Employee profile
What was the name of your video store?
Erol's Video
Where was the store located?
Arlington, Virginia (United States)
When did you start working at this store?
1987
In your own words, how did you get started working in video retail? What
led you to choose the video industry, and this store in particular?
I was in high school, needed a job, knew a guy in my group of acquaintances who worked there who told me they were hiring at this particular branch. I was pretty excited, as I enjoyed movies and renting videos,and the prospect of easy access to lots of tapes to rent was enticing.
Describe your store - what did it look like? What were its distinguishing
features?
By the time I worked for Erol's it had been a growing chain for maybe six years. It started originally as a TV store and repair shop in South Arlington, a Washington D.C. suburb. When VCRs hit consumers, they started renting out titles, and demand was huge and they 'ran' with it, growing into one of the first pre-Blockbuster's chains in the East Coast, but focussed mainly in the Washington D.C. area, I think(they eventually sold their entire video rental business to Blockbusters, I believe, then went into the computer retail and eventually internet service provider business). The original Erols had been a large TV store, and videos gradually took over the store until there were no more VCRs being sold, I believe. It became the flagship store, large and with many titles one couldn't find anywhere else. They had 'cult' and african-american movie sections in 1987. It would be worth tracking down whoever was in charge of those. While I didn't work at that store, but at a branch in North Arlington, they had a fairly standardized look: Red Carpets, wooden shelves, with special red boxes containing grey foam that the movies slid into. The box in which the movie was originally sold was cut up and pasted to the sides of the red box, which had a clear plastic cover. The boxes were sized to fit perfectly on the wooden shelves, and the title was visible on the spine. They had a decent range of titles; one wall was basically 'classics', one wall was drama, one comedy and mystery. There was also a small kids section. There were four or five computers set up with bar code readers at a wooden console the customer walked by on their way in. Also, membership sign-up took place at the front of the counter, which faced the street. Erols may have been one of the first to have bar-code readable membership cards, I'm not sure. There was red velvet rope that guided the customer by the counter. The movie shelves came after this counter and a turnstile. A customer coming in could drop off the movies, and I think paid for them upon return. Customers checking movies out had a similar situation on the other side. The manager's office was downstairs, and an employee lounge and bathroom as well.
What were your customers like? What particularly memorable customers or events do you remember?
Customers were upscale suburban Washingtonians and their offspring. I believe Washington Post critic Tom Shales rented movies there. Events: 1. I started working there a week before Thanksgiving of '87. I think the video rental boom had truly taken hold on a mass scale just that year, as this was before large amounts of recent movies would be stocked (studios hadn't made arrangements with the chains and were still charging them like $90 per new tape). I think that was the week that 'Dirty Dancing' and 'No Way Out' both came out on video, right around the time the expression 'waiting to see it on video' was drifting into the vernacular. Anyway, about 75% of all the tapes in the store were rented out by close of business Wednesday night. It was extremely crowded. 2. I remember a particular employee was in his late 20s and was a movie expert, and could dissertate about why Clint Eastwood was a great director. He took home all the promotional movie posters. 3. Another employee was extremely excited about working for a large chain, and liked to enforce 'company policy'. At some point, corporate had said that no one should be looking at the movie shelves without showing their Erol's card on the way in. This would help get more people to sign up for memberships. This employee asked everyone for their card right by the turnstile. I think this was eventually annoying enough for the rule to stop being enforced. 3. I got very tired of 'Dirty Dancing' playing on the TV screen ALL THE TIME. I learned very quickly that it is not a good movie.
What was your boss like? How did he or she divide the work in the store?
There were 3 managers, I believe, all good serious people in their 30s, overworked and underpaid. Employees did everything; work a till and shelve. All the movies came in from headquarters ready to rent, and didn't take much processing. There wasn't much too it. Closing time involved shelving, vacuuming and occasionally washing the windows.
What video formats did your store offer (i.e. VHS, Beta, Laserdisc)? Where were
different formats kept in the store?
When I started, they were largely phasing out Beta, and eventually just had VHS. The flagship store ended up with all the Beta titles, I think. The Beta titles were in grey boxes instead of red ones, and in a different section of the store.
In addition to mainstream Hollywood movies, what other kinds of videotapes
(children's videos or X-rated tapes, for example) did you rent/sell? Where were these
videos found in your store, and how important were they to the business?
Classics, which usually meant movies released before 1967 or something, took up a significant wall at this store.
What other services/products did you offer besides the rental or sale of
programs? Did this change over time?
Erols also rented video players.
Did you ever rent VCRs or other hardware to your customers? If so,
how important were hardware rentals to the business?
I don't know how imported hardware rental was to the business.
During the period that you worked at the store, what changes did you see take place?
Beta was phased out, but I was only there for about 8 months.
Is this store still open? If not, when did it close?
It is now a Blockbusters.