I moved to where I now live in 09, and back then the shopping center where my local grocery store is had a Blockbuster (it has since become a dental office) and everytime I buy groceries I think about the good times I had at Blockbuster growing up. At least once a month we would order pizza and go to Blockbuster to rent some movies. I remember when that Blockbuster went out of business in 2010 and they had a hug going out of business sale with PS2 games as low as 3 dollars and I bought a ton of games that day (wish I had never given up my PS2). I also remember when I was little it seemed every store or gas station had a corner for video rental.
As a kid working at a video rental place always seemed like such a cool job and as a teen, I was busy with sports and when I did work it was at restaurants or temp agencies. I'm curious if anyone had ever worked there or any other video rental?
Also, you think that model could ever work again with some being more interested in physical media? I could possibly see a rental place but they would have to have some other stuff, but I do know some VHS collectors so you could make it work.
I worked for Hollywood video in 2007-2008. This was shortly before they went under and Blockbuster collapsed not long after. We were instructed to destroy all VHS tapes that couldn't be sold for a dollar. Customers begged us to let them just take them but we had managers watching to prevent this.
We couldn't let customers use the bathroom because they kept stealing disks from the DVD boxes in there. Management made a point of only assigning one employee to work on Friday nights. I stuck around in spite of massive turnover, but the whole work by yourself on Friday repeatedly is what finally finished me.
Customers were frequently snotty especially if they came in at Thanksgiving and Christmas. If you did not give them what they wanted instantly they would sneer and say, "I'm switching to Netflix. It's the future!" Some customers were great, especially the prison employees who came in to get stuff for the prisoners to watch, nothing rated R. Usually it was a quiet job to do where hours just passed, but when it got bad it got really bad.
I won't deny there was probably a time it was better, and maybe my area was worse than most, but it did not end well. The movie "Be Kind Rewind" speaks to me in ways that it probably should not.