Allan Mott quickly discovered
that the average
middle-of-the-night customer
at a sex shop isn’t a creep,
but just a normal lonely guy.
Back in 2002, they didn’t have cooking reality shows like “Top Chef” and” Hell’s Kitchen” to warn aware wannabe kitchen grunts from an industry that’s arguably crueler to the people who work in it than any factory farm raised animal they serve, so I eagerly took a job as a dishwasher at one of Edmonton’s finest restaurants.
I barely lasted two months. Turns out I didn’t enjoy working back-breaking 12-hour shifts six days a week. If Gordon Ramsey had been around to call me a pussy, I couldn’t have argued otherwise.
Having learned this valuable life lesson, I decided that for my next job I’d avoid anything strenuous. In fact, my ideal choice would be a position in which I got paid to do as little as humanly possible. If I could sit in a chair and watch movies all day, I’d be more than happy to accept minimum wage — I’d be sincerely grateful.
In other words, I wanted to be a video store clerk.
This wasn’t a newfound ambition. Every time I’d gone on a job search, I’d sent my resume to every video store in the city, hoping to impress them with my near-encyclopedic knowledge of film, but I never got the chance because who wants to have a short geek working for them when they could hire an adorably sullen teenage girl instead?
(Note: That’s not written with any bitterness. Given the opportunity, I’d probably make the exact same decision.)
But despite this past history of failure, I still got excited when I found a want ad in the paper for a video store position that was just a few blocks away from where I was living.
My enthusiasm didn’t last long, though, when I realized which video store it happened to be.
Source was actually a chain of stores all identically designed to be as open and well lit as possible in a clear attempt to both appeal to couples and discourage any attempts at public masturbation.
Mostly devoted to renting adult movies (which at that time still came chiefly in clunky VHS form), Source also sold adult novelties that ranged from “erotic” candles to vibrating wands designed to look like the kind of small rodents various celebrities have been rumored to enjoy intimately.
As benign as it was, I still couldn’t help but feel a little embarrassed as I opened up the store’s frosted front door. I wondered if actually getting a job there would ever cure me of this (it didn’t).
Fifteen minutes later I was no longer unemployed, but the catch was that I would have to accept the 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM weekend shift. I had no problem with working graves, having been a habitual night owl since birth.
The next day I found myself being trained in the ways of adult video store clerking. The first thing I noticed was how the position fit in the same niche as psychiatrist or prostitute, in that the people who came up to our counter were frequently letting us in on the personal secrets they shared with almost no one else.
I remember one balding man in his forties whose hands were literally shaking when he handed over a tape he quickly grabbed from the store’s Gay section, as well as the guilty, shifty eyes of the well-dressed businessman who asked if we had any more tapes in a series devoted to rubber bondage gear.
By far the most bizarre part of the shift was the mandatory novelty inventory, which required me to print a list of every dildo, vibrator, pocket pussy, tube of cherry flavored anal lube, etc., we had in stock and make sure it was still there and accounted for.
If you’ve never spent a late half-hour trying to figure out why you only have four rubber Ron Jeremy cocks, instead of five, you probably worked really hard in school. (Turned out someone hid the fifth one behind the penis enlarging pumps.)
Once I figured out nothing was ever actually done with the inventories I was supposed to do each night, I started faking them while I sat down and watched videos I brought from home.
That said, those guys have all sort of melted into a forgettable blob memory-wise. I really only remember the weirdos.
For example there was the guy who had a print out of our entire video inventory, which he used to make sure he didn’t rent the same thing twice. This might seem a bit OCD, until you found out he rented 16 movies at a time, which probably did make it hard to keep track.
I did the math and figured out that at an average length of 90 minutes, it would take him 24 hours to watch all 16 movies, which he would probably have to split up into 8 hour shifts for the 3 days he had the movies.
This meant that either watching porn was this guy’s full-time job or he was just recording them and building up his own library with the hope of opening his own store some day in the future.
But I didn’t find him quite as mystifying as the older gentleman with the suave mustache who came in and bought a new DVD (at $60 a pop) every Saturday.
That was odd, but what made it odder was the fact that his choices were always completely random.
One week it would be a gay DVD, the next it would be one that featured extremely overweight women, which would be followed by a vanilla bondage video and then a transgender flick. I didn’t give a fuck what anyone’s particular kink was, but it did become annoying that this guy seemed to want to have it all. It just seemed greedy.
OK, I admit I wasn’t totally lacking in judgment. One kink did bother me and that was when a guy my dad’s age would come up to the counter and hand over a tape like Barely Legal or Bring ‘Em Young (which went so far as to announce on its cover how many days its young participants were over the age of 18). That was undeniably creepy.
Another reminder of porn’s creepy side was the saga of one particular tape kept in the part of the store devoted to the crappiest of the crappy discount titles.
At one point it was by far the most popular tape in the store, simply because it’s front cover featured an attractive anonymous blond woman suggestively petting a horse. Many of the dudes who rented it were actually bold enough to try and get their money refunded when they came back to return it.
It got to the point that someone on another shift wisely attached a sticker to the cover that simply read, “She doesn’t fuck the horse.” It became a lot less popular after that.
Beyond this, the most annoying part of the job was dealing with customers who assumed that my working a minimum wage weekend grave shift position in an adult video store made me a qualified expert in all things freaky and/or deaky.
One gentleman would always pepper me with questions about how he could start his own porn company, as if I had been personally responsible for producing the videos he was renting.
But that was nothing compared to the many, many male customers who would come up to me with plastic representations of female genitalia and ask, “Is this any good?”
All I could ever do in these cases was politely nod, even though I personally felt that even just using lotion while masturbating was an unnecessary extravagance.
My distaste for these ridiculous assumptions did admittedly change on the rare occasions when an attractive woman asked the very same question. Then it was all I could do to stop myself from turning into Barry White.
“Oh yeaaaah, baby. All the sweet ladies love the Swinging Monkey Asiatic Dual Three-Speed Vibrator with Massaging Action. It rocks their world.”
Speaking of women, as hard as Source tried to appeal to them, they weren’t a common sight in the store. When they did come in, it was usually as the uncomfortable half of a young couple (“No, Darren, I am NOT watching THAT!” I remember one young woman standing up for herself when her boyfriend tried to convince her that they should rent the latest edition of American Bukkake) or because they were on the lookout for something to spice up an upcoming bachelorette party.
I do know that I never once rented a video from our very large Lesbian section to a woman, much less an actual lesbian. Take of that what you will.
Truthfully many of the strangest moments on the job had nothing to do with the fact that I was surrounded by pornography, but rather the standard weirdness that comes from working with the public in any capacity.
Three months in, I got a call from an acquaintance asking me if I wanted to apply for a writing position at the local publishing company he worked for. Within three weeks I was a full-time working writer. But that didn’t stop me from whipping out my best porn store anecdotes at every available opportunity.
As someone whose resume makes for some interesting reading, it remains the funniest job I’ve ever had and if circumstances were to ever force me to return to it, I honestly don’t think I’d mind (except for the whole “Being embarrassed to walk through the door thing”).
by Allan Mott
Originally appeared at xoJane
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On the points about power and politics and feminism and such. You are both right. Men do rule the world. Women are doing better in lots of ways. How to understand thjis paradox. It isn’t all men rich and poor young and old black and white, who rule the world. Uhuh. Nope. Not at all. It is a very few, old, almost exclusively white, very rich men, and, and, a tiny few women of similar ilk. A real few. Tiny. The rest of us , men and women, black and white, poor and ‘middle-class’ (they are coming after you, globalising… Read more »
To those who think that men have a monopoly on sexual frustration, think for one second of how many women buy vibrators. Many of them are in relationships…with men who think “clitoris” is the name of an asteroid!
As long as men won’t know what to do with that, heterosexual hookups will be orgasm-less, and therefore, worthless poor excuses for sex for most women. That’s why you guys can’t have nice fucks.
Who here claimed they did?
And yet it is only men who are shamed for “reducing women to their body parts” – though that phrase more aptly describes most female sex toys ^_^
Ah – the good old “men don’t know what to do in bed”, argument. Never mind that most women don’t have to do a thing except lie their during sex. And then complain when they don’t orgasm. So the man is responsible for both peoples orgasm? While the woman looks pretty and moans occasionally? Sure you might need clitoral stimulation to get you off. Two options – most people have two hands, either use one of yours or instruct him to use one of his. And if you can’t bring up the courage to do that latter, how did you… Read more »
Some interesting debate here about why men look at porn. Let’s not lose sight of the basics, because sometimes the basic explanation may actually be the best. Maybe the whole point IS the “self-induced orgasm” and not much else. Masturbation is fun. Porn has a way of making masturbation even more fun. Most men consume porn that increases the pleasure or intensity of self-pleasure. When men “consume porn” they usually masturbate while they view it. (I hope this is not news to anyone.) I call this the “Funner Wanking” Theory. No doubt for many men this theory is sufficiently explanatory.… Read more »
“Poor Substitute” kinda weak if you have lovers or sex partners you enjoy, in fact that hurts most of them.
“Objectification” men are not the only ones to look at porn..not even the only mammal.
“Misogyny” And if you are Bisexual and look at gay porn and straight porn?
“Masturbation is fun” hmm and porn as a masturbation aid kinda fits the ticket. it is also a way to explore fantasy.
Why might a man look at porn?
hmm I wonder.
Do ya think, just maybe, it could be the slim possibility that he likes sex and or looking at sexual beings?
Just a theory.
“When a lot of people talk about “porn use,” what they’re really talking about is how they feel about masturbation. This makes for a very evasive discussion, even a dishonest discussion.” Totally disagree with this. I wish men would masturbate more to using their own imaginations then using pornography, which I’m sure you know, I think is hateful toward women a majority of the time. Stop supporting a business that respresents women poorly! Holy Cow, you guys complain all the time about media that protrays men poorly yet you can’t call yourselves out on your own crap. It’s mind blogging.… Read more »
I’m not going to chase you down another porn argument full of your fallacies, straw men, hurt feelings, ignorance of female sexual/financial agency and baseless opinions. Your last paragraph shows exactly how out of line with reality you are Men rule the world – A feminist claim that can’t stand up straight. So a few men have positions of power so all men are rulers – nice leap of logic there. Men get power from porn (real or otherwise) – Will need proof honey becuase last time I checked it was about sexual gratification not power – Unless you are… Read more »
Perfect, simple and genuine.
Well of course the customers were odd. This was in Canada, right? In the U.S. the customers are totally different….
“Truthfully many of the strangest moments on the job had nothing to do with the fact that I was surrounded by pornography, but rather the standard weirdness that comes from working with the public in any capacity.”
Very good point. A retail graveyard shift, really any retail shift dealing with hundreds of customers every week, will bring you in contact with the small percentage of people who are memorably weird. I don’t mean that as a snobby remark, just stating the mathematical likelihood. I’d be curious if you had worked in a 24-hour convenience store if you’d have comparable experiences.
I never worked at a convenience store, but I did have another job that proved insane people are an inescapable part of any late-night customer service work: http://www.xojane.com/issues/my-life-as-a-reluctant-loan-shark
Many years ago I worked 11 pm to 7am in a gas station on weekends. Whoever coined that old phrase “The freaks come out at night!” must have worked overnight retail!
I just think it is time to legalize prostitution. As much as I hate the idea.
But, clearly too many men are just sexually frustrated and need an outlet. We have highly intelligent Ivy League women working as $1000 an hour escorts, already.
So, let’s just make prostitution as accessible and safe as porn so men can enjoy sex in a safe, clean, and regulated environment. The female sex workers would also benefit.
Good idea. What country do you propose to implement it? because it’ll dang sure never happen in the U.S., sad to say.
The author will also realize the same thing if he observes the men who hire sex workers.
I think it needs to be acknowledged that obtaining sex is much more difficult for men than it is for the other gender, and paying for sex is an understandable, logical solution.
Unfortunately there is only hatred and disgust for men who pay for sex. Women and feminists particualry hate those men, even the ones who claim to be sex-positive.
“I think it needs to be acknowledged that obtaining sex is much more difficult for men than it is for the other gender, and paying for sex is an understandable, logical solution.”
As long as you’re wishing, I’d like a pony. (i.e., don’t hold your breath.)
I don’t hate men that pay for sex. I am sure some nice men pay for sex. I just don’t agree with their values and would not want to be romantically involved with one on the basis that our values don’t line up.
People visit stores like this for all kinds of reasons. Loneliness is one of them. Pretty much everyone has a sex drive (save the asexuals) and desires for human touch and validation, but it’s not always available to everyone (for a lot of reasons, some no fault of their own, some due to dysfunctions) so normalizing sex stores, and sex work, would help a lot of people, men and women both. I only worry that a cycle of utilizing stores creates more isolation, secrecy, shame and less human connection and openness, as that seems detrimental to these sad lonely people… Read more »
yes, normalizing sex work will benefit both – male customers and women workers.
Women dont need to pay for sex. Even the obese women can get laid left and right with lean guys and complaining why they wont date them.
A) It’s a cultural falacy that sex is so easy to come by for any woman of any body type. It’s dismissive and hurtful to women who struggle themselves.
B) Women are more sensitive to be used for sex, since men more often do tend to use us for sex and men prove to be more sensitive for being used for money. So believing that everything is candy hearts and honey drops for women just be getting sex, is an over simplification of situation and the rainbow of human emotion that comes with sex, even casual sex.
“the average Source customer wasn’t a gross, disgusting pervert, but just a normal, lonely dude who was too homely/fat/short to get a girlfriend and too shy/sweet/poor to sleep with hookers.”
This is the realization that must never be permitted in a feminist-friendly society: the notion that sexless men aren’t predatory monsters or pathetic losers deserving only hatred.
That’s so strange. I’m a feminist and I think I just wrote something really accepting about why people might shop at a store like that.
Some feminists are empathetic and sex-positive, a lot are not empathetic towards men and very sex-negative, at least in relations to male sexuality. You cannot go on feminist websites or read feminist literatures without being quickly exposed to people who loudly express the opinion that porn is intrinsically misogynistic and that men who use it are misogynist, that they are almost abusing the porn stars of what they consume. It’s even worse for johns, who, for many feminists, are just a step above rapists. They are assumed to be violent, to treat women like mere objects and to be automatically… Read more »
Amandlooo Marshoddy claims to be sex-positive. but she also has hate and disgust for men who pay for sex.
What is sex positive about a majority of heterosexual male pornography? That’s a sincere question. Most heterosexual male pornography appears to be kind of rather alienating of women. Which is probably why he didn’t get a lot of women coming in.