Ask Jizz 4.11.2012 - What bugs you the most as a Jizzmopper?

Today's question comes via a friend on Facebook:

(Did you know you can Like the Jizzmopper Chronicles on Facebook by clicking here?)

What bugged you most when you worked at the porn store?

With so many annoyances to choose from (shoplifters, prank calls, people trying to screw each other in the video booths), it may surprise you that the thing that bothered me the most was when people tried to bring their children into the store.

This happened all the time and some parents got really angry when I wouldn’t allow their kids into the store. To be fair, some did ask if it was okay as they walked into the store, but some people were halfway to the double-headed dildos before I was able to stop their group and escort them out of the store. It’s one thing to not know kids weren’t allowed (if you're a moron), but it’s another to get offended and mad because I won’t let your six-year-old hang out in a store that sells ball gags.

The customers that really got to me were the ones coming in with their kids to buy drug paraphernalia. I’m not particularly judgmental about casual drug use, but I don’t think you should be relaxing with a joint while your kid is sitting in the back seat. I found myself legitimately concerned for the safety of the kids whose fathers felt the need to stop into the store and pick up a onie on their way back from daycare.

These customers are the ones who would get the most offended when I asked them to leave. They’d say things like, “Can’t I just buy some papers,” or, “He’s so young, he can’t understand anything anyway.” In certain cases, they’d bring their kids back out to the car to wait while their parent came back inside to buy a bong.

I want to make sure everyone understands this, so I’ll say it again. SOME PARENTS WOULD LEAVE THEIR KIDS ALONE IN AN UNLOCKED CAR PARKED IN A PORN STORE PARKING LOT SO THEY COULD BUY A NEW PIPE!

Even all these years later, just thinking about this pisses me off. I wouldn’t sell to the parents when they came back in, which usually just pissed them off more. But fuck it. If they can’t take care of a child properly, how the hell are they supposed to appropriately operate fire and a pipe?

My behavior was completely supported by the owner. He was okay with selling smoking supplies, but considered smoking anything to be disgusting and a sign of weakness.

Bringing kids into the store was not quite as common when I worked at the couples-friendly mini-mall store, but it still happened. Usually the parent would suddenly realize they just brought their child into a porn store and apologized while leaving (why they didn’t expect this when they saw the lingerie-clad, large-chested mannequin in the window is beyond me.) One customer even tried sending his kid in with dvd rental returns, which resulted in him losing his rental privileges.

 I’m a very open-minded person, but I also feel that we should try to allow children to have the longest childhood possible. Kids grow up so fast these days anyway; I don’t think it’s appropriate to confuse them more by adding pornography into the mix. (I do, however, feel that it’s every parent’s responsibility to teach their children about sex before they learn about it from school or their friends.)

My takeaway is this; if you’re going to buy porn, sex devises, lingerie or pipes, do it without your child.

No returns means; No returns!

*Editor’s note, the action in this entry is taking place in 1999.

For reasons that should be fairly obvious, we do not accept returns at the porn store. We will exchange defective tapes that are returned, with a receipt, within a week from the original purchase date. (We’re required to test any returned tapes and if the defective tape works in our shitty TV/VCR combo machine, there’s no exchange.) Otherwise, we don’t allow customers to return anything. We test all the devices that vibrate before they leave the store and, in addition to the large signs posted all around the store, explain to every customer that the store offers no returns.

But this doesn’t stop people from trying.

I can’t tell you how many times someone has come in with a defective vibrator and set the package, pubes and all, on the glass counter. In one case, a customer tried to return an anal vibrator that I’m fairly sure still had blood and shit on it. (Thankfully, everything was still in a plastic bag and after he left it on the counter, vowing to never shop here again, I was able to just toss the whole disgusting sack into the garbage.)

Attempted returns are particularly amusing when they involve one of our smoking accessories. Glass, metal and plastic pipes still reeking of pot have been set under my nose by irritated (and stoned) customers who felt the product had failed in some way or another.

These customers are easy to get out of the store. All I need to do is say, “That burned residue looks suspicious. By law, I need to hand this over to the Mankato police department with the customer’s name, telephone number and address.” I don’t have to give the police anything, but it’s hilarious to see their eyes stretch open wide and grab their defective pipe as they mumble, “nevermind,” while bolting out of the store.

One customer almost bled to death when he tried to return a glass “incense” (aka meth) pipe that he had purchased from store less than an hour previously. He didn’t want a bag when he bought the fragile pipe and was now holding the shattered remains of glass in his bare hands. He got mad when I told him we didn’t take returns and I suddenly noticed he was bleeding as he squeezed his broken glass-filled fists in anger. Thankfully, he didn’t bleed on the floor or get any blood on the door, but as I watched him walk away from the store, I saw his grey hooded sweatshirt sleeves darken with what I assume was his blood.

One, deeply embarrassed customer tried to exchange a bi-sexual video because he didn’t realize it included men having sex with men. I found this hard to believe as the bi videos are kept on the same shelves as our man-on-man videos in a completely different area as the straight videos. My suspicions became stronger when I saw that the cover of the video in question featured two men French-kissing while a busty actress attempted to finger their assholes. I pointed this out to the customer, he stuttered something I couldn’t understand and slunk out after I said, “Sorry, no returns.”

I don’t like getting ripped off any more than anyone else, but when you’re purchasing novelties at an adult bookstore, there has to be a certain amount of “oh well” when the product breaks. Every store I’ve ever been to has a strict “No Return” policy and when an establishment is selling products that either cover or go into your genitals, this seems fair. Unfortunately, not everyone appears to have this commerce common sense.

Some people are downright stupid.

I had a ragged looking woman try to turn in a winning lottery ticket during one of my overnight shifts. When I told her we didn’t sell, nor reward lottery tickets, she objected by stating she had bought the ticket here just last week. She mumbled irritated phrases to herself as she left the store without her ticket. When I examined her "winning" ticket, I discovered it was really a Super America gas station receipt.

Once I got to know the products better, I became better at suggesting what vibrators lasted and the ones customers were more-likely to enjoy. Most of the time, this involves spending a lot more money. Some customers are cheap and end up buying a $20 piece of shit that looks like it was put together by a blind monkey. In several instances, I’ve had customers come back into the store to buy my higher-priced suggestion after they went home with the cheaper alternative and learned it only vibrated for 2 minutes before exploding.

My advice for customers: Do your research online. Find out what’s available, what people are saying and then match your needs with the right product. Paying $150 for a quality vibrator that will last for years is a hell of a lot better than losing a piece of plastic up your wife’s vagina because you bought the cheaper version made by a company in Thailand.

Also, if you ask the clerk for help, take their suggestions to heart. We deal with these products all the time and can usually give some great insight if you’re comfortable with opening up to us a little bit. We’re going to make fun of you regardless, so you may as well let us help you find the right product.

And if you do buy something that’s been shoved inside you that breaks. Write a letter to the manufacturer with the product’s UPC or serial number. (DO NOT SEND THEM YOUR USED VIBRATOR!) You’re much more likely to get a new vibrator and letter of apology from California Exotics than you are from Jimbo, the overnight-stoner-burnout-clerk.

We're not fucking Blockbuster...

(Or another reason why you should fuck with porn store clerks.)

Move rentals at porn stores are always a pain in the ass and I often wonder why owners and managers bother to put up with the complicated process. There is no convenient computer system with membership cards and barcode scanners. In every porn store I’ve been to, they require the renter to secure the price of the rented movies on their card before charging $5+ per movie, per-night. This way, if the movie isn't returned, the store can simply run the charge on the card permanently. 

It’s an obnoxious process that takes forever because you always have to explain what you’re doing to the customer, who then has to decide if they really want to hand over their credit card to be temporarily charged. We only have a handful of repeat renters, so every time someone wants to rent, I have to explain why I need to swipe their cards multiple times and reassure the customer that the charge will not appear on their monthly statement if they return the movies within a week.

Recently, the owner decided that if movies were more than five days overdue, we’d simply charge the credit card and be done with it. But we used to be required to call customers with overdue movies at least once a day until the overdue movies were returned.

I hated doing this and turned it into something of a game to amuse myself. The dumbasses that left a work number as their contact ALWAYS received several phone calls per evening until they brought back the movies. This was particularly fun working the evening shift as after 7 p.m., I was sure to get voicemail, so the clerks working would take turns calling and leaving messages in different voices. We were also particularly careful to mention the titles of each late movie multiple times during the message. (It's fun saying Cocksuckers 19 in a fake British accent.)

This resulted in multiple occasions of movies being thrown at me when customers finally came in to return their overdue rentals. During one of my nights off, a particularly irate customer bitched out the evening clerk for 20 minutes because our phone calls got him fired from his custodial position. (I’m not positive, but my guess is he was the customer who left his Christian Youth Group employer's phone number as his contact.)

I'm not heartless. I never left a message if a child answered and when it sounded like a spouse had answered, I kept the message very matter-of-fact.

The most amusing late-rental episode occurred when we realized two brothers with 10 overdue movies between the two of them were both working at the same AAMCO station down the street. I discovered that their phone went automatically to voicemail at 5 p.m. so it was easy to leave multiple messages throughout the night. I’m sure owner was amused to hear six messages a night from different clerks requesting that Danny and Donnie return Cum Sucking Sluts 15, Yum Yum We Love Cum and eight other colorful movie titles before the end of the week.

You can tell a lot about someone by the porn they rent. I’m sure bosses around Mankato loved learning that their accounting manager had five transsexual midget movies overdue.

Sure, these messages could get someone fired, but the customers really shouldn’t have listed a work phone number in their contact info for renting a porno movie. And if they don’t get fired, their boss will know what to get them for a Christmas bonus. 

Jizz around the world…

I’d like to take a moment away from my stories about the creepy Mankato whack shack to talk a little about other porn stores. I’m kind of the “porn expert” within my social network, but have really only been to a handful of other stores.

From my experience, I can say that around the United States, porn stores are pretty much the same. They range from disgusting places you’d never want to visit to incredibly upscale places that have an atmosphere more appropriate for jewelry than dildos. You can usually get a feel for the store just by driving past the parking lot. If the store has windows, chances are it’s more of an upscale, couple’s store. If the parking lot is filled with rusted out, windowless vans covered with 70s fantasy murals… just keep on driving.

My international porn store experience took place while I was living in Seoul, South Korea, teaching rich kindergarteners how to speak English. (I’ll wait while you make your jokes about a Jizzmopper being allowed to teach a  classroom full of children.) This time of my life was focused on drinking, hashing (see previous entry) and not much else.

Korea was interesting because, like Japan, it has huge Lolita fetish bubbling just under the surface of its society and any nudity in the media is blurred out. I thought it was hilarious that a country that had prostitution readily available wouldn’t allow adults to purchase magazines or videos of nude people without penises and vaginas pixelated out.

From what I understand, prostitution is illegal in Korea, but generally not prosecuted and is something most people just accept. There were even red-light districts with the workers displayed in glass windows for all to see. (They didn’t service any Westerners. AIDS is seen as a foreigner problem, so to protect themselves, sex workers in the red-light districts only work with fellow Koreans.)  

While I was there, and several times since, the police implemented special initiatives to crackdown on the sex industry in Seoul. They accomplished this by listing a very specific time frame that they would be walking through the known sex districts and arresting anyone suspected of prostitution. Once this program was completed, things would pretty much go back to normal.

From my perspective, I saw this crackdown as something the police felt pressured into doing by conservative groups and the fact that they announced the dates they’d be enforcing this program showed they weren’t very serious about it. However, the sex industry saw this as an attack and fought back hard. Thousands of sex workers and their supporters protested at the capital and demanded this harassment end. The grounds of the capital became a sea of people as they sat in non-violent protest for weeks against what they saw was an unjust action.

Support for the sex industry came from all over. Amnesty International and a large number of women’s rights groups provided financial and political support. The ACLU sent a delegation and spoke in front of the capital during one of the most heavily attended rallies of the protest.

But the most unexpected (at least for me) support came from the Korean Men’s League. They appealed directly to lawmakers to stop their attack against the sex industry and revoke all anti-prostitution laws. They argued that if prostitution was illegal, many young men who were serving in the army (which is required of all male, Korean citizens) would become depressed an inefficient soldiers. I followed their efforts on the English Armed Forces Network and the Korean Men’s League appeared sway quite a few lawmakers.

Eventually, the crackdown ended (precisely on the date they had announced it would) and everything did go back to normal. The once empty red light booths were now filled with friendly faces and Korean men were no longer in danger of developing depression.

While the running club ran through the red light district quite often, I can honestly say I only went into one Korean sex shop. It was located in Itaewon, the international district of Seoul located near the army base, and was well hidden on the second floor of an alley storefront. A small group of us went in together, unsure of what we’d find, but drunkenly enthusiastic at the same time.

We were disappointed to find the small store almost empty of customers and products. There was a small rack of foreign, plastic-wrapped magazines that were priced at $50 each (my best guess is that they were Thai). There were a few, incredibly cheap-looking dildos and vibrators that ranged in price from $80 to $550. I was thrilled and ready to buy some items from the tiny bondage section, until I saw the prices. My fantasies of how to utilize the eye-less gimp mask ended when I saw they were charging $1,200 for something that would be available in the U.S. for $50. They also had some scary looking whips and paddles, and I couldn’t help but wonder who they were selling this hodgepodge of sexual items to. The store probably wasn’t legal and had disappeared the next time I walked through the area.

To put this all into perspective, the country that doesn’t allow frontal nudity is filled with arcades that feature animated nudity and sex scenes. You can easily pay for a blow job, but it’s illegal to sell or buy a pocket pussy. You can get 30 years in prison for getting caught with a joint, but alcoholism is a completely accepted social norm.

I expect all of this is less of an issue now that we have the internet to beam all manner of pornography to anyone with a high-speed router, but I still find myself thinking about the strange sexual social customs in Korea.

Even a Jizzmopper can be shocked.

Bill’s even more of an asshole as a non-manager…

The rise and fall of Bill Cook volume IV.

For those of you who haven’t read the other entries about this fascinating and disgusting man, here are quick links to my previous posts about Bill.

Bill, an Introduction

You’ve Got To BeFucking Kidding Me - Bill is Made Manager

Bill Decides toLose Weight

The BillIntervention – I’m Made Assistant Manager

(Now that you’re caught up, here’s the end of the story.)

As I had expected, Bill didn’t take his demotion away from manager well. He was told about the new arrangement with me and another clerk as the store’s new management. They gave him the rest of the weekend off and told him to come in on Monday to hand over his keys and duties. As assistant manager, I would be instructed on any new duties or responsibilities by Bill, after things had settled down.

Unfortunately, they never did.

Bill pulled a complete 180 with his behavior at work and his opinion of the owners. Instead of being the ideal employee that just complained about his coworkers and constantly kissed the owner's ass, he was now complaining about everyone and not completing the modest duties that were his responsibility as a clerk.

When he ‘trained’ me how to order merchandise from the catalog, he essentially showed me the page numbers for all the products we carry at the store. He felt the need to explain that some prices were higher than others and that these higher priced items didn’t sell as fast. He also said that if I didn’t learn the ropes quickly, he’d be back as manager before I knew it.

After he handed over his keys and the combination to the store’s safe was changed, he spent his shifts bitching about his coworkers to customers and sitting on his butt. The few times I worked alongside Bill were spent in awkward silence as he overtly ignored my presence. Even my suggestions to order Godfather's Pizza were ignored!

I’m sure he feels betrayed. Bill was always paranoid that everyone else at the stores was gunning after his job as manager. Now that he was ousted, he probably thinks that we had been planning this coup for months and that everyone else at the store was reveling in his failure.

It’s true that all of the clerks wanted Bill removed as manager, but it wasn’t personal. At least we didn’t intend it to be. The owner wouldn’t have named another manager if Bill hadn’t been performing incredibly poorly in his position. If Bill hadn’t been such a prick to everyone, we may not have been so eager to talk to the owner about why he needed to be replaced. We were all shocked that he was named manager in the first place, so to think that there was a conspiracy to get rid of him even before he was made manager is just insane.

Eventually, Bill succumbed to what he hated the most.

He put in his two-week notice to start a new career as a truck driver and we thought we had heard the last about him. A week after he left, a nervous 19-year-old came in to the store and asked if I gave the same deals the fat guy did. When I asked what this special deal was, he explained that he picked out what he wanted in the pipe case, Bill would bring the stuff out to his car after his shift and sell everything for $100 cash. I said that the owner probably wouldn’t approve of this practice and that he would probably be calling the store now that he heard us discussing this over the security system. (The phone just happened to ring 30 seconds after I said this and I pretended like the dead line was the owner.)

It surprised me that Bill would start stealing from the store, even though he felt completely betrayed. More than anything, it was sad that he apparently tossed out all his values as soon as he got mad enough.

Several weeks after that, the store started to receive faxes from a bank Bill was trying to secure a $900,000 loan from. He was attempting to purchase a new semi truck and had said that he earned $150,000 a year as manager of the store. (In reality, he earned $22,000 at the most!) I sent these sheets on to the main office and listened to the touring manager laughing his ass off as he told the story of how Bill called the owner and asked him to lie about how much he earned at the store.

They never charged Bill with theft, even though they had his back-door transactions recorded, but the owner did threaten to charge him with everything from larceny to harassment and trespassing if Bill ever called him again.

I was reminded how similar this situation was to that of the last manager who was fired from the store and thought it was funny how life goes in circles.

I still wonder what happened to Bill, but have been unable to find any information about him online. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was dead, but every time I drive by an 18-wheeler on the freeway, I look up with the slight hope that I’ll see Bill in the driver’s seat, pissed that I must have tracked him down in his truck just to give him a hard time.

Spanish Fly, and other shit that doesn’t work…

This probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise, but porn stores are a great example of the adage, “People will buy anything.” This is fine for joke and novelty purchases that customers don’t actually expect to do anything. Where it gets sad, is when (stupid) customers buy products expecting them to accomplish something specific.

The best example of this is Spanish Fly. Cantharidin, the actual chemical obtained from blister beetles and the active ingredient in Spanish Fly, is a strong blister agent and a poison. The concept behind giving a woman Spanish Fly is that the chemical will cause areas in their vagina to swell and that they’ll want to engage in sex to relieve this constant irritation. (Totally hot, right?) People have died from taking real Spanish Fly and thankfully it’s not allowed to be sold for non-medical use in the United States. (That doesn’t mean you can’t get it, but the chance of actually getting the real stuff in a $3.95 bottle of coconut flavored Spaznitch Flie at an adult bookstore is virtually non-existent.)

Knowing this, it surprises me that there are a large number of male customers who regularly purchase our novelty Spanish Fly, insisting that it works beautifully. One regular explained how he just has to add the strawberry flavored Spanish Fly to his special “leg-opener” cocktail (Bacardi 151, Malibu Rum and god knows what else) and his date is certain to put out. My thought is that drunken date rape is what’s really going on here, but he didn’t listen when I tried to explain this.

Another non-effective product we sell a lot of is Herbal V (herbal Viagra.) It’s probably unfair of me to say that this product isn’t effective. It certainly could be and the repeat sales we have of this $79.95 bottle of 30 capsules would suggest that it works. However, the ingredients listed on the back of the bottle are vague at best and I think it’s absolutely insane to take an unregulated herbal supplement.

*Author’s note: I’ll write more about this when I’m telling tales from the next, mini-mall, couple-friendly porn store, where cardiac patients were our most regular herbal-love-concoction customers.

Herbal V could be safe and effective, and these regular customers could have spoken with their doctors before trying this product, but I doubt it. I don’t trust buying condoms from this store and won’t even think about taking the pills in a bottle labeled, “May cause dizziness and increased heart rate. Contact a physician before use.” Let’s be honest, no one wants to die from taking counterfeit Viagra when you could probably get it for a $10 co-pay if you had the balls to ask your doctor for a prescription.

The final product I’d like to mention is the “Not-Yet” desensitizing cream. Unlike the first two products I’ve written about, this cream absolutely does what it says it will. From personal experience, I can attest that rubbing a quarter-sized amount on your penis testicles will cause you to go numb from your bellybutton to your knees. And while it does delay ejaculation (in theory), it also prevents you from feeling any sexual pleasure. You could be dry humping a car door for all the sensation you retain and, despite what you’ve seen in porn videos, repeatedly blindly thumping into your partner will not bring her to new levels of ecstasy.

Worse yet, if the cream hasn’t absorbed by the time you start rubbing against your partner, her genitals will also go completely numb and you’ll find your passionate evening replaced with a late night of watching reruns of Friends.

Please know; I share because I care.

The moral of this story is that no one should look to a porn store to purchase anything medically effective. These things are novelties and they help you climax, fantastic, but don’t rely on them. With current medical technology, you should be talking to your doctor about your inability to achieve erection. Your body must be a temple before it can be an amusement park and sexual side-effects are usually a sign that something else in your body is not operating efficiently.

Why people seem to be more comfortable discussing their sexual shortcomings with the slob behind the pipe-counter than with their doctor is beyond me, but it keeps happening. All I can do is be honest when they ask questions:

Customer – “Do these horny goat weed pills actually do anything?”

Me – “No.”

Customer – “I’ll take 5 packages.”

Me – *Facepalm

Jizzmopper Origins

Most people who have found my blog and twitter feed quickly realize why I have the nickname Jizzmopper, but what you might not know is that a lot of people called me Jizz long before I started sharing these stories with the world.

As far as I know, Kevin Smith’s Clerks was the movie that brought the term Jizzmopper into the mainstream. Since this movie came out in 1994, there was plenty of time for people to add this word into their vocabulary before I started working at the porn store in 1998. A few friends gave me a hard time for being a Jizzmopper, but it didn’t stick as a nickname until I moved to Korea.

When I was teaching English in Seoul, I became involved with the Southside Hash House Harriers, a drinking group with a running problem. We’d meet every Sunday at 10 a.m. to drink beer, sing dirty songs and run a trail laid by one of the “hares”. On their sixth trail, new members are giving an incredibly inappropriate nickname. By this point, the other members had talked with me enough to learn about my porn clerk past, so the hash name Jizzmopper was almost a given. I did come dangerously close to being nicknamed Whack Shack, and am glad that Jizzmopper came out as the winner.

You’d be surprised how quickly you can get used to being called Jizz. I have my nicknamed embroidered on clothing and a sharp-eyed reader of this blog even found a picture of the patch that was made in my honor when I moved away from Korea. (I can't find the link anymore, but I will post an image as soon as I can.)

I continued being involved with the Hash House Harriers when I returned to the United States and still attend trails set by the Minneapolis Hash House Harriers from time to time. This has kept me comfortable with being referred to as Jizz and my wife will even call me by this name in certain situations. (For more information about the Minneapolis Hash House Harriers and hashing in general, check out www.minneapolish3.com or www.grhhh.com).

Anyway, the whole point of this post was to give you an idea of how long these stories have been percolating in my mind and how long I’ve been known as Jizzmopper. It also explains why there are three h’s in my email address.

Hopefully it gives you a little insight into my background and encourages you to ask more questions about me. The Ask Jizz mailbag has been running dry lately.

jizz_mopperhhh@hotmail.com or via Twitter @jizzchronicles

Reality check...

Since starting this blog and connecting it to Twitter, I’ve been tremendously pleased with the number of fantastic people that I’ve enjoyed connecting with and receiving encouragement from. Just when I think I’m a little odd, my world view is thrown open to reveal an entire population of delightful freaks I didn’t know existed. (Please understand I use the term “freaks” with the utmost love and respect.)

The other day, I posted a tweet asking people for seductive and erotic suggestions for me to blog about. In return I would mention them in the Jizzmopper Chronicles and be forever grateful. Only @VilenaPose and @LilyCrash9 participated, but they did give me some great situations to start working from. However, I’m still a little uncertain about the quality of my erotic fiction, so instead, I used these ideas to examine how lines of reality can get blurred when working at a porn store.

When you surround yourself with any environment, it will eventually start to seem normal. Whether it’s the adult industry (porn stores, strip clubs, etc.) or working in a bar (alcoholics, sleeping in until 3 p.m.), sooner or later this population of people will start to look and feel like the norm. This isn’t always a bad thing. I’ve heard of (lucky) BDSM couples who are able to commit full-time to their lifestyles. But when you’re dealing with a section of the population that obsesses about pornography and drugs, your world-view can get incredibly negative.

While I’d love to be able to tell stories about crazy hedonism taking place in the store after-hours, with the exception of the attempted sex in the video booths, nothing like that ever occurred. Only two things happened that are worth mentioning. The first was being propositioned by a rather unattractive man buying a swinger magazine to meet him and his wife for a drink after my shift was over. The other was getting flashed by a woman in the passenger-side seat of a car while her husband sat behind the wheel and grinned. It was dark out and it took me a while to figure out what I was staring at inside the dimly-lit car window. I don’t know if they were trolling for potential sex partners or simply getting a kick out of flashing strangers from a distance, but I just waved, got in my car and drove off to make the daily deposit.

Being surrounded in this environment did make me look at things differently. There was once instance in particular when I ordered a pizza and found myself surprised that the woman delivering the pizza didn’t start taking her clothes off as I reached for my wallet.

The darker side of this skewed world-view was that I started looking down at anyone I thought used drugs. Ministry has taught us to, “Never trust a junkie,” but I think it’s unfair to look poorly upon anyone who uses drugs recreationally. I could just as well feel the same about anyone who drinks alcohol. Generally speaking, if a drug has taken control of someone’s life, it’s pretty obvious and you’ll know you don’t want them in your life. But as I continued to sell products to junkies and potheads whose lives revolved around getting their next high, I felt more and more glad my drug days of high school were long over.

Every once in a while, my assumptions and held stereotypes would get turned on their ear. There was the guy who I recognized from campus that always wore a suit and bought one-hitters a few times a month. (I don’t know if he was a professor or admin staff, but he certainly looked like he had his shit together.) Additionally, once in a while a couple would come in for some toys and movies to spice up their love life, and it was always reassuring to see people actually happy to be in the store.

One Thursday evening, I spent most of shift with a couple trying to find a vibrator to replace one they had purchased in the mid 80s and used constantly. They wanted an exact replacement, but after it became clear this product wasn’t produced anymore (I checked several catalogs), we spent the rest of the time testing out the vibration functions on products that interested them. This experience could have been annoying and long, but their enthusiasm and openness made me feel privileged to be helping them with something so intimate.

Then there was the guy who smelled like shit and bought our molded fist dildo. He couldn’t stop giggling as he pulled out bill after crumpled bill from his disgusting trench coat pocket. For every warm fuzzy there’s a repulsive antithesis ready to creep you out to the core.

But these experiences were important for keeping me grounded and taught me that while some people are crazy perverts who only receive joy from shoving molded plastic fists up their asses, there are also people who use these products as an occasional treat in their lives.

Everything was put into perspective one day when I went to the mall and saw a group of young men hanging out in the Game Stop discussing video game news with the clerk behind the counter. This group was always there whenever I stopped by and I realized that the only difference between these geeks and the perverts at my store is that these guys were getting their sex fix virtually.

We all orgasm in some fashion, make sure you’re getting the most from yours. 

Carl – This is your brain on drugs…

I’ve written several times about how the owner of the store likes hiring older employees. I’ve also explained why this is a bad idea because anyone over 40 who wants to work at a porn store is probably the last person you’d want handling money or working with customers. They’re either a burnout or a thief (sometimes both) and can’t be trusted with anything.

Despite this, our regional manager hired Carl to work our overnight shift and for some reason, I had to train him.

The first thing I noticed about Carl, as I arrived at 10:45 p.m. to work an unscheduled overnight shift, was that he shakes. A lot of shakes. Throughout the course of the evening, I eventually learned why he constantly vibrates.

Carl looks like a real-life version of the Big Lebowski’s The Dude, if he was completely fried, emaciated and always wore a dirty jean jacket. A child of the 60s and 70s, Carl had a rather rough experience when he went to school at Mankato State University. He and his brother were dorm roommates that were constantly disappointed at their classmates’ lack of debauchery. He never went to class, drank incessantly, got high constantly and eventually flunked out after his second quarter. During their last night in the dorm, Carl and his brother decided to take the rest of the acid they had left between the two of them. They had 34 hits!

This was a bad idea on Carl’s part. Now the walls melt on their own if he doesn’t remember to take his anti-psychotic medications. Drinking alcohol reduces his shakes, but if he has more than two, he usually has a seizure. (I would later learn that he has a large number of seizures.) He tries to stick to Mountain Dew, but the caffeine makes his tremors worse, so he’s usually stuck in limbo between almost falling asleep and shaking himself into oblivion.

I'm sure this trend of chemical consumption continued after college, but I didn't get much information about this time of his life.

In addition to working overnights at the porn store, Carl is a tattoo artist and a piercer. I learned this after I asked about the permanent artwork on his hands. My best guess is that these images are supposed to represent a castle and a knight, but it looks as if this was attempted by a child using jumbo crayons. He explained that he had done these pieces himself and removed his ever-present jean jacket to show me the other tattoos up his left and right arms. They weren’t any better and I found myself reminded of Picasso.

A few days after training him, I learned more about Carl’s failed tattoo and piercing parlor, and why he wasn’t allowed to operate this business in Mankato anymore. For years, Mankato Ink had been the only tattoo parlor in the area. Carl decided to start his own place and compete by offering much lower prices. He was able to achieve this by not paying for little extras, like proper lighting in his store or new needles for each piercing. He told me about two girls who came in to celebrate their high school graduation with belly button rings. Carl gave them a great deal by piercing them together, sticking the first girl, wiping off the needle and then immediately piercing the next girl with the same needle. (I hope they were really close friends because they’re now sharing a hell of a lot more than friendship.)

When the owners of Mankato Ink got word of what was happening in Carl’s shop, they made a deal with their tattoo and piercing supply vendor. They’d buy from this supplier exclusively if he stopped selling to Carl. The vendor agreed and Carl eventually closed his shop because he ran out of needles, ink and (I can only hope) cleaning materials.

Now his career is in flux, so he’s just working at the porn store until he can get his parlor up and running again. I pray that he’s never able to achieve this. I also completely expect to be called in to cover numerous overnight shifts because he’s had a seizure, his tremors are too severe to operate the cash register or he finally finishes what he started in the 70s and O.D.s. 

Hazing at the porn store...

I’ve been working at the store for a while and have managed to get a number of my friends hired. Because of this, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to start hazing new employees that we know outside of the store.

To be fair, working at the porn store is one of the least-taxing jobs on the face of the earth. Kicking out people trying to fuck each other in the video booths notwithstanding, there aren’t any demands other than ringing customers up and counting your cash drawer. I decided that this was too easy and added some spice to our newest employee’s first solo overnight shift.

Steve is the brother-in-law of Jeremy, an evening shift clerk who agreed to help make his in-law’s first shift memorable. We did this using a four-part method.

1. We crank called the store from the pay phone located across the street of the store. We did our best to call only when the store was crowded and took pains to keep him on the phone as long as possible.
2. A female friend was sent in to attempt to return one of her old sex toys and then act irate when he wouldn’t allow the return. (She refused to let us smear lint and facial hair on the device before bringing it in.)
3. Since walking and cleaning the parking lot is required at the end of his shift, we placed a variety of surprises for him to find. These surprises were specifically designed to make him wonder what the hell was happening outside the store while he was working. For one, we put an entire roll of saran wrap balled up around a rubber chicken, wet naps and an empty jar of Vaseline. Along his car, we smeared Vaseline (obtained from the now empty jar) on his passenger side windows and wrote suggestive messages that were apparently only visible when he drove home and the sunlight hit the passenger side of the car. Next to the garbage dumpster, we drew a large pentagram in the dirt and threw a couple of raw chicken breasts in the center. (In retrospect, this was the dumbest part of the prank. Everyone had to deal with the smell of rotting chicken for days after throwing raw meat on the ground.)
4. The coup de grâce was a condom filled with Campbell’s chicken and stars soup thrown against the wall of the back, corner booth. This was accomplished during one of the long prank phone calls and we were able to get the soup to explode all the way up to ceiling. I was tremendously impressed with the results of this part of the prank as it's incredibly difficult to get condensed soup into a condom.

The most difficult part about this prank was playing it cool. It was several days before I was going to see Steve again and every ounce of my being wanted to call him up the following night to ask him about his first overnight shift by himself. This wouldn’t be completely out of the ordinary because I’m an Assistant Manager, but I’m also terrible at keeping a straight face/voice while talking to someone about a joke. I felt that for the good of the mission, I would simply wait until Steve chose to tell me about these events.

Eventually, Steve told Jeremy what had happened and wanted to know if this sort of thing was normal at the store. That’s when the prank was exposed and after about 10 seconds of deciding whether or not to get pissed, Steve burst out laughing. This prank was quite literally over the top and we made it up to Steve by taking him out for drinks and dinner.

The only problem now is how to top ourselves the next time another friend gets hired. Also, I'm a little worried about what Steve will pull in retaliation.