So you wanna work at a porn shop?

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Image borrowed from The Shark Book, click image

Fill out an application, just like the other five thousand people who think it’d be the easiest, most awesome job ever. I can’t tell you how many times a group of little punks come in, laugh at all the toys, ask me what a butt plug is for, say that’s “gross” and then ask if we’re hiring.

Lack of knowledge and poor attitude. That’s exactly what we’re looking for in an employee. And you want to work here, why? You think our stuff is funny and gross. So, just go home?

I think everyone thinks it’s all fun and games working at the porn shop. I really thought so too, at first. But I came into it the way I come into everything: with a good healthy fear of the downside. And oh, there are downsides. Allow me to rant about workplace annoyances and things that have become commonplace that should NEVER be commonplace (or maybe, should always be commonplace, depending on your tastes). Here goes.

Things I see regularly (or have happened at least once) at the porn store:

• Dudes come in to masturbate in the booths. We call them boothers, not so affectionately. They have mannerisms that define their existence. For example, they will go out of their way to avoid having to cross paths with other boothers. They come in and walk fast to the booths, but walk in winding paths, so as to persuade the clerks that they are not actually going to have a wank. Because we’re stupid and a meandering path confuses us. Additionally, there are two camps of boothers, the Co-Dependent Wankers and the Solitary Wankers. The Solitary Wankers like to wank alone, and are offended by the Co-Dependent Wankers who prowl the booths (I’ve seen them do this on camera) and listen at the doors, and knock, and like… try to get in to help out. The Solitary Wankers often come and complain to me about it but… what do they want me to do, honestly? Scold the Co-Dependents? Ban everyone? Make a sign? Get a sword and go guard their booth? I have a job to do, and the Solitary Wankers are totally capable of hollering, “Leave me alone.”

• People try and get with you. Not only do people try and hit on you lamely, people will sometimes try and hit on you FOR THEIR IMPRISONED BOYFRIEND’S IMPRISONED BROTHER. Yes, my friend, a woman hit on me for her boyfriend’s brother. Boyfriend and brother are in prison. She went on and on about how she knew I might not be single, or straight, or WILLING TO DATE AN INMATE but he was SUCH A NICE GUY even tho he was ARRESTED FOR DEALING COKE. Yeah.

• People call you names. I was called a cum guzzling whore, to my face. I threw the man out.

• Strippers walk around, shopping for new outfits, in fence-net tops (if you’re lucky). Boobies hang out. Sometimes the boobies are nice, sometimes the boobies are not. Such is life, but it’s gotten so normal that it’s happened while the Chinese food guy has been bringing food and as I see his “WTF IS THIS PLANET!??” face I wonder, “When did this become my life?”

• Random drunk people will talk at you for ages thinking they have game. Drunk people? You do not have game. When someone stops looking at you when you’re talking at them, that means they are AT WORK AND HAVE A JOB TO DO and do not want to listen to you talk about your alcoholic wife and whiskey dick. Seriously. What is the game plan?

• Someone will come in wearing a motorcycle helmet and breathlessly rush around muttering about the cold, use the ATM, and leave with the cash in his mouth. Don’t ask, I don’t know either.

• Someone will come asking for “tranny porn.” This will happen daily. They will not use the correct terms, and using the correct terms with them will not help, they will not know what you are talking about. So you need to actually say “chicks with dicks” or something equally offensive. Recently, it killed my soul to say “hermaphrodites,” after I tried and failed to tell the person that they were referring to intersexed individuals, and that actually, the kind of porn they were looking for likely didn’t exist because people don’t usually have a perfectly working penis and functional vagina. Like, ever. But, don’t tell a wildly drunk gang of middle aged chicks this. They’ll get angry and yell about “tranny porn.”

• Someone will look at the “tranny”/gay/BDSM porn (all in the same area, cause that makes sense) for two hours, memorize every word on the cases, and then buy something generic from another corner of the porn, with a pink box and happy teenage girls who just discovered their butts on the cover. Dude, really, I saw you in the kinky corner. If you wanna buy the bondage porno, it’s fine. I know what’s over there. I’m not surprised, really. People who can’t get the balls to buy the porn they really want annoy the shit out of me. Do they think I don’t know what they’re looking at?

• Someone will buy one condom and one pillow pack of lube, pay with a $20, and take the goods and their new wad of small change directly to the booths. And I will scrub the fingerprints off my hands with hand sanitizer.

• Someone will come in, go to the booths, not find their wank friend, and then come back out, pick up a free issue of New Times, and read it in the center of the dildo aisle. They will do this while dressed to the nines, to attract their wank friend to them, even tho it’s Sunday night at 7 pm and everyone is at home being decent human beings.

• Some dude will buy sex toys for a stripper thinking she’ll actually sleep with him. And maybe she will, I have no idea.

• Some dude will come in and tell you about how he had a jelly toy he used with his girlfriend but she went home from college and couldn’t take it so he gave it to his buddy to use on his girlfriend. And you will die of the ick, and be unable to hide your disgust.

• Kids will call the store repeatedly and swear at you/Someone will call the store and ask for Real Dolls/Pervs will call the store and make jizz sounds into the receiver. You will dread the phone ringing.

• Someone is going to ask you what porn you like and then make a beeline for the booths when you answer. You will thank God that you lied to them, because if you had told the truth and gotten that result, you would die inside.

• Someone will come in and ask for change and pretty much set their money in your food. Because clerks are not people and obviously we like money germs in our food.

• Larges groups of kids will come in, laugh at everything in the store, and smack each-other’s asses with the crops. They will touch everything, and then leave in a silent, single-file line. You will loathe their existence.

• One of them will come back alone, and buy something deeply disturbing.
  

• A dude will come in and spend $250 on gay porn DVDs, magazines, and a giant tube of silicone lube. You will really want to tell him to slow the fuck down or else he might hurt himself, but you keep your mouth shut, and hope for the best.

• A weird dude will come into the booths and stay for six hours, emerging only to pretend to look at magazines while watching pretty young girls shop for sex toys, and then return to the booths to wank to his new spank bank footage. You will finally decide he’s had enough chances and tell him to cut it the fuck out or you’re gonna ban him. (FYI, when he leaves, he is slick with sweat and looks like he only got out by digging a hole through the ground and is lucky to be alive.)

• Someone will try to recruit you for a threesome. Just say no to porn store threesomes.

I will update this atrocity as soul shattering things occur at work.

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