The end of an era
Looks like Tower Records is gone for good. My first job out of college was at Tower Video, just outside the Tacoma Mall. This was back in 1990; I got $4.50/hour to work the counter, shelve videos, and work TicketMaster. The benefits back then actually looked better than those offered now in 2006: I had full medical and dental, and none of the HMO and PPO hassle that you get currently. As a McJob goes, it wasn't as bad as it could have been, I suspect: fast food will always carry that connotation.
Maybe that's what was most disingenuine about CLERKS II: whereas Kevin Smith really knew his territory in the first CLERKS, in that convenience store, you didn't get the sense in this sequel of someone who had spent an intolerable amount of time working the fryer or the drive-thru. And as such, transposing his angst from a convenience store to a fast-food franchise, is he right or just making a convenient cultural cross-reference?
Whatever. I evolved beyond counter-clerk into whatever I am now. But my time at Tower Video was a definitive part of that evolution. When that Tacoma store closed in 1997, I remember the write-up in the Tacoma NEWS TRIBUNE. It made mention of the fact that some of the clerks there were ill-mannered and discourteous; I have to think that some of that was aimed at me specifically. I don't know what Quentin Tarantino was like as a clerk at that video rental in Manhattan Beach, but I gotta think that he was better than I was. Me, I was Randal Graves: the customers all wanted bad movies, and we stocked them in excess. It was a McJob, and I viewed it as such, not knowing how much it would inform the remainder of my working life.
So now Tower is no more. Well, that's sad, since as a chain they weren't as lockstep as Wherehouse or Sam Goody. Fortunately, there's plenty of market competition to include most of what Tower was offering, so the battle isn't lost. But I can remember a time when you couldn't find it in town, so you'd go to Tower. Which was open til midnight. And I worked that shift, for better than a year. Once upon a time.
Maybe that's what was most disingenuine about CLERKS II: whereas Kevin Smith really knew his territory in the first CLERKS, in that convenience store, you didn't get the sense in this sequel of someone who had spent an intolerable amount of time working the fryer or the drive-thru. And as such, transposing his angst from a convenience store to a fast-food franchise, is he right or just making a convenient cultural cross-reference?
Whatever. I evolved beyond counter-clerk into whatever I am now. But my time at Tower Video was a definitive part of that evolution. When that Tacoma store closed in 1997, I remember the write-up in the Tacoma NEWS TRIBUNE. It made mention of the fact that some of the clerks there were ill-mannered and discourteous; I have to think that some of that was aimed at me specifically. I don't know what Quentin Tarantino was like as a clerk at that video rental in Manhattan Beach, but I gotta think that he was better than I was. Me, I was Randal Graves: the customers all wanted bad movies, and we stocked them in excess. It was a McJob, and I viewed it as such, not knowing how much it would inform the remainder of my working life.
So now Tower is no more. Well, that's sad, since as a chain they weren't as lockstep as Wherehouse or Sam Goody. Fortunately, there's plenty of market competition to include most of what Tower was offering, so the battle isn't lost. But I can remember a time when you couldn't find it in town, so you'd go to Tower. Which was open til midnight. And I worked that shift, for better than a year. Once upon a time.
posted by Russ the Librarian at 11:03 PM
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