raidenradio Posted December 12, 2010 Share Posted December 12, 2010 I ran a record store for 4 years and since I'm home alone and bored and my fiance is working late I thought I'd regale you with a couple of the funnier stories from my time there. The store was part of an independent chain in the Baltimore area that no longer exists. Chime in and guess which one and you win 10 free internets. So I stroll into work on an unusally slow Saturday and relieve the other manager. He isn't out the door 10 minutes when our computers went down. Now we had some absurdly old computers that may or may not have been made by ColecoVision and were hooked up to a network for our store chain that may have involved Easy-Cheese and duct tape. Whatever the case, we're fucked. We now have to do fucking hand receipts until it's fixed. We actually had to dust off that old contraption that takes imprints of credit cards. For every transaction we have to write out the 14-digit SKU numbers (we put stickers that had our own SKU numbers for our own record keeping) for every item we sold and the payment method. I call the warehouse and they tell me they'll have someone in the store Monday to look at it. As this is going on we get absolutely slammed with business. It's absurd, wall to wall people in the store. And I'm teaching the cashier how to do hand receipts as I'm doing my own transactions on another register and people are lining up out the door to get in. There's another guy there, Kyler, but he was too stoned to operate a belt let alone a register. We basically paid him to stand in the back, listen to music, and be a scarecrow to shoplifters. Other than that, there's no other employees in the store. Someone could have made off with my ass virginity and I wouldn't have noticed it. Hours pass that feel like months but it's about 30 minutes til closing time. There's still wayyy more people in the store than normal. Kyler's turn to pick the CD comes up and he asks me if there's anything I want to hear. I look him dead in the eye and say, "Play whatever you want, at whatever volume you want." He got the message. We were gonna blast these people's ears off til they leave the store and I can start the unending process of adding up all these receipts by hand. Kyler goes through the racks and pulls out Nuclear Holocaust (i think that was the name, had the word Nuclear in it). We crank that shit up and it is unreal how loud it is in the store. It sounded like a velociraptor was being raped by a jackhammer in an alley lined with bubblewrap. We're standing up front laughing our asses off when I noticed something unbelievable. Not one person in the store moved an inch. They didn't even seem to notice or care that their ears were being blasted with rock-em-sock-em trash compactors. WTF. For the next ten minutes I stood, mouth agape, watching this 75-year old black man, with a speaker less than a foot from his face, casually flipping through budget DVD's. He was just fucking taking that shit man. It was unbelievable. Finally some woman came up and said, "Can you turn this off? It horrible!!" Kyler looked at this woman coldly and just said "No" with the most deadpan expression of seriousness I'd ever seen. She just calmly walked away and continued to shop. After work I had to give Kyler a ride to his car. We were just driving around shootin' the shit when we passed this lady maybe in her 20's crossing the street in front of us. As I passed her with my window down I broke the silence of the night by screaming at the top of my lungs, "HEYYOURGADDAFURDERRADDAARRRRA!!!" I kept on driving as she whipped around to look at me but I guess she did it too fast. All of a sudden Kyler just erupts in laughter. "SHE FUCKING FELL!! SHE FUCKING FELL!!! SHE FUCKING FELL!!! OH MY GOD SHE FUCKING FELL!!!!!!" He was laughing so hard and rocking back and forth that my car was rocking as he did it even though I was driving. It was so funny I doubt this story will put it into proper perspective how perfect a moment it was. But for the two us, "SHE FUCKING FELL!!" was our "THE GIANTS WON THE PENNANT!!" If you guys enjoy the story I'll add more as I recall them. If not, then ...... not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
desensitizedbyu Posted December 12, 2010 Share Posted December 12, 2010 Guess you had to be there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest scottyf Posted December 12, 2010 Share Posted December 12, 2010 I found this story pretty amusing and funny haha. thanks for sharing Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
counterfiction Posted December 12, 2010 Share Posted December 12, 2010 Oh god, I don't even want to think about all the ridiculous stories I could tell. 7 or 8 years of working at record stores will do that to you. But that one was funny. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xxmartinxx Posted December 12, 2010 Share Posted December 12, 2010 Worst story ever. Thanks for sharing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek™ Posted December 12, 2010 Share Posted December 12, 2010 I don't want to be that guy, but it's absolutely mandatory. In all seriousness, I personally appreciate you taking the time to create this thread. Would read future updates. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kouka Posted December 12, 2010 Share Posted December 12, 2010 Record and Tape Traders.. and no way that story was real, it was too CRRRRRRRRRRAZY! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
counterfiction Posted December 12, 2010 Share Posted December 12, 2010 We used to have a regular named "Disco Don" and I can't remember for the life of me how he got that nickname. ANYWAY! So, he came in about every three days and never bought a damn thing. Apparently he was always looking for a 12" single of 'Barracuda' by Heart (swear to god) and refused to buy anything else until he bought that single. Although that's strange, it's not nearly the strangest thing about the guy. He would spend, literally, 6 hours in the store and go through our entire used vinyl section. It was incredibly fascinating to watch a grown man spend almost half of his waking hours flipping through the same dusty copies of Herp Alpert he had seen the week before. Icing on the cake? When he came across a record that he found interesting he would remove the LP from its sleeve and hold the record itself vertically. He would then LICK the edge of the record! Fucking weirdo. He never found that Heart LP. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
evvandflow Posted December 12, 2010 Share Posted December 12, 2010 haha wtf Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raidenradio Posted December 12, 2010 Author Share Posted December 12, 2010 Record and Tape Traders.. A winner is you! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deafmx Posted December 13, 2010 Share Posted December 13, 2010 I enjoyed the story. keep em coming. my favorite part about spending an hour or two at a store looking through used stuff is when someone thinks I work there and I actually do help them find the section or band they're looking for. fuck, I wanted to work at Cheapo when I was 16 soooo bad. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest errolwest Posted December 13, 2010 Share Posted December 13, 2010 We used to have a regular named "Disco Don" and I can't remember for the life of me how he got that nickname. ANYWAY! So, he came in about every three days and never bought a damn thing. Apparently he was always looking for a 12" single of 'Barracuda' by Heart (swear to god) and refused to buy anything else until he bought that single. Although that's strange, it's not nearly the strangest thing about the guy. He would spend, literally, 6 hours in the store and go through our entire used vinyl section. It was incredibly fascinating to watch a grown man spend almost half of his waking hours flipping through the same dusty copies of Herp Alpert he had seen the week before. Icing on the cake? When he came across a record that he found interesting he would remove the LP from its sleeve and hold the record itself vertically. He would then LICK the edge of the record! Fucking weirdo. He never found that Heart LP. haha. this rules way too much. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danthemjfan23 Posted December 13, 2010 Share Posted December 13, 2010 he should get in touch with my dad, who has 2 copies of that Heart record. i wish i were kidding. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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