Where somebody knows your name

I never thought it was possible but I actually miss a retail chain.

Alright, technically that’s not true: I miss the staff at the Suncoast video store at which I used to shop. Suncoast mismanaged itself right into into a buyout by FYE. Not that it matters much in our grand corporatocracy which video outlet is selling you DVDs you really don’t need to own, but in the making life more pleasant realm it makes a big difference.

I’m what you’d call a binge DVD shopper. I have one criterion which every DVD on my shelf must meet: It must be something which I will want to watch more than once. None of this using the DVD store like a rental outlet because “they’re just so cheap and if I don’t like it I can sell it back used for 2/3 the price and get my money back” bullshit. No, if it’s on my shelf it’s there because it’s something that on some random night when I just can not sleep I might actually want to watch. This, of course, leads to an oddly currated collection.

Part of the reason I’m a binge shopper is that Suncoast put me in the habit. Every six weeks or so they’d have a triple points weekend for people enrolled in their frequent buyers’ club. Instead of getting one point for every $1 you spent you got three. Buy enough in quantity on those weekends and eventually they were paying you to take DVDs out of the store.

And I guess because I showed up regularly and treated the staff, who were just as big if not bigger movie geeks that I am, like human beings they always remembered me by sight if not necessarily by name. I could go from triple points event to triple points event and have Jenna, the assistant manager, remember that I’d asked about something previously that was out of print that had since been scheduled for release. Plus, they had a decent selection since all they did were DVDs.

Unfortunately, though, in the reorganization and purchase Suncoast’s buyer closed most of their stores. The closest one now is, well, not all that close and the staff has been disbursed, on to other jobs that I hope are more rewarding for them. And me, I’ve been reduced to buying my DVDs at Best Buy or via Amazon.com

So it was thus I found myself at a Best Buy in Northern Virginia yesterday attempting to fill in some holes in my collection (Criterion Collection Edition of The Seven Samurai, no go; The Rock, check; Speed, check; To Have and Have Not, no dice) and a indulge in a couple of impulse purchases, things that meet the basic criterion but weren’t on the mental list. Despite the resemblance to a casino that Best Buy seems to cultivate, and despite the paucity of offerings there was one extremely bright spot in yesterday’s shopping trip.

If it had been just one copy I could have written it off to customer abandonment. But no, there were five copies of Terms of Endearment right there in the Horror section where they should have been.