Hunter's Formula

Our very own Hunter saw this one day, and decided to try it out.......

And guess what, it works! That's him on the left on the way to fix someone's toilet. That is milk in those cups, right guys? Funy thing is, there's a guy in the next room in a Bowser costume that just got the crap beat out of him. Looks like the princess wasn't in another castle after all.

The Touchdown Kid

A father and son were checking out one day, and the dad's got a pile of X-Box games that he places up on the counter. I talk to him a little bit, and learn first of all that his son plays on his school's football team, and happens to be a runningback. The father says that he regrets a deal recently made with this future NFL hall of famer: every touchdown he scores lands him an X-Box game.

This kid's got it made. He must have some talent, since his father also mentioned that he owes about 9 games already, and the lucrative contract was just signed a couple weeks ago. As if a future career in the NFL where players make million dollar salaries isn't enough, having new games to come home to after gridiron matchups must be enough to motivate him to shake one more tackle and push for the end zone. It would be uber-ironic if the youngster wanted a copy of Madden though. Maybe for every touchdown he scores playing in Madden his dad can take him to a football game.

My question is - can this reward system work backwards? For every fumble, does he have to sell a game back to us? If he gets traded to another team, does he have to switch to Playstation?

Meet Mr. Sparkle!

Today I'd like to introduce you to the hardest working, MOST important employee of the store (sorry Hunter), MR. SPARKLE! He's the CD janitor, working hard spit shining all the brutally scratched up copies of Disney movies that hyperactive kids who don't know anything about the delicate handling of compact disc media get their grubby little hands on. Mr. Sparkle can take a game or movie that's been through the ringer, work his magic, and in 4-6 minutes make it look brand new again.




How does he do it, you might ask? Ice water for veins! Gravel ground between his teeth! Well, more like a cleaning compound that's mixed with some distilled water and slowly ran over the CD as it's being buffed. But Mr. Sparkle does have ice water in his veins - even when facing a long day of cleaning box set after box set of "Lost", he doesn't lose his cool.

Most other janitors that applied for this job only had ONE sanding pad - not Mr. Sparkle! Due to a genetic disorder, Mr. S was born with FIVE sanding pads, proving that he was born just to clean games! Tired of having Kingdom Hearts keep skipping audio when Mickey is blathering on about "Sora, Donald, Goofy........."? Mr. Sparkle will buff you up!

Seriously, a lot of people have shown some interest in the CD cleaner, so I figured I'd show it off a bit. Since we clean almost everything that comes in as trade, it gets quite a workout. The pads get replaced about every 50 cleaings, and the filter needs changing, but other than that it's a very durable machine. There's a touch screen on the top (like a Nintendo DS, kids!) for interaction, and you can change the settings depending on how bad the disc is torn up. Gamecube minidiscs are not a problem, just use a handy adaptor to make them the size of regular Cd's. The one thing Mr. Sparkle can't handle is Dreamcast discs, due to the inner ring they are manufactured with. I'm curious about the Wii and PS3 Blu-Ray discs, just don't ask me to be the guinea pig with my personal game collection.

I know "the boss"

Solicitors are the worst. Really. They take time away from serving the customers, and won't take NO for an answer. I'm sure any business gets their share of these parasites, and if you don't know how to deal with them, you're screwed. I'm not talking about someone holding a game tournament wanting to post a flyer in the window, or a kid with a lost dog sign, the real sharks are the ones who have some kind of business deal they want to work out with you....such as including gift cards in a raffle, or selling candy in your store for "charity". I had one of those guys stop in during a shift, and opened up a can of pwnage on him right quick:

"Hi, I'd like to sell these Peppermint Patties at your store and donate the money to (insert charity here)."

"I'm sorry man, we just don't do that here, I can't help you out with that." Which is the truth, it's something we avoid.

"Oh, well I know the owner, I was talking to him the other day, and he said it would be ok."

Slow down pardner. First, you know the owner, and don't refer to him by name? That doesn't pan out.

"So you talked to him just the other day, eh?"
"Yeah, I was in just the other day, and he said I could do it....."

This is great, because the owner was on vacation in Florida for that week. I had this guy by the analogues and knew it. I told him this key fact, and he just turned around and left.

Score:
Postman - 2
Con artists - 0

More gaming stories coming up soon........

The Madden Curse..........

So they say everyone who's on the cover of Madden gets hurt......

Let's hope so.

Fight Night at the store.......

This past weekend was quite an interesting day at the store. Having less of a social life then the other crew members (one took his girlfirend to a play, the other went to a concert), I wound up working an eleven hour shift - open to close. Which in reality I don't mind - I enjoy this job, and that helps me to deal with long days such as this. That, and having things like.....I dunno....fist fights break out in the shop. Did I mention that?


Here's how it went down. A group of four kids come in, and the "leader" (packs of kids always have a leader. Wonder if he's elected, appointed, or just steps up?) wants to sell music CDs. We used to deal in music but stopped about four years ago, so I suggested he try a music store about three miles down the road. He thanked me and the crew started to leave, with two kids hanging by a display by the door, looking at games. These two browsers were talking to each other a little, but I couldn't hear what they were saying.

Next thing I know, one guy is staring the other one down pretty hard. Smack talk starts to fly, and I pay close attention. I still have no idea what this started over, but it wasn't game related (some might argue they played too much GTA..........). While still right up in the other kid's grill, the smack talker decided to throw a punch, and landed two good shots on his "opponent".

By this time, I 've got the phone in hand and dialed the "9", waiting a bit before finishing the last digits "1-1". The leader was cool, and told his crew "not here guys, not here!". Since they were so close to the door, the scuffle spilled out onto the sidewalk, and the two non-participants were trying to restrain the fighters. It was over pretty quick, and the leader came back to grab his CD's that fell, and apologized for what happened. I watched as they left, and here's the kicker - they all get in the same car and drive away together!

My first thought is that they stole something, and that whole fight was a distraction ploy - but nothing was missing! That whole scene made absolutely no sense - but know what? A lot of things in life don't............

Here is to you Bob!

Not everyone that comes into our store is a retard. Though somedays that seems the case... One of my favorite customers is a 70 year old gentleman named Bob. At 70 bob is a big time game player. His family often comes in and gets him gift cards where he saves and buys tons of games. He plays mostly war games, but i see him going for things like God of War too.

Its always nice to see the different type of game players. And its fun when you and an older gentleman have something in common. Makes ya wonder who else out there plays games.

The Movie Bin

So we have this bin of DVD's in the store...We sell them for 4.95 a piece. This bin brings a vast amount of characters about, but my personal favorite are the bin fixers. We keep the bin messy so people have to dig through it to find the movies they are looking for. This causes them to find other movies they want or bring back memories and they decide to buy them... Its actually amazing when u see how good it works.

So in digging for the movies this causes people to stack them up and fix the bin all nice and neat. I seen people spend like 20 minutes on fixing the bin..And even people who put it in alphabetical order. After they leave I'll usually go over and mess it all up again for the next person. Of course this caused a humorous story.

One time after the customer fixed the movies and left. He told me he fixed them...Like he did me a favor..So he left and I messed em back up..and he came in again...and was like...what happened to the movies? Me not wanting to get into it with em said oh someone came in after you i guess... so he runs outside and looks around and leaves...weird...guess some people are just bored...

Oh the irony.........

Have you looked on the back of some movies or games lately? I think the information there was designed by eye doctors, the writing is so small. One customer brought a movie up to me, and asked if I knew what the rating was, and if it contained "foul language."

The package designers not only used the smallest font possible for the human eye, but also hid the rating and content box somewhere in the middle (I forget what movie it was........). After practically making out with the DVD case holding it so close to my face to read it, I saw it was a PG rated movie, and it only contained adult situations.

The customer's response?

"Good, I don't want my kids to hear bad language in a movie. There's too much s--t to deal with in the world anyway."

I couldn't help but laugh at that one...........

Murphy's Law in FULL effect

Screw Murphy.

Whoever she or he is. Why not make a more helpful law like Einstein or Newton.

No, you had to come up with "anything that can go wrong, will." (Seriously, anybody know who Murphy really is and where this came from?) Today the DVD resurfacer was on the fritz, and the strangest thing happens.

I can go three eight hour shifts without anyone coming in to fix a disc. Sometimes longer. Not many people know about our ability to fix scratched discs, much less use it. You know how many came in just today for that purpose? Around FIVE. How do they find out today's the least likely day to get a disc cleaning? It's beyond me.

One guy I felt really bad for - his computer crashed, and his Windows disc was completely rimmed. This happens when a CD device is turned on it's side or bumped with a disc in it (happens to the 360 a lot from what I hear). He was in this afternoon trying to get it cleaned so his computer would be up and running again. Kept saying he needed it up today......but that just didn't happen. He was muttering something about a "Mac..." on the way out though........