a number of reasons. Most importantly, since he was a heavy smoker and caffeine fiend, this drug (which is also a stimulant) caused him to stop sleeping and sweat more in addition to reducing his appetite. The only thing that his coworkers noticed about this medication was that he was even more irritated all of the time and his sweat-stained clothing was a much deeper shade.

His next attempt at medical weight-loss was truly disgusting and caused me to expect him to drop dead at any moment.

Bill began taking Xenical, a medication that prevents your body from absorbing the fat you consume. This pill can be a very effective way to lose weight when you combine it with a healthy diet and exercise. Again, unfortunately Bill didn’t change any of his lifestyle habits while attempting to lose weight on a drug.

To completely understand how extreme Bill’s eating habits are, allow me to describe what happened during the last shift we worked together. Godfather’s Pizza has a special where you get an extra-large, medium and dessert pizza for $30. For most people, this could be up to six meals, but Bill would consume it all by himself in one sitting. This “meal” was a favorite of Bill’s and I had seen him eat this much food many times before he was on any weight-loss medications. He was so fond of this particular pizza combo that we all referred to it as the “Billy Pack.” Because he ate so much, I was terrified I’d have to perform CPR on his bloated frame after he dropped in the middle of a carb-filled bite. Now that he was on Xenical, I was certain he’d end up shitting his colon out.

His absorption of these three pizzas would usually take around 30 minutes and by the end he’d be breathing heavy and dripping with sweat. All of this perspiration actually made him smell better as it washed away some of the spoiling obesity funk trapped within his layers of skin. Now that he was on a medication, he simply took the large, blue pill after finishing the first pizza and then sprinted to the bathroom after the last bite of his dessert pizza. Then he’d stay in the bathroom for 90 minutes. (I’m not exaggerating.)

The first few times this happened, I seriously considered picking the bathroom lock open, expecting to find him flopping around on the bathroom floor like a swollen guppy. I even went so far as to listen at the door to make sure I still heard signs of live inside. (For the sake of humanity, I won’t describe what I heard coming out of the bathroom. Let’s just say it was something like a cross between a pig being slaughtered and a sing garbage disposal.) Amazingly, he always came out of the bathroom an hour-and-a-half later looking refreshed and ready to tell me about all the crazy stuff that shot out of his anus.

Fortunately for him, this medication regimen didn’t last very long. While he wasn’t gaining weight anymore on his dinosauric diet, he wasn’t losing any weight either. All of this time in the bathroom was becoming an inconvenience for him and his internet porn habits, so after a few weeks, he was back to binging without purging. This sucks for me because I no longer get my regular 90-minutes of Bill-free time now that his bathroom trips have been reduced to 30-minutes or less.

The other day, he tried to explain how eating more than 1,000 calories at a meal actually kept you from gaining weight. I’d like to point out that as he said this, he was finishing his second foot-long meatball sandwich from Subway. He’s convinced that he’s going to lose weight by eating ‘healthier’ foods (like meatball subs with double the meat and extra cheese all swimming in mayonnaise.)

I’ve stopped trying to argue with him about his bizarre ideas and just look at his ramblings as some sort of eccentric performance art piece. It’s less depressing than thinking he actually believes the shit that spews out of his mouth. 

Jizz Rants... About porn star wish lists!

Since I’m posting blog entries in chronological order, the majority of items that have been posted so far have actually took place in the late 90s. However, now that I’ve created a Facebook page and twitter account for the blog (@jizzchronicles), I’m seeing the world of porn through social media. Because of this, I’d like to introduce the Jizz Rants section, where I’ll be discussing more topical subjects that interest or irritate me.

Some of the adult uses of social media are what expected. Porn stars having twitter feeds and posting images of their latest video shoots is something that makes complete sense. Porn video companies posting information about new movies and links to sneak peek previews is a great idea. Adult novelty companies posting information about sales, coupons and new products is an excellent way to increase sales and awareness through social media.

What surprised me was the large number of sex workers posting “wish lists” of products on Amazon. This is both amazingly brilliant and incredibly sad.

In some respects, I could see how this would make sense. If you hire a dominatrix, bringing her a present could result in a more intense session. I can also understand how bringing a present to a dancer you’re obsessed with at a strip club could result in a more enjoyable dry-hump. I can even see buying a present for a prostitute you’re planning on visiting in Nevada for a more ‘romantic’ evening at the brothel.

But what’s sad is that people who have no chance of ever meeting these sex stars will send them presents instead of using the money on a person they actually have a chance of starting a relationship with. These poor men (I’m sure women could participate in this as well, but my assumption is that most of the purchasing is done by pathetic single [and married] men) will be purchasing everything from clothing to expensive electronics for someone who they’ll only connect with via the internet.

Now that I think about it, I can understand clothing and shoes. At least in this case, you could give it as a gift and possibly see what the sex worker looks like in it… if they choose to share a photo with you. But what does a poor shy guy get out of buying his imaginary girlfriend an iPad?

It’s like a mild version of the Nigerian scam aimed at horny guys.

I’m not going to judge the sex workers for posting their wish lists. If you can get a stranger to buy you something, why not? I just remember myself as a lonely young man and how tempting it would be to buy an internet model a gift I couldn’t afford at the chance of getting some online attention.

Then again, if someone is spending all their time and money on internet porn, they may not be real-life relationship material.

Your porn soundtrack...

I think I’m going to go insane. I’ve gotten used to staying up all night and dealing with druggies and perverts, but the one thing I’m having a hard time with is the music pumped into the porn store 24-7.

We all know those 70s/80s, soft rock compilations that are advertised on late night TV. My work soundtrack is 24 of these compilation CDs that run in the same order, over and over and over again. Not that is really matters. Summer Dream by Seals and Crofts and Lost in Love by Air Supply are on most of the compilation CDs and I end up hearing the same 20 songs repeatedly, every shift.

I take that back about everything being compilation albums. I know for a fact that Air Supply’s, ABBA’s and Jimmy Buffet’s Greatest Hits are in the cd-changer. I strongly suspect there are multiple copies of these CDs in the changer because I hear Jimmy Buffet’s Greatest Hits at least once a shift, EVERY SHIFT. I wasn’t a big Jimmy Buffet fan before I started working here, but now I absolutely loathe him. With the exception of Yoko Ono, he’s the hardest musician to ignore when his music is playing in the background. As soon as Cheeseburger in Paradise opens the album, I immediately do everything I can to busy myself in the back rooms. I’m completely screwed if there are customers in the store and have to stay at the register, which is located right in front of a speaker. Because of this, I’ve seriously considered bringing in a large box fan to drown out the music.

I get no sympathy from coworkers. The morning guy who usually takes over the store from me is a huge “Parrot-Head” and loves Jimmy Buffet. He’s traveled out to see him live on multiple occasions and once brought in the blender attachment for his cordless drill that allows you to make margaritas while camping.

This puts the whole “Jimmy Buffet” mania into perspective. I can listen to almost anything while drunk and would have to down a lot of tequila to make it through a Jimmy Buffet show. This is probably a similar phenomenon to how the Grateful Dead and Phish are amazing live… as long as you’re stoned. Jimmy Buffet must be a blast you’re trashed.

The thing about Jimmy Buffet that really bugs me is the fakeness of his sound. I’ve recently discovered instrumental surf-rock and appreciate artists that attempt to bring in steel guitar and other sounds that are common in island music. I even love exotica, which is a completely artificial aural experience, but it’s fun, creative and makes me want to drink rum. Jimmy Buffet’s songs (at least the hits) are loaded with synthesizers and every sound is processed. It all sounds like it could have been recorded in one take, during a 4-hour studio session.

Furthermore, the only appropriate place to drink fruity island cocktails is while you’re actually on an island, or at least a beach. Failing that, you should at least be at a tropical themed restaurant. But Jimmy Buffet has made is socially acceptable for grown men to mix blended fruit drinks with a portable drill while out camping at outdoor concerts.

It’s shameful.

You might be asking yourself, “Why doesn’t he just replace the CDs in the changer during his shift?”

During my first week, the owner had Bill create a wood box for the large CD changer because employees were changing the music. Their greatest fear is that someone would play rap or hard rock in the store. This seems fair, how many times have you been shopping for pornography when annoying music came over the speakers and drove you from the store? (sarcasm) Failing Melt Banana or death metal, I don’t think the music playing in the store could have any negative impact on sales.

What I did for a while was unplug the changer and then plug it back in again. The box has a tendency to make the electronics inside overheat, which will eventually cause the changer to turn itself off or jam. Bill has since drilled ventilation holes in the top of the box, which he insists will take care of this problem, so I have to use the unplug method sparingly. Otherwise, they’ll figure this trick out and mount the whole audio system inside the store safe.

And as much as I hate to admit it, it’s much easier to fall asleep during a shift with no music on versus any music playing. I’ve found it’s impossible to fall asleep during ABBA’s CD, so while it feels like my brain is slowly melting out of my ears, at least I won’t get fired for sleeping on the job.

Ask Jizz 2.19.12 - The strangest customer requests...

Today's edition of Ask Jizz brings forth the question, what’s the craziest thing a customer has asked for?

You might not be surprised to learn this, but of all three stores I’ve worked at that sold adult material, each location had at least one customer asking for something truly bizarre. Furthermore, the ones who ask for the strange stuff always assume you have it in the back room. It’s as if most customers assume that all adult stores have a secret stash of forbidden porn that’s only available to those who know the secret password.

When I worked at the now defunct Shinders in my early college career, the obsession was with porn starring pregnant women. These fetish videos aren’t particularly hard to find, but we only carried mainstream porn videos and never carried anything featuring pregnant women. What annoyed me was that the several regular who asked about ‘Preggo’ videos were convinced that while these videos weren’t on the shelves, we had them available somewhere behind the counter. One such customer even tried to start an argument with me about selling him these videos before leaving, furious, convinced that I was hiding the movies he wanted.

The creepiest thing we sold at Shinders was nudist magazines, which weren’t technically pornography, but were kept in the back, 18 and up room. While I’m sure there are some nudist enthusiasts who bought these magazines to read up on nudist topics, the majority of people bought them because they featured naked photos of children and adolescents. I don’t know if these magazines are still available, but the publisher must have found a loophole to publish photos of children under eighteen by making the magazines intended for nudists.

We also received sample magazines from publishing distributors trying to get Shinders to carry their magazines. Most of these were pretty run of the mill, but sometimes we’d get very specific fetish magazines. The best was a ‘Pony Boy/Pony Girl’ magazine for people who were into dressing up in incredibly elaborate costumes that made the wearer look like a horse. There wasn’t any nudity or sexual content. Just page after page of people dressed in what looked like a cross between a shitty Halloween costume and the most elaborate bondage costume I have ever seen. The ‘erotic’ stories in the magazine were even more bizarre. Again, no sex, but incredibly detailed short stories about people dressing up like horses and being literally rode around by their lover.

In Mankato, the most common request was for pissing videos. We did carry a few of these when they happened to come in, but didn’t regularly carry this genre. When the owners bought movies, they’d order them in boxes of one hundred, only telling the distributor what genre of porn they wanted. Again, several customers asked if we had any of these videos in our back room. (We didn’t.)

The strangest thing I was asked for in Mankato was for pictures of women being dunked underwater repeatedly. The guy’s request seemed genuine, so I recommended he buy a computer and search the internet. This happened in 1999, so I wasn’t sure if sites actually existed for this type of fetish, but we certainly didn’t sell anything related to drowning women. Nowadays, a quick Google search will provide you with hundreds of sites dedicated to both simulated-drowning and real-downing photos. (I don’t recommend actually searching for this unless you want to be forever terrified of water, particularly if you have small children.)

During my time at the couples-based porn store, the questions I got were sometimes strange, but seemed a lot more genuine, involving what the average person with a fetish is looking for. I learned a lot about living a bondage lifestyle from a couple who frequently came in and would explain why certain products would or wouldn’t work. The guy was the dominator, with his wife as the subordinate and they lived these roles all the time. I had never considered it, but it's important to purchase high quality products when your gimp is wearing submission devises 24-hours a day.

This store wasn't open all night, so I was always amused at the people waiting to rush in when we opened at 10 a.m. Sunday mornings. (This also happened at Shinders every weekend morning.) These limited hours also avoided a lot of the creepy trollers who would come into the 24-hour Mankato store late at night looking for a date.

The strangest thing I was asked about at this strip-mall store was a belt that would hold a dildo in place up the wearer’s ass. The customer explained that he’d seen these devices before and it allowed the person wearing it to put underwear and pants on over it without anyone being the wiser. Also, it was possible to lock the device on like a reverse-shit-chastity-belt. Obvious a submission device, I can honestly say there is nothing about this device that turns me on. The worst part was that I started to imagine that everyone I saw, from the gas station cashier to the mailman, was wearing one of these devices.

For all you know, I could be wearing one right now. (I’m not.)

I’ll be writing more about the strange requests and questions that came in while working all three locations, but these are the ones that come up mind immediately.

Remember, you can ask me anything you like (preferable porn-based) by shooting an email to jizz_mopperhhh at Hotmail.com or shoot me a message on Twitter @jizzchronicles 

You’ve Got To Be Fucking Kidding Me…

The existing manager got fired and two other employees quit, so Bill was placed as manager of the store.

While this is sounds terrifying the reality is that since the owners don’t trust anyone, a trained cat could perform the required duties of the store manager. Also, since Bill worships the owner and thinks every employee and customer is a thief, he’ll get along perfectly.

Those who won’t enjoy this change are the clerks.

As Store Manager, Bill’s normal clerk duties have expanded to writing up the monthly schedule (which never changes), coming in if one of the booth’s dollar accepters gets jammed and covering random shifts is someone is sick, quits or doesn’t show up. He has a certain amount of say when ordering product for the store, but the vast majority of our stock comes directly from the warehouse, whether or not anyone put in an order. He can’t fire anyone, has no authority over whom to hire, make deposits (this is already done by the person working the 3-11 shift) or get anything out of this position other than the title of manager and an extra $100 a month.

I was thrilled to finally move off the overnight shift to evenings, but this is really going to suck. Now I’ll be sharing the evening shift will Bill from 2-10 p.m. at least three day a week, which means seven hours of attempted conversation with Stupid-The-Kid.

I learned of his promotion yesterday afternoon when I came in for my 3-11 shift. He blathered on and on until 10 p.m. about how things were going to change with him as manager and how Kevin and Kris were so jealous that he was made manager after they left. (In reality, Kevin got fired and Kris moved out of the area.)

Have I mentioned that Bill’s entire life revolves around the store? He never talks about anything other than the store, the employees and the store owners when I can actually get him to talk and most of the time this is spent bitching about his coworkers. Even his downtime is spent thinking about the store and he often calls at the end of the 3-11 shift to hear how much we made during the evening. I don’t know if he thinks this will discourage employees from pocketing money from the register or if he honestly believes that he’ll get a bonus if the store does well, but he loves hearing the daily totals and brings up past days’ sales all the time.

In fact, he loves to brag about how much he’s made when he worked a 3-11 shift. Remember, this is the guy that calls every other guy in the store, “Queerer than a two-dollar bill.” (Yes, the fact that there are two-dollar bills in circulation is completely lost on Bill.) He’s rude to every customer that makes him get off his wooden stool and answers every customer question with a one-word answer. Yet somehow, his amazing salesmanship has resulted in the store earning more money that otherwise would have come in during the evening.

Now that his ego has been boosted, I expect his bragging, bitching and waist-size will continue to grow. I just hope he doesn’t do anything to outright hurt the store.

NSFW

A friend gave me this.... kind of makes you think.

What does excellent customer service mean to you?

I’ve written a lot about how I don’t have to be nice to customers and that I can kick out people simply on a whim, but the thing is that I actually like helping customers that have legitimate questions. The couple that wants to learn where to start with sex toys. The husband who wants to bring home a naughty movie that isn’t too intense. A young woman who doesn’t know what size lingerie will fit her and needs an objective opinion about which outfit looks best. (Okay, that last one has never happened.)

While the majority of customers I write about are freaks, the truth is that I believe adult stores provide an important service to loving couples who are looking to spice up their love lives. So I do my best when these customers get up the nerve to ask me questions.

Sometimes, even these legitimate questions are hilarious.

For example, one Sunday morning around 5 a.m., an older gentleman came in looking for, in his words, “masturbation sleeves” that were at least eight inches long. This was new terminology, but I knew exactly what he was talking about. For those unfamiliar with this product; do you remember those Water Wigglies toys that were a tube of plastic, filled with water and slipped out of your hand when you held them too tight? (If not, Google Water Wigglies.) Now imagine this toy with a handle on the side so you can slide your penis inside and squish the entire apparatus until you ejaculate.

These products are all about five inches long and there’s no reason you need to need to fit your entire penis inside as the movement in and out is the main appeal. I showed him what we had and he, realizing how small they were, started to object. As he started motioning towards his crotch to express his great need for something larger, I walked away and said, “I’m sorry sir, that’s all we have,” over my shoulder.

Then there was the married couple looking for a “vibrator with an insane amount of power.” (This was their, well-worded description.) This was fun because the husband kept agreeing and saying, “She just needs more power!” We went through a variety of different vibrators and toys, testing out the vibrating power of each with our test-batteries to find the most powerful toy in the store. In the end, they bought The Earthquake, essentially a penis-shaped vibrator that was four times as large as a typical vibrator and required 5 D-batteries to operate. They were so excited, I was surprised to see them tearing out of the parking lot. I assumed they would have gotten busy while still parked in back of the store.

Then there are the more depressing “family” incidents.

A large number of parents try to bring their small children into the store. This isn’t allowed by the store and I’m pretty sure it’s against the law. Sadly, most of these customers are looking to buy drug paraphernalia and I shudder to think of the children sitting in the back seat while their mommy or daddy takes hits while driving.

One incident that really disturbed me was a mom who came in with an infant that obviously had some sort of mental disability. I don’t know if drug use had anything to do with this child’s disability, or even if it was her child, but logic would suggest it did. I told her she had to leave with the baby and she went absolutely ballistic. She droned on and on about how she comes in here with the baby all the time and that she only needed a new bat box. None of this mattered and after she finished her diatribe, I repeated that I couldn’t serve her. She left, angry and swearing, and I was left wondering about the future of that poor child.

Some parents even go so far as to leave their kids in the car. If we see this, we’re supposed to kick the customer out of the store. I would kick them out even if it wasn’t store policy. What kind of a parent leaves their kid in the car while they buy porn or drug supplies? (I have an angry, blatant answer for that, but will keep these comments to myself.)

Sometimes, it’s really obvious that there are kids left in a car. All of a sudden, you’ll start to hear high-pitched laughter over the constant stream of 70s love ballads that broadcast throughout the store. Other times, the bored kids will start to honk the horn in a rhythmic pattern until their parent comes back to the car. In one case, someone’s child even stuck their head in the door and cried out, “daddy” as the ten customers jumped, faced the entrance and then turned away with red faces.

Some of the trolls in the video booths drive to the store in vehicles that have child car seats in the back seats. But as often as I have to kick them out for trying to have sex with each other, I have to give them credit for at least leaving their kids at home.

Some days, my childhood seems like it was a lot less complicated than most others.