The Porn Store Employee FAQ file

Written by Mascalin

[Note: Do not let the sex title fool, this article is merely a desperate ploy to get myself arrested for drug trafficking and round-out a resume of vice and corruption. As a vegetarian, I have sold the carcasses of chickens and cows for profit to a capitalist venture1.

I have sold alcohol and have one of those silly little "Serving It Right" cards2.

I have sold cigarettes and cigars in more minimum-wage+$.25-so-we-as-the-management-feel-a-little-better- about-ourselves-for-wage-slaving-you jobs to yes *gasp* minors because I really didn't care to ask for ID and less they were being a jerk to begin with.

And obviously as my "lurid" tales are about to inform you, *I* the slightly SNAGgy3 guy from a nice middle class suburban family have peddle SMUT!

Wooohooo!

So if you can help to arrange an arrest for the possession of an illegal (& preferably soft) drug, pls contact me @ wx191@victoria.tcn.ca and help my career of degeneracy complete!]

* * *

Okay so con.ca had a sex issue here and I missed the chance to contribute to that.

Fortunately, the editor followed it up with a "jobs"-ish and it just worked out so perfectly! Now, at last, to an audience of possibly dozens, I can expound the wondrous going ons that plague the boredom of your average porno-joint employees.

But first let me begin by saying this: please don't Misunderstand me. Working there was strange but not enthralling. I was looking for a very non-demanding job that would allow me to study for University classes for hours on end or watch movies and read books and still get paid for the only sporadic interruptions of passers-by. Alas, my life-long dream to be a parking lot booth attendant has not panned out either as I may have hoped for so this will be that ultimate job for me it seems. And you may not believe this after I've worked in a porn store, I'm not a lech either. I've got a great gf who's nowhere near the bimbo-esque proportions of the porn industry and has a real spirit and personality which I love her for and I couldn't be happier with.

I worked for a chain called "Red Hot Video" which is one of only three major porn chains out here on the West Coast of Canada. The second is a company called "Adults Only Video" and the third doesn't seem to have a name, they just seem to share the same love of tacky yellow awnings outside their Granville and Hastings St. stores. All are pretty much 1 part video sales and rentals to 1 part toys and magazines.

I had a manager called "D", and two main co-employees "C" and "T"4.

When I sat down to write this, I had just way, way too much material to put into one article so I decided I'll just start with the basics. Later, if my writing isn't too horrible and I'm not stabbed to death with a bible by anti-porn activists, I'll tell more stories.

So now then without further ADO for enjoyment, mirth5, and/or consideration HERE is the...

Porn Store Employee FAQ:

Q: Do you have that like hard core movie that Markie Post (Night Court), Marina Sirtis (ST:TNG), or Courtney Cox (Friends), etc.. etc... did before she got famous? I heard she got all nasty and....

A: No. And I hope with the advent of the Internet this will never come up as a serious question again. If they had done anything even vaguely pornographic don't you think it would be as badly dragged up and shoved in our faces as all those movies where David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson had two second nude or simulated sex scenes?

Remember "The Italian Stallion"? It's the only time I ever actually cried at a Stallone movie and that's just because it's the only thing worse than "Stop or My Mom Will Shoot!" 8

This is also not counting the innumerable quests for that "lost" (meaning mainstream not home) porno movie that Pam Anderson did in her early days. Unfortunately, this came true and I'm still getting spammed with e-mail to see it 2 years after the fact. Ugh!7

Q: Wow, are those real?

A: No, they're bigger than her head and torso put together.

This is still one of the most frightening aspects of the porn industry to me. Not simply for the size being inhuman but it's becoming more and more porn-chic to not even bother pretending that they are real. Many is the video box I shelved away where the porn actress smiled happily bearing HUGE red (and sometimes swollen) scars on the undersides of each nipple. Men still rented the videos.6

Q: You must get real horny working here, huh?

A: No, mostly hungry.

I was next to a corner store and could lock up for brief periods when there were no customers around to grab something to eat or get some change. I remember thinking more about dinner than the porn most days. After all, it's same stuff I had to be bored with looking at the day before.

My manager "D" once said the only thing I couldn't do behind the counter when nobody was around to be served was jack off. He also tried to assure me shortly after that the video cams in the store didn't actually work and were just for show. I still don't know if he was telling the truth the cameras and I don't know if he meant anything by putting those two thoughts so close together.

Q: Can I return...?

A: (pointing at sign as I read it aloud) No returns on sex toys or lingerie.

C'mon, common sense here PLEASE!

Q: Well, where do these come from?

A: 90% of all porn in Canada comes from L.A. and is made by about the same group of 20 or so pornographers, about 5% is European, 4% comes from New York or somewhere else in the U.S.A. but mostly NY and there's an odd 1% that comes from "elsewhere".

This "elsewhere" did include quite a few titles from Quebec but they were just sold stateside and brought back to Canada with the other run-of-the-mill stuff.

Q: Oh my God!

A: Yes, Ron Jeremy is *the* ugliest man alive and yes he does work porn and yes, he did get his start in porn because he could (and still can at 300+ lbs) suck his own dick.

He had a life time goal he set himself when started working porn in about 1980 or so to star in at least 1,000 porn movies. He has since past that goal as of about 5 years ago and is working on getting to 2 or 3,000 videos now as I recall but is concentrating more on producing now.

He was vaguely more attractive of course when he started out. However, the most accurate descriptions of his more youthful appearance generally follow along the lines of a "real life version of Mario from Super Mario Bros with extra back & ear hair too! or "Gabe Kaplan on steroids".

Q: Can I rent with my wife/girlfriend's Driver's License and Visa?

A: Unless you are a knock-dead stand in for her with the same signature, no.

And yes, I did have to be polite while MANY men asked me this stupid question. Usually the wife/gf did know he was going out to rent a dirty video but there was a few that seem to not appreciate why this was a stupid question to begin with.

As a side observation, the porn industry actually figures that about 30% of its market is female though you wouldn't know it from looking at the video shelves. The reason is that a lot of women were afraid to go in and deal directly over the counter. Ergo the boyfriend got the job of going to the porn store and probably only about 2% of the customers were female.

Q: Oh my God are those real?

A: No, his doesn't match his own skintone and the other guy's is a purple jelly with sparkly things in it.

I am sad to say that a company called Raunch-o-Rama popularized the FAUX-sex-freak genre in the early 90's with a series called "Freaks of Nature" and spurned other companies to make similar knock-offs. Generally, this involved oversized genitalia that was little more than just an oversized sex toy everybody would pretend was actually attached to the actor/actresses body though it quite obviously wasn't. As an extension of the fake-boob thing one regular actress in the series appeared "over-sized" with (I'm not making this up) paper-mache' tits strapped on with a Naugahyde bra.

One day a medical doctor actually rented one of these atrocities in his porn pile. I reconsidered medicare for awhile.

Q: Do you have that movie with the blonde?

A: Yes, the one with the big fake tits?

Q: Yeah, her!

Q: Do you have Bambi or Top Gun?

A: Do you know what kind of store you just called or walked into?

Oddly enough, if the person had walked into the store, they usually didn't ask this question until after they've looked over all the main shelves and picked up a video or two.

And last but not least for now:

Q: Is it okay to bring the baby in? I don't want to leave him/her in the car.

A: Yes or no. (Depending on how much trouble I thought it would cause).

At least once every week or two I would have to explain a young couple that came in that "No One under 18" does include infants and newborns in B.C. The concept that 2 months old was indeed under 18 year of age seemed to confuse most people.

But given that most of the younguns were in those carry stroller/cradles and were still having trouble focusing on those pink things at the end of the their arms that weren't covered in wool or flannel, I didn't feel bad about the possibility of corrupting these minors. Usually, it was a compromise in the end. I told the parents, who obviously weren't perverts just sex-positive adults without too much forethought, they could stay and the baby could come in but that they had to put a blanket loosely over the cradle so there infant would not be corrupted.

Based on subsequent stories of what I have heard (3rd hand, mind you) about B.C. provincial film classification people, I still fully expected them to come charging in with an arrest warrant for having a minor on the premise.

Mind you, it was the Saskatchewan and not the B.C. film board that actually bothered to ban "Exit to Eden" (remember THAT "erotic/comedy" of a movie?) and caused an even larger spectacle for an even more intellectually degrading movie than porn EVER was.

Anyways, that's food for thought for now. If you want to really live the porn-store employee life do whatever you do normally that's quiet and involves mostly sitting in one place. Hand the FAQ to a friend and have them ask you a question on the hour or so to break up the monotony.

Also, get other friends to stare at your video collection while you're bored and then glance around the room with constant nervousness.

More stories to follow of much-less non-monotony. If y'know, whatever...

=:)

And until then, remember the file shell is most active of the bivalves.

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