Employee profile
What was the name of your video store?
Video Library
Where was the store located?
El Cajon and La Mesa, California (United States)
When did you start working at this store?
1986
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?
My first job after high school was as an usher and then an assistant manager at a UA Cinemas. I loved the free movies, but couldn't get by on the low pay. Next I moved on to pizza delivery, but my car kept breaking down, so I applied at the local video store and ended up working for them for three years. Video Library was a great San Diego based chain of stores... until Blockbuster bought them. I quit as soon as they took over.
Describe your store - what did it look like? What were its distinguishing
features?
The store was fairly large for video stores of the time, but it looked pretty much like the Blockbusters and Hollywood Videos of the day. The key difference is that all the videos were kept behind the counter - only the box covers were kept on the A-frames and you had to bring the tag (red for VHS, green for Beta) to the counter to get the movie. The counter ran perpendicular to the front of the store, along the right way and hooked to the left for the back office. The first row of A frames were kids films and new releases were along the left wall. The rest of the store was two sections - all the mainstream films in alphabetic order (no genre sections - and we were proud of this) and all the adult videos in back. A tall A-frame wall separated the two sections. The movies were all bar-coded (gold stickers) and we used a pen-shaped bar-code reader to swipe the number and check out the movie. We kept the signed membership/rental agreement, which was printed on an envelope with the deposit inside, under the counters. At the front of the store, we had a single TV on a TV cart and we showed movies all day long. We also rented VCRs.
What were your customers like? What particularly memorable customers or events do you remember?
We prided ourselves on our movie knowledge and all employees were encouraged to watch as many movies as possible. We were also expected to discuss movies with our customers and offer suggestions. Most of our customers were great. The most memorable customer was a first-time customer who rented a tape and then came back to return it. He couldn't get the tape to play on his TV - it turned out that he didn't own a VCR and didn't know that you needed one - he had actually stood in front of his TV set trying to figure out where to put the tape! I know this sounds like an urban legend, but I swear it happened. This was probably 1987, so videos had been around for awhile, but there were still people that had never rented a tape before. It took everything I had to keep a straight face while I told my employee (I was an assistant manager) to rent a VCR to the guy. The other very memorable event was my first or second day on the job. I came in and my manager was in the process of boxing up all the Traci Lords adult videos to send back to the main office. We later found out the reason was that she had just turned 18 and announced that to the world, turning almost every one of her videos into child porn.
What was your boss like? How did he or she divide the work in the store?
Everyone pretty much did the same job, but the newest employees were the tag hangers. They were responsible for filing the returned movies and then hanging the tags above the boxes. It made you become very familiar with all the movie titles. Our favorite trick to play on new employees was to make up fake movie title tags and see how long they would search for the corresponding box. The best movie titles were ambiguous ones where you couldn't tell if it was a mainstream film or an adult film.
What video formats did your store offer (i.e. VHS, Beta, Laserdisc)? Where were
different formats kept in the store?
VHS and Beta. As I recall, all the cassettes were in alphabetic order with the Beta copies mixed in with the VHS copies.
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?
We rented every kind of video from children to Hollywood to foreign to Adult. They were broken into 5 sections: Children, New Releases, Old Releases, Adult new releases, and Adult Old Releases. I believe that at least 50% of our income was from the rental or sale of adult videos. Behind and on the counter top, were the videos for sale.
What other services/products did you offer besides the rental or sale of
programs? Did this change over time?
We rented VCRs, sold VCRs, microwave popcorn, movie-theater-sized candy, and Premiere magazine. We eventually stopped selling VCRs. When Blockbuster bought the chain, they got rid of all adult videos.
Did you ever rent VCRs or other hardware to your customers? If so,
how important were hardware rentals to the business?
Yes. I don't know how much income this represented, though.
During the period that you worked at the store, what changes did you see take place?
I witnessed the gradual death of Beta. I also watched as Blockbuster grew and swallowed every video store in site. Our chain grew from something like 15 to 40 stores in the time I worked for it.
Is this store still open? If not, when did it close?
Video Library was swallowed by Blockbuster in 1988. My particular store was relocated across the street (bigger building) after Blockbuster acquired it, but I don't know if it's still in that new location.