Netflix Killed the Video Store

Throughout high school and college, I had a string of pretty good part-time jobs and babysitting gigs.

Yogurt-Slinger

My first real job was working evenings and weekends at TCBY. The perks included all the yogurt and Belgian waffes I could eat. Downside: I was forced to wear a green, collared shirt and mop the floors. I learned frozen yogurt comes as a liquid in huge plastic packages that you simply pour into the top of the yogurt machines and let electricity do the rest. I never learned to make change or to inhale the nitrous oxide from the whipped cream cans as one of my co-workers was fond of doing.

Hawker

There was the gift store at the mall, that sold all sorts of tchotchkes, lotions, candles, posters and dolls . It was fun to help people select their miniature babies for layaway before wrapping them gingerly in tissue to store in the vast stockroom until Christmas.

Perks: a 15% employee discount there and at the mall food court. The downside: The unending track of music, comprised of maybe 12 songs that looped over and over and over until time stood still and became a meaningless concept. I learned to distinguish between a Madame Alexander with its clever themey accessories and a Himstedt with its human hair and lifelike features.

(This only came in handy later when I identified a roommate's doll as being highly sought by collectors and was able to arrange a sale. Sweet! Beer money.)

Governess
I did a lot of babysitting. Even when I probably should have had a babysitter of my own, I was entrusted with the care of the children of others. There were the neighbors whose children were delightfully fun, begging me to paint their nails and then going to bed without so much as a complaint or a fuss, leaving me with the mistaken impression that children were naturally equipped to snuggle into bed and quietly sleep for 10 hours with little more than a "nighty-night." The perks of babysitting included easy money and the fun of raiding the family's refridgerator. I learned that parents pay more after they've been to parties and had a few cocktails. Downside: Trying to stay awake after the kids had gone to sleep. It was embarrassing to be snoozing on the sofa when Mom and Dad came home.

But, the best job ever was...

Video Jockey

Even before the movie Clerks pointed out everything hilarious and true about being a video store clerk, working in a video store was a hilarous and true high school job.

Getting paid to watch movies, making sanguine and sincere recommendations to customers and encouraging them to pay the extra 50 cents for something called "video insurance" freeing them of responsibility in the event their VCRs ate the tapes (which was actually quite common), made for an oddly fulfilling work experience.

There were late nights and the excitement of working with college kids including the coolest girl, Kimberly, who sort of took the high-school girls under her wing, regailing us with tales of her second job as a cocktail waitress and giving us tips on how to sneak in to local clubs to listen to bands.

I learned to use a shrinkwrap machine and not faint from the noxious fumes and to make a bitchin' display to promote the latest installation of the Lethal Weapon series. We rented video cassette players to folks without and Sega game systems.

My boss was school-of-hard-knocks single mom who probably shared way more about accidental pregnancies and dating married men than my tender 17-year-old ears were ready to process at that time. The perks included free movie rentals, working next door to a pizza parlour, where most of my wages went during work hours, and unparallelled people-watching opportunities. The hardest part of the job was dusting the display shelves and vaccuuming at the close of business. The only downside was when the store was briefly under the ownership of a franchise that required its employees to wear hideous yellow shirts emblazoned with the store logo.

Everything I needed to know about life may have been contained within those four walls: learning, love, laughter. Well, everything except how to make change.

Happy Fourth of July!