Kevin the video clerk

Meet Kevin the video store clerk.

Actually, his name is something different... I'll at least be diplomatic enough to change the names to protect those who don't have the brains to protect themselves(1).

Kevin's the kind of guy who wants to be friends with everyone. That, in itself, is no big deal. Hey, I'd like to be friends with everyone.

The problem is that Kevin's a moron.

Worse, he's a moron who doesn't realize he's a moron.

Kevin's the sort of clerk who will try to strike up an engaging dialog with every customer he serves. Even when there's a line of customers half way through the store. And the problem is that as his customers are stuck in his slow moving line, they're growing more and more grumpy. Some perverse twist of fate has given Kevin the ability to detect when people are upset, but instead of solving the problem by attempting to get everyone out the door as quickly as possible, Kevin tries to calm each person down individually with a nice personalized chat. Each chat pulls a lead control rod out of the breeder reactor of hate that the line has become, until people start to leave the store in frustration.

I don't know... maybe that is his master plan. It did take care of the line.

But it's not just his startling inefficiency that irks me.

He also has opinions.

And damn it, if he's got opinions he should post them on the web, or take up stand-up, or wear a sandwich-board and wander around downtown. He certainly shouldn't share them with the customers.

Only recently he tried to actually talk me out of renting a movie. I walked up to the counter with a copy of A Beautiful Mind and he told me it was awful, depressing, and wouldn't I like to go pick out a different movie? Now, some evil genius might do this if it was the only copy of the movie in the store and they wanted to rent it for themselves... but no, they had an entire shelf full of the movie. Maybe he thought he was doing me a favor -- but having heard what movies he thought we spot on (he'd been lecturing the previous customer on the wonder that was Hart's War and Rat Race) I told him firmly that no, thank you, this one was recommended to me, I'd still like to rent it.

And the guy just can't process humor. I come back to the store to return A Beautiful Mind after having watched it, and I tell him You must be smoking crack, that was a great movie... just the sort of thing I'd been hoping it was. Only to be rejoined with "No, I don't do drugs." sigh.

I mean, this is the same guy who tells the customer in front of me, who's renting a murder mystery, that the movie is a remake of another movie, and then starts talking about the ending of the original movie.

Grrr...

1) Well, for all you know the names have been changed. It could, in fact, be that Kevin is his real name and he works for Hollywood Video. But the idea that I could have changed his name, but maybe I didn't, should at least cover this rant in the appearance of etiquette.