The Camera Store

One of the most fun and lowest paying jobs I ever worked was a camera store in a mall. The store was part of a west coast chain with the headquarters in Seattle. A regional manager would visit the store every few months, but it was usually just the store manager and 2 or 3 other people working in the store. If I worked early morning or late evening, I usually found myself running the store alone.

The interesting thing about working a retail store is that ANYBODY can walk in. All types of people, you just never know. In my accounting jobs, it seemed that a more narrow demographic range entered the office. At the doctor’s office, only sick patients came in. For the CPA firm, mostly small business owners entered the lobby.

The main reason I loved the camera store job so much was that I love photography. The concept of stopping time – saving a moment in time - in a photograph is awesome! And I really got into all the technical knowledge of how to use the camera and get the desired results. I became something of an expert. Even people who worked with me would ask me how to do something with a camera or the photo lab. I even had customers calling from home and asking me how to turn their flash on or how to rewind an unfinished roll of film so they could develop it. I could usually tell them where the controls were located by visualizing the camera model in my head.

When someone came back for their pictures, I put on the white gloves, pulled out their prints, and flipped through them with the customer. If I noticed any eye catching or well-composed shots, I’d point them out and tell the customer what they did right. If there were pictures which did not turn out, I helped the customer diagnose the problem. Usually it wasn’t too hard. A huge, round, white reflection on a window meant that somebody had tried to shoot through a window, straight on, with their flash engaged. Dark, blurry photos meant that someone had tried to use 100 ISO daytime film for dusk photos. The camera just can’t see the way our eyes do.

During holidays, our store had later hours and heavier traffic. I remember one Easter we set up a booth out in the mall and paid a girl to dress up in the Easter Bunny costume so kids could have their pictures taken with her. I was amazed how many kids were afraid of a huge fluffy bunny with long ears! They were screaming and crying and clinging to their moms! Thanks a lot Steven King! Always turning something peaceful and familiar into something horrifying and terrible! Look what’s happened to kids these days! Ok, ok just joking.

One day I finished helping a customer and looked up to see two teenage boys knocking the Easter Bunny in the head. “Hey!” I yelled. They turned to look at me just as I hopped over the ribs-high counter and started walking briskly toward them. They took off running down the mall, laughing as they went. I asked the girl if she was ok and told her I’d keep a closer eye on her.

There was one time I worked with a customer for about an hour, helping her find the right camera with the right features. After I range her up and bagged her items, I went back to the display case to put everything away. To my surprise I found two of the same camera model, the display model and the camera I had just placed the battery in for the woman. The camera she had just purchased! My coworker looked up in alarm as I bolted from the store. I ran like a sprinter down through the mall and caught the woman just before she made it to the parking lot. “I am so sorry ma’am, but I am pretty sure I accidentally put an empty box in your bag!” Sure enough, we checked and her box was empty. I was able to set things straight and she was not angry, so everything turned out ok.

I had a security guard come by late at night sometimes and talk to me. Somehow it came up that I believed sex before marriage was wrong. The security guard disagreed, “You need to find yourself a few girls and do it with them. Get some practice. Did you know that’s why most women leave their husbands? Because their men don’t know how to give it to them like they want it!” I laughed out loud, “That’s ridiculous! Besides, I’ll probably end up with a girl like me. We’ll learn together. And if I happen to marry a girl who made a mistake, I guess she can teach me what she learned!” His only response was grinning from ear to ear and shaking his head.

One of the customers asked me, “Hey! Are you old enough to be working in here?” I asked him, “How old do you think I am?” He sized me up and said “I thought you were about 16!” I laughed, “No, I am 21.” His jaw dropped. “Man! You sure look younger! I bet you get carded a lot!” I shrugged, “Well, you won’t catch me in a place were I need to be carded.” He frowned, “Awe, c’mon! That’s no fun!” I grinned at him, “Why do you think I look so young?” He looked puzzled for a second and then my meaning struck him and he laughed as he turned and left the store.

There was one guy who came in looking for a tripod. We had all of our tripods standing in a group in the center of the store with their legs not fully spread to save space. As we were taking one out from this group, his elbow bumped another tripod, causing a domino effect as three tripods tipped over. He took a step sideways and caught all 3 of them before they hit the carpet. I noticed the way he moved and asked him, “Do you by any chance study or teach martial arts?” He gave me a puzzled look, “Yes, how did you know?” Without waiting for a response, he told me about the dojo where he taught.

We also offered a passport and immigration photo service using Polaroid photos. By far the most adventurous experience happened with a Mexican who came in to have his immigration photo taken. Immigration photos were taken differently than passport photos and had to be framed and shot in a very precise way. The girl who shot his photos had screwed up and immigration rejected them. He had somebody else shoot them again and came back to us for a refund. I gave him the refund, took the defective photos, and he left.

Two weeks later he was back. This time he reminded me about the faulty immigration photos and the refund. I told him I remembered. “Look man, you short changed me! I gave you a $20 and you gave me only $2 change! You owe me $10.” I was shocked at first. “What?” I frowned, “The register tells me exactly how much change to give you. Otherwise I’d be out of balance at the end of the day.” His voice took on a threatening tone. “I want my money! Give it to me!” I almost laughed. “Listen. If I went into Wal-mart and told them they short changed me two weeks ago, do you think they’d give me more money? NO! If the change was wrong, you should have told me before you left the store.” He slammed his fist on the counter, “Give me my $10 now!” I shook my head and continued in a level tone. “I can’t just take $10 out of the register. I’d get fired!”

At this point, he escalated to accusations. “You took the money and put it in your own pocket! Give it to me! C’mon! Give it to me or I’ll kick your butt right now! C’mon!” This time I did laugh. “You can try, but you won’t get any more money. Just leave the store now!” Now he was yelling and attracting the attention of all the customers and the two girls working with me. “I will! I’ll kick your butt! Give me my money!” He took a swing at me across the counter. I snapped my head back and he missed. I had just been studying Jujitsu for about 9 months and my mind began racing through all the possible things he might try to do and how I should deal with them. For a moment I thought he might try to lunge over the counter after me. Rather than keep trying to keep him on the opposite side of the counter I thought I’d pull him over and take him down on the floor where I could hold him until police arrived.

But he never made another attempt to grab or hit me. He just shook his fist and kept yelling, “You stealing from me! You stealing from de company!” I just looked at him wondering what was next. Then an elderly lady who was being helped further down the counter said “How much did he want? $10?” She took a bill from her purse and extended it to him. I watched, speechlessly appalled, as he took the money from her and headed for the door. “This is not the end of this! I’ll be back! Do you hear me? I’ll be back!” He yelled, pointing at me as he walked out of the store. I walked to the old lady, “I can’t believe he just took your money! If I had any with me, I’d give it to you.” She just shook her head, “It’s alright. At least he’s gone.”

Then I turned to the two girls working with me. They were both standing there wide-eyed and frozen, as I suspect they were the whole time. “Why didn’t one of you call the police?” They shook their heads. “How can you be so calm! Look! I am shaking!” One girl said. I was still in how-to-handle-the-situation mode. “He was just bluffing. Probably needs money for drugs or something, although $10 probably won’t get him anything. I guess I’ll call the police, now that it’s over.” I picked up the phone and called the police department. I told them he had tried to punch me in the face and was making verbal threats. I gave them his name and they told me to let them know if he came back. Needless to say, I was very cautious going to the night drop at the bank that night. But I never saw the guy again.

One reason some of our customers came to us, was that we would develop nude pictures (barring child pornography) and Wal-mart would not. Our mini lab was positioned so that the pictures came out right near the doorway so that people walking by in the mall could see them. We made a special cover out of a corrugated box to put on the machine when objectionable photos were popping out. As we called ourselves a high-quality lab, we tossed and reprinted pictures with poor color balance or density. At one point we discovered that the janitor was digging through our trash after we took it to the dumpster, trying to find tossed nudies! The girl working with me asked him about it and he said he didn’t know the bag was ours. Still didn’t explain why he was digging in the trash, but we tapped up our trash bags with our store logo tape to avoid any confusion. It probably just made it easier for him to spot them in the dumpster.

One guy that worked with me at the store for a few months almost always came to work high. Did he ever love the wacky weed! He was so mellow and in a daze all the time. He even told us about the marijuana he was growing in his basement. One night I left him to work the late shift alone. When I came back the next morning, I found that he had replaced the chemical tanks in the photo lab. This was a procedure we did about twice a day depending on the volume of prints we processed. The problem was that he switched the tanks around so that developer was feeding into the fixer parts of the machine and stop-bath was contaminating the developer tubes and rollers. This was a very expensive mistake because our mini-lab practically had to be rebuilt. So many parts were ruined or contaminated. Believe it or not, he didn’t get fired for that, but left on his own a few weeks later.

In the end, I left because of the way they treated their employees, even though I enjoyed the work and it paid for some of my education. After giving me raise from $6 to $6.20 per hour, six months later they changed the plan. They put me back at $6 per hour but had me working 48 hours per week instead of the normal 40. The extra hours were supposed to make up for the reduction in pay rate. How stupid did they think we were? They did some other ridiculous things like that. When I talked to the regional manager about it and let him know I thought it wasn’t right, he just said “Well, I’m sorry you feel that way about it, but that’s the way it is! Take it or leave it.” So I left it.