Employee profile
What was the name of your video store?
20/20 Video
Where was the store located?
Redondo Beach, California (United States)
When did you start working at this store?
1989
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 had a friend who had recently become an assistant manager at the store, and he proceeded to get each and every one of his close friends a job at 20/20. There must've been at least 10 of us that worked there over the course of about three years, even after my assistant manager friend had quit and moved to England!
Describe your store - what did it look like? What were its distinguishing
features?
The colors were really 1980's - lots of teal and pink and bright blue. It was pretty clean, (except for the break room and occasionally the bathroom) but only because we cleaned the damn thing every single night.
What were your customers like? What particularly memorable customers or events do you remember?
The customers were all pretty much your average folk. It was a quiet little suburban beach town, so you'd get lots of families, couples, that kind of thing. Nothng too blatantly weird... Except for the guys who would rent a HUGE stack of porn flicks and then return them all the next day. You'd open them to scan them back in, and you could see that the person who rented them had only watched each of them for the first ten minutes or so. All of them! He had watched each tape for literally no more than ten minutes, and then switched to another one. People are funny... I remember my assistant manager friend and I would memorize the account numbers of all the good-looking girls that would come in and rent. We'd say to one another, "Didn't #57803 look hot last night?" "Hell yeah!"
What was your boss like? How did he or she divide the work in the store?
Well, because the assistant manager and I were friends, the manager would rarely let us work together because she didn't think we'd get any work done. Not entirely true, because we did end up working together for quite a while after she quit and we ran that place like it was an army base - no bullshit, and any lame customers got the boot. We'd go smoke bowls in the bathroom on lunch breaks and then commence to spend the rest of the evening watching John Hughes movies and laughing our asses off at everyone and everything, but we still got shit done.
What video formats did your store offer (i.e. VHS, Beta, Laserdisc)? Where were
different formats kept in the store?
VHS. This was at the tail end of the '80s, so Beta was long gone. Laserdiscs were too expensive and cumbersome to stock.
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?
The porn section was HUGE, it took up almost the entire top floor. Actually, from the time I started until the time I left, I think the upstairs porn section more than doubled in size. Amazing... It brought in the most money, so why the hell not? We had all the other sections, as well, and they did fine, but the porn section was where the money definitely came from. We'd have guys come in on Friday night, rent 5 tapes for 10 bucks, return them the next MORNING, and then rent 5 more right afterward. This would continue throughout the weekend, until they had rented at least twenty tapes over the course of two days. Incredible...
What other services/products did you offer besides the rental or sale of
programs? Did this change over time?
We rented/sold video games and video game systems, too. We introduced them at the beginning of the '90s when the whole video game thing was really taking off, and it did pretty well. They induced quite a lot of inside stealing, but that's another story altogether.
Did you ever rent VCRs or other hardware to your customers? If so,
how important were hardware rentals to the business?
No VCRs, just video game systems. The early ones, like Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo. They weren't that important to the business, as they'd only get rented maybe once a week. Not a big deal...
During the period that you worked at the store, what changes did you see take place?
Lots of different people coming through. I saw co-workers that went on to get married and have children, friends who worked at the store to get them through college who later went on to become software millionaires, female employees that absolutely refused to work with me because I was such a creepy little 17-year-old, the whole freakin' gamut... Lots of great stories... As for the store itself, I think it was really trying to be too much. It spread itself out too thin when it started with the video game rentals, video game system rentals, etc... No one ever repainted the place, though, for all I know it's still that ugly teal, pink, and blue.
Is this store still open? If not, when did it close?
I have no idea. I imagine it is, though. I moved to San Francisco from Redondo Beach when I was 21, and I don't really get down there much. When I do go down there, though, I always try to drive by it and say hello. I bought my first pack of cigarettes at the liquor store right up the street from it, I met one of my best friends out in front of it right after I got into a car accident, had a lot of great times there...