CUSTOMER OF THE NIGHT: 10/28: What is this, the Andy Griffith Show?

Excuse me sir, would you like me to play this?


This gentleman comes up tonight with his 6, maybe 7 year old son and he hands me the rental he picked out for his kid (Zathura), and a card coupon good for a free rental.

So I ask him if he has his blockbuster card.

"No."

Do you have your driver's license?

"Yes, I have that."

So I look up his name in the system, quite a few people with the same last name, about 2 pages worth, I read off each one.

"Nope, nope, nope...etc..."

Me: Have you been here in a few months?

Customer: I've never been here. I don't have an account.

Me: Oh.

First of all, he waits til I go through 2 pages of member names to tell me this. Could he have said when I originally asked for his card "I don't have one. I don't have an account." ?

So I said to him, assuming, you know, he just needs to get one first "Let me just grab the application you can sign up for one it will only take a second."

So he looks at me like I'm nuts "I don't want to sign up for an account."

Me: Oh, well, you'd need to. We sell merchadise without accounts, but in order to rent you need an account so we can track who has what copy of what title.

Customer: Let me explain, you see that card?

Me: Free Rental, right.

Customer: My son here won that at his school through this thing called "Race for Education". He did really well in school and got an A so his teacher gave him that as a gift, he just wants to use that.

Me: I understand. That's very cool. But Blockbuster policy dictates that we need a membership account to rent. It doesn't cost anything to sign up for one. The account is free, the rental would be free with the card, so if it's a just a one time thing, you could theoretically sign up, rent this, and never come in again, we'll never charge you a red cent and you'll never hear from us again. No money changes hands.

Customer: My son just won this and I want to use it, I DO NOT want to sign up for an account.

Me: There's no way to do that in this computer to do that even if I WANTED to do that.

Customer: Can I please speak to a manager?

*Pulls Tom Over*

So the customer explains to Tom what he just explained to me.

Tom: The computer doesn't even let us rent to non-members, I'm sorry but even if I wanted to do it, there's honestly no possible way.

So the guy takes the card back from me and as he's leaving, he turns, pats his son on the head gently and says "I'm sorry son, but I guess Blockbuster doesn't care at all about your special achievement"

And then he leaves.


And all Tom can say is "Is this a difficult concept to grasp?"