We called him Jukie on account of how he moved in the hallways at school.
His real name was Cody, and he was maybe eighty pounds soaking wet, all of four feet and some odd inches tall. He had this timid, tiny little mouse voice with a quavering lilt to it that made him near goddamn impossible to understand. He was a scrawny little shit who would sprint toward you at full tilt, only to duck and weave out of your direction at the last second—the eponymous “juke” motion.
Now, of course, it should be stated that Jukie had some kind of learning disorder and was predominately in special education classes. My interaction with him was pretty limited outside of the scope of seeing him in the halls with one major exception.
Jukie, you see, liked to come into the video store a lot. Sometimes he’d come in with his dad, George, and other times he’d come in by himself. But one common theme for these visits was that Jukie never had any goddamn money. The other common theme, seemingly birthed by the first, is that Jukie always wanted to try to scam me out of something.
Movie Madness didn’t have a complex computer program to handle customer accounts, but it did its job. It could track rentals, late fees, invoices, and rental history (to an extent). And when it came to Jukie (and George), it told a pretty compelling story:
Jukie’s family never, ever brought movies back on time. And because they never returned rentals on time, they racked up a bunch of late fees.
Late fees at Movie Madness were pretty easy to grok; if you didn’t bring your rented movie back by 6:30 P.M. on the following day, you got charged another day’s rental. After a few days, we’d print the invoice, put it in a basket, and call and hassle you about bringing our shit back.
Most of the time the late calls worked, but sometimes they didn’t.
As an aside: On at least one occasion before my time there, I was the recipient of these late calls. I’d rented movies under my name for movie night at a friend’s house, and said friend never took them back. I ended up accruing at least $40 in late fees, a whole heap of anger from my mom, and got banned from the store for a while.
Anyway, I called Jukie—well, George—more than a few times about late movies, but as far as I can remember no one ever answered the phone. Sometimes it rang. Sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes the phone was disconnected. This was actually a pretty common occurrence. Even though the late fees grew exponentially, it didn’t stop Jukie from coming into the store and trying to rent movies every few weeks.
“Cody,” I’d say, “We can’t just let you rent stuff. You gotta pay some on this late fee.”
“I’ll put a dollar on it,” he’d reply.
“Cody, the late fee is $35. We honestly shouldn’t have let it get this bad.”
“Let me put a dollar on it,” he’d say again, in that weird garbled speech of his.
“Dude, no,” I’d say, all of four years older but drunk on the power of telling him no.
This would repeat for at least five minutes, up until the point where he’d get pissed off and call me an asshole and either go out to get his dad for more money or just leave entirely, often just dropping whatever “giant animal versus other giant animal” movie he was trying to rent on the floor.
I’d like to think that this is just isolated behavior, that Jukie’s actions are not indicative of society as a whole, but three years of video store rental clerkdom proved me wrong.
Despite the absolute clarity of the video store rental agreement, no one ever wanted to pay their late fees. What’s worse, a not insignificant percentage of the population didn’t even want to admit that their shit was late in the first place!
I tell a fictionalized version of a story in my novel about something that actually happened to me about a week or two after I started at Family Video back in 2007, but the most intense argument I’ve ever had with a customer over late fees involved being accused of trying to steal from someone.
The short version of this story is that Family Video, God rest its soul, used to allow customers to rent an odd number of movies for $1 a piece or, if you doubled them up, two per dollar.
A lady came in with a handful of six movies and explained that they were late. But the conversations turned sour when I told her that she owed $6 for all six.
“But they’re fifty cent movies,” she said.
“No, ma’am,” I offered, trying to be as polite as possible. “They’re just two for a dollar.”
This went on for a few minutes and a line developed, until finally something in this woman snapped and she literally threw a twenty dollar bill onto the counter and screamed.
“Fine,” she hissed. “Take it. Take my money. You want to steal it anyway, it’s all yours! This is highway robbery!”
My friend Bruce says that he will never forget the way I deadpanned to this woman, after accusing me—and my brand new employer—of theft, “I’m sorry you feel that way,” but I just remember feeling like my skin was melting as my insides turned to molten chunks.
I quietly made change, passed the appropriate amount across the small counter, and watched her snatch it up from the orange surface like she was worried I would try to take it back.
As she left, she stopped in the door and shrieked, “I feel sorry for the owner of this company when he meets God!”
As far as bad customers go, however, that was pretty tame. I don’t begrudge her the frustration she felt that night all those years ago, because if we’re being honest the whole “Two for a dollar” thing might feel pretty confusing for maybe the first thirty seconds you’re thinking of the concept. What I do begrudge her, however, was her insistence that I was the asshole for just reading the screen.
It’s the same level of judgment and disdain I held for good old Jukie, who always had a shitty attitude regardless of the situation. Whether he was about to run you down in the hallway or trying to convince you to let him add another $5.00 to his already astronomical balance at the video store, nothing was ever his fault.
I looked up Jukie the other day because I remember both his first and last name, and I’m proud to report that he hasn’t seemed to change in any meaningful way. In fact, I think he’s a Juggalo these days, which is really fucking wild because as far as I can tell Juggalos are generally some of the most chill, nicest people on Earth.
Even when it came to video store behavior, Juggalos were always apologetic about stuff. They had late fees the same as everyone else, but they were never combative about it. They’d either grin in a mea culpa, a sort of “Oh, fuck, ya got me!” smile, and pay the amount without argument. Sometimes you’d just tell them the dollar amount and they’d get kind of crestfallen. But then they’d lean across the counter and whisper, almost conspiratorially, to ask if they could put down a couple bucks on the late fee this time because it’s their weekend with the kids and they really want to watch some movies tonight.
And you know what? That kind of attitude goes a long way. More often than not, I bet they had a really good time with their kids watching movies and hanging out.
Look, late fees and movie rentals have gone the way of the Dodo Bird, and eventually no one is going to remember the joy of wandering the aisles of a video store seeking out something to watch or put on in the background while you do shots or try to get laid or whatever. It’s just another relic of history, like Nokia candy bar phones and physical mixtapes.
But I’ll remember them, and more than that, I’ll remember the weird fucking kid with thick glasses, unkempt hair, and a penchant for nearly slamming into you full-tilt in the hallway without a second' thought.
Required Reading
So I don’t have a lot of reading recommendations this week because I haven’t done a lot of reading, and a big part of that is just being too busy. But I will tell you to go subscribe to my friend Ella Dawson’s Patreon because she is very smart and honest and knows a lot about digital marketing and relationships.
If you’re looking for other smart writing that happens to be about sports, I can tell you that you should go snag a copy of This Publication to Be Named Later, which includes sports writing from a whole bunch of really talented people and was edited by another friend of mine, Sarah Kelly.
Curious about all the Gamestop bullshit? Luke O’Neil has you covered with this installment of Welcome to Hell World, but you may have to pay to read this one, but I honestly can’t tell because I’m already a paying subscriber.
There’s been some really heavy shit that’s gone down in the Kansas City beer world this week as a couple of people at much-beloved Boulevard Brewing Company were revealed to be creeps and/or apologists for sexual harassers, but by and large those assholes have been fired and the workers are beginning to reclaim some of their autonomy.
Musical Selections
I’ve been digging through old writing playlists I’ve put together for when I start coming up with new ideas for books that I abandon less than a week later. I put this playlist through the rotation a couple of times this week and while I can’t even begin to tell you what the theme of the book was supposed to be, the playlist itself isn’t that bad.
Final Thoughts
I made a joke a few hours ago on Twitter that my approach to writing was to just shit words out onto the keyboard/screen/page and then ignore them until it was time to hit post, and that’s more or less what happens here, if we’re being honest. That’s why the version that hits your inbox is usually a tiny bit different than what gets linked to. I will inevitably find a typo somewhere that needs fixing.
Except there’s a piece of writing I’ve been working on that’s pretty personal and raw, and I’m curious as to whether or not I even want it to go live. I’ve worked it over at least five times in the past week and had several friends take a look at it. I’ll let you know when it’s coming (if it is), but in the meantime I just want to thank everyone who clicks and reads and subscribes and shares my shit because it really does mean a lot.
Speaking of sharing and subscribing…