Workingman's Blues Part 2: The Drop Box is Missing

I'll always remember her name, because she made sure that I would. "It's Stacia Newcomb," she told me. "As opposed to Stacia Oldbrush." That and she was cute. And she was loitering inside the Hollywood Video where I was working as a manager for hours. And she told me I was wasting my life. You tend not to forget these things.

When I graduated high school, I was offered a job at the local Blockbuster Video, mainly because my buddy Dan was dating the manager's daughter. I worked there for twenty-nine months, and when I left I had worked my way up to Assistant Manager and I had also decided I didn't want to work at a video store anymore. I put in my five weeks' notice (that was how important to the organization--two weeks would not be nearly sufficient amount of time to find a replacement) and planned to get a job waiting tables at the 99 restaurant that was just opening up next door. But one of my last nights working at Blockbuster, I received a phone call from Hollywood Video. They were opening two stores in the area, and they wanted me to come be the store manager for one of them. As ridiculous as it might seem, Hollywood Video had headhunters.

I was only 20 years old, and apt to follow the path of least resistance, so I accepted the Hollywood Video job, with a caveat: I did not want to be a store manager, but an assistant manager. The regional manager from Hollywood tried to convince me that I should take the store manager position, as it had a salary of $26,500 with benefits not understanding that was the exact reason I didn't want to take it. I knew that I was 20 years old, and knew that I was apt to follow the path of least resistance, and that a job that paid a 20 year old who still lived at home with his parents $26,500 was a path of least resistance as well as a path that would lead me to becoming a 46-year video store manager. I figured that once I started making that kind of money it would be hard for me to ever give it up. So I insisted on taking the lower paying, less responsibility job.

I spent one really long Sunday (7am-9:30pm without any significant breaks)setting up the new Hollywood video store in Whitman with two young guys from Colorado who were big fans of David Foster Wallace, which meant I was able to talk about "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" all day. These guys weren't going to be working at the store--their jobs meant they were flown all around the country helping setting up Hollywood Video stores--but I thought it might bode well for my new co-workers. The hardest part of leaving Blockbuster was all the friends that I had made working there, (many of them still among my best friends today) but alas, this was not to be the case.

For reasons unknown, I was transferred to the Hanson store. My hopes of having a bunch of young and hip coworkers were fairly quickly dashed: not only was the store manager Donna middle-aged, the entire staff was over 40. One woman named Mary was probably well into her 60s. Before we opened, Donna had hired at least one teenager that I can remember, but for the most part I was the one young person among a cast of older people, like Steve Guttenberg in "Cocoon."

In addition to Donna and Mary, there Carol, who became another shift supervisor/manager on duty, as well as Frank and his wife. They both worked at Raytheon and took this job as something fun to do together. Frank was made an M.O.D. along with Carol, and since his wife was just a customer service representative (CSR) they hardly ever were scheduled to work together, which I think defeated the point of getting the job, and Frank's wife quit shortly thereafter. There was even a second Donna, who I assumed was some friend of the other Donna's, although I don't know why I thought that, other than the fact that the two Donna's were scheduled to open the store Monday through Friday.

But then something happened to Donna before we opened: the regional manager was very cagey with where she was, just that she was going to be missing for the first three weeks. I overheard that she had been hospitalized, and my thoughts went immediately to hysterectomy, because it seemed like the kind of procedure a woman of Donna's age might undergo, and one that has enough of a stigma surrounding it that it would be kept a secret. Although looking back on it now, "nervous breakdown" also fits that description, and fits in with what happened later.

So, without our store manager, and with me being the only of the management staff who had ever worked in a video store before, I became the de facto store manger for our store's opening two weeks, which is what I had been initially hired for, minus of course the salary. I didn't mind. Donna had kind of freaked me out, and I liked not really having her around. I did have to work with the second Donna a couple of times, and she creeped the hell out of me. The regional manager came down to help out, but for the most part, I ran the opening two weeks of Hollywood Video Hanson without any incident.

When Donna came back, she returned a much angrier woman. Everything I did was the subject of some kind of stern talking to in the office, which unlike every other job I've ever held, was in the front of the store, right next to the front window. She didn't like the ties I wore. If I came in with a day's stubble, I'd get spoken to about it. I remember she once spoke to me about being too nice to some girls who came in. Dear God, I hated everything about it.

And then one Saturday night I was working, and Stacia Newcomb came in. She might have been stoned, or drunk, or just an odd duck, but she spent a good amount of time hanging around the front counter, talking to me. And she told me a lot about herself, her desire to become an actor, her commitment to the arts, but what I remember most of all was her chastisement. I was wasting my life, she told me, working in a video store. I can't say that the thought hadn't occurred to me, but things always sound so much more cogent and profound when spoken by a beautiful girl.

Luckily, it wasn't too much longer after that that events conspired to end my time at Hollywood video. Hollywood had a free-standing return drop-box on the sidewalk outside the store, which allowed people to pull up and return their videos without getting out of their car, probably the only way in which Hollywood was superior to Blockbuster video. I came in one Thursday night to work, and the drop box was gone.

I was relieving Donna, so when I came onto my shift I asked her about it. She brought me into the front office. "Frank stole it." That didn't make any sense, I said. How can you be sure? Donna had some story about the security cameras from the front office catching it, although looking at the angle of the cameras in relation to the front window, I sincerely doubted that. I was confused, but didn't fight her too much. Until she told me that when Frank came in to pick up his check it was my job to tell him he was fired.

I told her that I wouldn't do it, that it was above my pay-grade, and that if she wanted Frank fired, she would have to do it herself. Part of it was my affection for Frank. I wouldn't say we were friends, since he was older than my father, but he was a nice guy and always very friendly. Another part was that I felt there was something really fishy about the whole thing. Unlike taking a nutty like she usually did, Donna just kind of nodded and said she would take care of it.

She left for the night and I was thoroughly confused about the missing return drop-box. It must've been some high school kids or something. It just had prank written all over it. Why would Frank take it? It didn't make sense.

Carol came in next for her check, and she was acting weird. I had worked with her the least, but she was also very pleasant and friendly usually, so her cagey behavior was out of the ordinary. She hung around a lot longer than I expected her to, and seemed to be watching me carefully. Frank called to see if the checks were in, and when he told me he was on his way, I decided to tell Carol what Donna had told me. I brought her into the front office. "Donna told me to fire Frank," I said. "She said he stole the drop box."

Carol looked shocked. "Really?" she said. "Because Donna called me at work today and told me that YOU took the drop box."

When Frank came in, we brought him on board and he told us that Donna had called him at work to tell him that Carol had taken the drop box. I still to this day have no idea why Donna did this, unless it was her version of divide and conquer that would only work if you were trying to divide and conquer a group of Fraggles. There was no way it was going to work with intelligent adults.

We all quit that night. We called the regional manager, explained the situation, and said we were leaving without notice. I said I would keep my store key until the next payday to insure that Donna couldn't try and hold my last paycheck from me. We left Donna a note, signed by all three of us, locked up the store and all went home. On my way home, I drove past the back of the store and saw the Drop Box next to the dumpster. None of it made any sense.

That Sunday afternoon, I received a call from the teenage girl who worked at the store. She asked me when I was coming in. I told her that I had quit and didn't work there anymore. She sounded confused, and said okay. But Donna had left her at the store at 11:00 and she was supposed to be off at 3:00, but now it was 5:15 and nobody was there to relieve her. Donna had told the girl that I was on my way in, and the poor girl had waited 6 hours to call and check to see where I was. I went in and sent her home, closed out the registers and locked the money in the safe (to make sure that Donna couldn't try and claim that I had taken any money), vacuumed the store (I don't know why I did this) hung a sign up on the door saying we were closing early, then locked the door and threw my key into the return slot. I never went back, not even to get my last check. It showed up a month later in the mail.

A few days later, I received a call from the regional manager, explaining that it was Donna and her boyfriend who had removed the drop box, and Donna had been let go. He offered his apologies, and asked me to come back and work at the store. He offered me the manager's position again, even offered to raise the salary if I'd come back. He said he was planning on calling Frank and Carol and asking them to come back as my management staff. I politely declined. Even the fact that Donna was gone, that I was going to be the boss of the store, wasn't enough to get the voice of Stacia Newcomb out of my head. Within six months I would begin work as a substitute teacher, which was the beginning of my career in education.

Three years later, I was working at the local middle school as the building sub, and I took the eighth grade class I was subbing for to a school assembly about Anne Frank. Miss Frank was being portrayed by a young actress named Stacia Newcomb. I recognized her immediately and during the Q & A following the performance, I especially recognized the tone in her voice, the one that had told me that I was wasting my time by not using my abilities for the greater good. I wanted to go up after the presentation to tell her that I had followed her advice, that I had made a decision about how I wanted to live my life, how I wanted to contribute to the world. But it was only 12:35, and there was still lots of work to be done.