When I was 18, I got my first real job. No, this wasn't my FIRST job. I'd worked in a supermarket, and spent summers doing manual labor. However, this was the first job that I cared about; the first job that I enjoyed.
I already spent my days talking to people about movies. Now someone was paying me to do it. Life doesn't get much better (except if they paid me more than minimum wage).
Moving on... I've worked in two video stores: Couch Potatoes, and California Video. These were both independent chains, slowly being swallowed up by the big players like BlockBuster and Hollywood Video. So, even though I was paid poorly and had no vested interest in how much money our store brought in, I still felt a loyalty to it. Therefore, obviously, BlockBuster was the devil. You hated it, and anyone who rented there.
Even though we hadn't really been to a BlockBuster before, we could tell you all about it. The employees were mindless cashier drones, the title selection was poor and never in stock, and rentals were all overpriced. I proudly stated that I would never be caught shopping in such a horrible store.
And yet, the wheel of time continues to turn (just threw that in to make matt groan) and people change. After college I moved to a city without independent rental chains. The store I used to work at in college even closed down. What was a guy to do? I couldn't just buy every movie that I wanted to watch (I did try that for a while).
So I did 2 things. One, I signed up for BlockBuster online. They sent me movies in the mail. Great... I could rent from them but not have to go to that horrible store. The reason we chose that over Netflix is because you received in-store rental coupons every month for that title that everyone is trying to get online (thus causing a long wait). We began going to BlockBuster about once a month. It wasn't so bad. They had all the movies I wanted to see (well, most of them), their employees were real people who liked to talk about movies as much as I did, and their prices were very reasonable (especially with the no late fee policy).
Long story short, I'm now a happy customer of the BlockBuster chain. It's cheap and convenient. In fact, I don't know why people hate the chain so much. I still have some friends who refuse to rent there... but I've never heard a good reason for it. Personally, I think that people like to have something to hate. They choose places like Wal-mart, Starbucks, and blockbuster.
Well can't we all just get along? Can my readers really give me a good reason why we shouldn't rent movies at BlockBuster? Is there some evil conspiracy that they are plotting? Perhaps renting movies from there will increase global warming?
I just don't understand...
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
BlockBuster - Evil or just Misunderstood?
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3 comments:
The library actually has a pretty good stock. you can request odd titles and most things are free for 7 days.
Video store or no video store- SUPPORT THE LITTLE MAN!
They've been accused of editing their movies to take out content that is too sexy or violent. In other words, to make it appeal more to the masses, or to the family-oriented consumer.
I don't know if they've done that for sure or not. Could be just a nasty rumor. But if it was confirmed that they did, I'd probably take that into consideration before renting another movie from them again. I want to see the movie for what it is, not for what Blockbuster thinks it should be.
Perhaps www.ihateblockbuster.com will shed more light on the topic for us?
Blockbuster used to not carry even semi-adult content. They often carried PG-13 versions of normally R-rated movies. That was a reason why I didn't like them. However, they've stopped doing that. You can get the same unrated version of American Pie 5 (naked mile) as you'd get anywhere else :-)
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