Dear Blockbuster Employee

Dear Blockbuster Employee,

I am a customer. Not a turd on your shoe.

I’m here for pretty much one reason. My hubby is out of town and my daughter and I are in desperate need of movies with little hearts on the boxes. Yeah. We want a Barbie movie and a romantic comedy.

It is, indeed, highway robbery to pay $5 a pop to rent a shitty kids movie and comedy that is several years old. I’m sure if I had that patience to flip around through 472,000 channels, I could find this mediocre movie on television. But I don’t and that’s another reason why I’m here.

So, I’m denying my daughter an ice cream from your little freezer bin. Sometimes we get one of those sherbet pushy things, sometimes we don’t. Today, I tell my little girl with the sweet face, “Momma’s wallet is a bit light. She’s been tossing money left and right. She forgot to have Daddy hand over some cash before he left on his business trip. So, we’ll just stick to these two movies and you can have a popsicle when we get home. “ Agreed.

So, Blockbuster employee, with your jovial little baby face, you’re asking me for an additional $2.12 for an unpaid balance. Let’s see. That must be my husband’s fault, if it is true. You’re just relaying what your Blockbuster computer is telling you, so it's true to you. But, I really don’t believe you since my husband is one of the most organized people on the face of the earth. But I can’t prove anything. So I will give you $2.12 in addition to the $10.00 it should have required a deadly weapon to have me fork over in the first place.

But, dear employee, let me tell you about the last movie my daughter rented. I wasn’t going to bring this up, but that $2.12 charge is making me say this. Yes, it was yet another shitty Barbie movie. This movie was disgusting. In all ways. After getting hung up over and over and skipping huge chunks of time, I pulled it out of the player and carefully wiped off all of the boogers and snot the last several kids have wiped onto the disc. In my opinion, when a movie is returned, an employee ought to have a glance at each disc (especially childrens’ DVDs) to make sure there is not a green coating. The disk skipped 7 minutes in one spot, and was digital hell for the last 20 minutes.

No, no one said anything when the disc was returned. My husband put a note on the box explaining its rotten condition. But it looks like he dropped off the box on his way to work when you weren’t open (UPDATE - hubby denies all wrongdoing). I wouldn’t have even brought this up, but that $2.12 extortion fee really pissed me off. I’m sure that the movie was due by midnight on Monday. I’m sure my husband dropped off the damn thing at 7:15 on Tuesday morning when no one was here. I’m sure the Blockbuster Bureaucrats would say that it was late. Fine.

But from the look on your face, I can tell you really don’t give a shit that my child did not enjoy her movie. I’m not really looking for a free coupon (yes I am, because my daughter’s last Blockbuster movie-watching experience really sucked), but your hands are in my wallet scooping out every last penny. I would, at the very least, appreciate a little tsk tsk of sympathy. But I don’t even get a tsk tsk. Just a demand for $12.72.

I hear you saying that if someone had dropped off the DVD and note in person that you would have given a damn. But since that did not happen, there’s nothing you can do. Uh huh. But you do know the movie of which I am speaking. You’ve pulled that information up on your Blockbuster computer with superpowers. It seems as if you can do all sorts of things. If you want. But . . . regarding the damaged movie . . .there’s nothing you can do. Sure. Sure.

Perhaps there’s nothing you can do (bullshit). But here’s what you’ve done . . .

You have rented a child a booger-caked DVD. You charged $5 (plus tax). You made her sad. You pulled her mama away from the computer to wipe the crud off of the DVD. No one in my family had a good experience with this shitty (I gotta say it) Barbie movie. You’ve put the stupid DVD back on the shelf without checking it (it still skips 7 minutes and has digital hell, just not quite as much as it did before I removed the green goo) in order to upset another child. You are making me mad right now. Thinking about this incident will make me angry in the future. You are making me wonder why the hell I didn’t rent these potentially terrible movies from Netflix. You have single-handedly improved business for Netflix.

Perhaps you already know that businesses like Blockbuster are tanking. And you just don’t care. Your enjoyment of upsetting children (and their mamas) far outranks your employer’s profits. What, are you not getting healthcare or something? Do you have a grievance with middle management? Do you really think that f*cking over your company will improve your life?

What you’re really done, genius, is to make my future decision making easier. Now all I have to do is flip the top of my laptop and click on “add to queue” in Netflix. It doesn’t get much easier.

Now, if I see you working at the shoe store next week because you’ve been fired for being rude/sadistic/oblivious or your former company has closed its doors, I’ll be glad to stick my stinky foot out for you to get down on your knees and measure.

Oh, wait. I don’t shop at shoe stores anymore. They never have my size. I’ll just mail order from Zappos. Perhaps you’ll be working in the stockroom.

Sincerely,

Mad Mama