[lfjokes] Lube Warning

[Adam Shand]

This is great.  Enjoy (not for the easily offended).  There's plenty
more at the web site, this is just one of many.

Adam.

Via: http://www.csof.net/node.php?id=176
From: http://www.improvisation.ws/mb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=4475

Lube Warning
Posted on 03-02-2002 at 10:28 AM

All of us abuse the hand sanitizer. I know that over-the-counter
antibacterial products are bad. I know that it actually develops hideous
resistant strains of bacteria. I even did the high school biology
experiment where you put penicillin in a petri dish of E. Coli, then
watch the zone of inhibition get smaller and smaller as the bacteria
learn to eat the stuff for breakfast. I know it is bad, and I don't
think it should even be legal to sell it. All of my fellow clerks agree
with me, but we all abuse the hand sanitizer. We can't help it.

Contamination is everywhere. I see people sneezing onto the tape cases.
They cough wetly into their palms right before handing me change. They
squeegee out their ears with their pinkies. They forget about the
security cameras downstairs and pick their noses with wild abandon and
astonishing force. Still, the only thing that realy freaks me out is the
semen. Well, OK, the lubricant freaks me out too, but I'm pretty sure
that's because of the implied presence of semen.

The only thing we can do is use the hand sanitizer. I use it so much
that I lose all finger traction and can't open our plastic bags. I've
had days when I've used it so much that I can't even make fingerprints
on the glass countertop. It freaks me out, but the thought of not using
it is worse.

Sometimes people get animalistic about the tapes. For the real addicts
(I'm convinced that porn is like alcohol: some people can stop at just
one every now and then, some people just binge on weekends, and some
people get genuinely, horribly addicted) the reptilian brain kicks in.
They hit the magic portion of the tape and they're done. They pop out
the tape and slam in another one, and the next day the stack comes back,
unrewound and covered in goo.

Repeat offenders get a note on their file that says "LUBE WARNING".
Management policy is that for $6.50 an hour, clerks should not have to
deal with the bodily fluids of others. The first time we discreetly but
firmly remind the customer that the tapes need to come back clean. The
second time we hand him the tape, the Windex, and the paper towels and
tell him to clean off the tape in full view of whoever else is at the
counter.

It astonishes me that someone could actually forget to clean off his
sticky and/or slippery tapes, but what amazes me even more is that
people actually have the balls to argue with us about it. They always
claim they got the tapes that way. They will actually claim that the
spooge in question was missed by both the clerk that checked it in and
the clerk that checked it back out, and that they figured what the hell,
they'd go ahead and play it, even though it was covered in gel.

One guy brought back a DVD with a big white thumbprint of come on it. He
actually tried to argue with me: "That's not mine. I never even played
that! I never even took it out of the case!"

I pointed out that the DVD had been put back in the case with the
reverse side up, which was where the thumbprint was. The clerk couldn't
have checked the tape out to him that way because the serial number is
on the front. The guy still tried to protest that sure, maybe he'd
picked it up and looked at it but - "Sir," I said, "It's your
THUMBPRINT. Do you really want to get into this?" He did not.

I hate it when people argue, but I understand why they do. I don't think
there should be any shame in masturbating, but I do think there should
be shame in expecting someone with whom you are not very, very close to
deal with a wad of your spooge. I think they get all defensive because
in that moment, they realize it too, but I think there's more to it than
that.

One of my favorite concepts in anthropology is that of the polite
fiction. It's something nobody believes, but we all pretend to because
it makes life so much easier. My favorite example was of a Pygmy couple.
Pygmy divorce involves quite literally breaking up the home: the couple
tears apart their house (it's easy - the houses are made of leaves) and
once it's down, the union is dissolved. One anthropologist was watching
a long-married couple have a fight. It escalated until the wife
threatened to leave, and the husband yelled something along the lines of
"Fine!" and there was nothing the wife could do but start tearing down
the house. She began tearing the roof off, clearly miserable. The
husband looked wretched too, but at this point neither could back down
without losing face and by now the whole village was watching.

Finally, the husband called out the Pygmy equivalent of "You're right,
honey! The roof is dirty! It'll look much better once we get those
leaves washed!" The two of them started carrying leaves down to the
river, soon with the help of the whole village, and then washed and
rebuilt the whole roof. When the anthropologist later discreetly asked
how often one washes the roof, everyone looked at him like he was a
complete doofus.

The polite fiction of the porn section is that, while people do
generally use porn for the purpose of masturbation, there is no reason
to believe that this particular customer will be doing so. He could be
using them for his Master's thesis. Hell, he may not get around to
watching them at all. We all like to believe that. When it becomes all
too clear to everyone involved that said customer did, in fact, not only
lube up, watch the tape, stroke himself to orgasm, and then grab the
goddamned thing without even taking the basic courtesy of washing his
goddamned hands first, we all get uncomfortable.

On the other hand, he gets angry because he's ashamed of something that
was entirely avoidable and his own fault. I'm supposed to keep my temper
even though I've just put my hand in a wad of his semen.

The destruction of the polite fiction is what creeps me out about one of
my weekend regulars. He comes in when I open at nine, then chooses and
rents two movies. He leaves for exactly two movies' worth of time, then
returns them before four to get the matinee special. I hate it because
there's no way to pretend he's been doing anything else. I just hope to
God there's been a hand washing between him and me. I think there is,
because his tapes are always clean, but it still gives me the shivvers
and sends me straight to the hand sanitizer. It's just too much to know.

Mr. Glasses is the very creepiest, though. He's always very friendly,
even courtly. He's too friendly, actually - he's always doing stuff like
announcing "It's THAT kind of personal service that sets your store
apart from the Blockbusters!" Yeah, whatever. The over-friendliness
itself is creepy, as is the way he sort of doesn't blink enough and
doesn't know that most business transactions don't really involve
sustained eye contact. (No, he's not hitting on me. He's gay.) But of
course what puts him over the top is that he's our biggest repeat lube
offender. I hate seeing him coming. It's like Russian Roulette.

Rainy days are the worst. He just plunks a wet bag on the counter and we
have to reach in and get the tapes. You know that initiation ritual in
Flash Gordon where the guy has to stick his hand way, way down a hole
and usually it's fine but sometimes there's a venemous beastie at the
end that stings him? It's like that. Actually, it isn't quite. The tapes
are always a bit wet on rainy days - it's just that my brain can't stop
churning about what they might be wet with.

We all abuse the hand sanitizer. And I am deeply grateful that it
exists.