Have you seen?

Though generally attached to additional information so I know what has the other person so eager to learn if I have shared their experience, I am asked this question all the bloody time. For the most part I consider it one of the consequences of working in a video store. It's only logical that if you happen to be surrounded by movies, other people in the area are liable to be thinking about movies, that same as I would expect librarians and book store staff inundated by questions pertaining to specific literature.

I tend to consider it a mostly rather benign aspect of my job, despite the fact my most common reply is that I am not personally familiar with the video in question. On one hand, I somewhat wish I possessed the first-hand information the customer was asking of me because it irks me when I am unable to provide much constructive input to people looking to spend their hard earned paycheques here. At the same time, for me to actually accumulate that depth of knowledge I'd be watching porn every moment of my waking life. That isn't going to happen. Not only do I take a quiet pride in having a modest life outside of work, but they are just not that entertaining as a whole. Besides, even if I was willing to devote my existence to memorizing every blue film ever created, it'd be like cataloging grains of beach sand.

However, being utterly clueless is not an option either. Even if I don't know the exact movie they're yammering about, I can usually point them to the right neighborhood. I've browsed the varieties, many of which do nothing for my personal tastes. Just because I'm not into twink videos or forced fem flicks doesn't mean I don't have customers who are and will need a bit more direction than, "here they are."

And this is where it starts to try and cross the tracks to the less innocent side of things.

The explosion of celebrity sex videos got stale extremely fast behind the counter. With every iteration of big named twat getting shtupped for the public to feel titillated by comes a new crop of people who want to know if I've seen it and what I thought of it.

If I'm lucky, I'll escape the surge of patron interest without ever laying eyes on the damned thing beyond the packaging. In the past, I've let morbid curiosity allow my eyes to stray to the flickering screen or hit the play button on a DVD player. Dumb. It's like getting talked into watching some boring neighbor’s home movie footage of their latest trip only none of them are wearing pants. If people weren't so stupid that the connection of a high profile name to some grainy, poorly shot footage of distracted sex makes them eager to part with their money, no one would touch it. Never once have I ever had a customer return who has bought one of those movies to say they enjoyed it. Most of them will have asked at some point prior to that purchase asking me what my opinion is of it.

This becomes a balance of ethics and self-interest. On one side, I could be scrupulously honest and tell them it would be cheaper to splice some free porn promo teaser clips into one of their parent's home movies. On the opposing side, they came in intending to buy the stupid thing. They don't want to hear anything to pop the fantasy they have about what will be contained within. More importantly, we want to unload every copy in stock before the mindless novelty of having to see fades away. Solution? I slice the truth thin enough to mount in an electron microscope.

If only the seedier side of "have you seen" was limited to Faustian sales and shaded answers to make a Sidhe proud. Instead, people feel the need to test my limits. This doesn't mean that they will quiz me to recite catalog lists or trivia about a given production company; they want to shock me. If a pair of water filled jack-boots hanging from some lad's scrotum fails to make me bat an eye, what about live eels wriggling in some girl's quim? Did that fail to send me recoiling from the screen? How about the infamous two girls clip?

I think I know how the guards outside of Buckingham Palace feel when some gaggle of tourists decides to test their discipline. I bet they wish they could shoot the idiots sometimes too.