WHEN I WAS in college, I worked in a video shop.
Yeah I know, remember them?
It was 2009, I had just returned from an Erasmus year, was stone-broke and had heard good things about this particular gig.
So, I showed up for an interview and crossed my fingers that I’d land it.
The interview took place in the store’s dimly-lit sideroom which measured approximately 8 foot by 2 foot square.
I perched on a step ladder in my ‘good trousers’ and ‘work shirt’ and did my level best not to topple the piles of DVDs teetering precariously on the ground alongside me.
It felt vaguely like I was being interviewed in a DVD-lined coffin, but I was in no position to judge.
Squinting at my interviewer, I filled her in on my work experience and was told I’d have to ‘hit the ground running’ before clambering off the step ladder and hoping for the best.
The next day she called and told me I had the job.
I started with an evening shift after a particularly grim day in college, and quickly realised I didn’t know my arse from my elbow when it came to… well… anything.
I am as close to a Luddite as it’s possible to be in this society, and yet even I thought the computer system was archaic.
So archaic, I literally couldn’t make head nor tail of it.
Let me paint you a picture here; the font was green (GREEN!), you alternated between the ‘Y’ and ‘N’ buttons to complete a transaction, and you used the arrows to navigate your way around customer accounts.
You know that scene in The Simpsons where Homer gains approximately 300lbs, dons a muumuu and begins working from home? Well, my system and Homer’s weren’t all too different.
To me there was no rhyme or reason and for every transaction I had with a customer, I winged it.
I clicked a few ‘Y’s, pushed the ‘down’ arrow a couple of times, and hoped the till would pop open at some point before the queue grew any longer.
Invariably it worked, but I lost count of the number of customers who walked away looking utterly baffled after I accused them of failing to return a DVD they had literally just pressed into my hands.
I was a mess.
But if the computer system had been my only challenge, I’d have counted myself lucky.
But no, then we had the whole computer game debacle.
Look, I’d be the first to tell you that I knew next to nothing about computer games.
I couldn’t tell my CODs from my GTAs, and I went momentarily deaf when someone used the term ‘trade in’.
But every day, I was forced to entertain queues of teenage lads practically salivating at the thought of the latest release, and every day queues of teenage lads left the store wondering why the person behind the counter resembled a lobotomy patient.
It got to the point where I began hiding on customers.
I’d assess a customer upon entering the store and if I thought they were going to be ‘problematic’, I’d sidle into the sideroom, hold my breath and hope a co-worker would entertain them.
More often than not, they wouldn’t be in a position to do their job and mine – rude, I know – and I’d be forced to re-emerge and bluff my way through the exchange.
One day I instinctively ducked beneath the counter when five 15-year-old lads barrelled in, and when I realised no one else was going to serve them, I got shakily back to my feet and pretended I hadn’t just cracked my kneecaps in an attempt to dodge a conversation on computer games.
They had watched me duck, watched me awkwardly re-emerge and, as a result, treated me with the same kind of wariness you might an eccentric old aunt.
It wasn’t long before I actually felt bad to be earning a wage.
I mean, I was sending confused customers on wild goose chases for DVDs they had already returned, I was bluffing to teenagers about the release dates of video games and I was regularly knocking entire stands of New Releases to the floor with the vigour of my Henry the Hoovering.
I was about as much use as a hole in a parachute.
Thankfully for my manager who was no doubt on the brink of firing me, I got word that my previous job was looking to recruit, so I handed in my notice and was re-hired by another company.
I still haven’t a notion about computer games, but I know every single word of the Ratatouille movie.
