The Vig

I had no idea rental insurance was still around in the video business.  Hollywood Video put a neat twist on their program by promising to donate a portion of their proceeds to charity.  A nice gesture, to be sure, but when neither employees nor customers are 100% sure how the program works, bad things happen.

The people I really feel sorry for in this situation though are the employees.  They’re making a little over minimum wage while working retail to make ends meet or pay for school or whatever, and now they have to tack on $.25 to a minimum number of transactions or risk being fired.  What an absolute douche move by the company on a couple of different levels.  First, why on Earth would you want to instill some sort of fear in your customer as they walk out the door to enjoy their evening?  All they want is to grab a movie and a pizza on the way home for a nice Friday night and now they have to worry about what “might” happen.  Movies are supposed to be a nice experience, not one filled with dread.  Second, tying performance to the sale of these products simply invites disaster.  Working at the phone company, we were “encouraged” to sell a product called Linebacker which insures the wiring inside your house.  If our numbers fell short, we were taken to a back room for further encouragement.  I can’t imagine its a whole lot more fun for a Hollywood employee to get lectured by their slacker boss about their sales numbers.  Life’s way too short to put up with such hooey.