Retail Madness

 Soho Video

                 and

                         Paper Zone

These two jobs were connected in a way, because when I was still at Paper Zone I had yet to return to school by starting at PSU; and I worked at Soho while I was at school again (for the first couple of years). I remember the phone call I had from Judith at Soho inviting me to work there, that I took on my break at PZ. The rest of the details are too fuzzy to recall. PZ was interesting. It was an office supply and craft store. They had oodles of rubber stamps, tons of paper of every style imaginable, and other supplies (pens galore). I wasn't hired as any type of supervisor, fortunately, but was eventually fired nonetheless for sharing my wage rate with another employee. I assumed we (the regular associates) were all making the same (around $7.25 I think) but the person was so upset (rightly so, as they'd been there awhile) that they went to the manager about it, to raise an understandable fuss. 

I'm still confused about why this was a "me" problem—why not just raise their wage and give them the difference to make up for the time they were at a deficit? Underpaying valuable employees is bad management practice. I was mad and disappointed, naturally, who likes being fired? But yet again, like OMSI (which came much later), I was better off. It was a small crew, with a couple of good natured people, and also some less friendly types. One supervisor, a woman younger than myself at the time called me "Dork" on a regular basis and didn't understand why it bothered me so much. Then there was a woman who was extremely perturbed when I attempted any small talk. I specifically recall asking what she was planning to make for dinner while we were stocking shelves one day, and she said "chopped salad," which I had never heard of, so I asked her more questions about it, and she's like: "why do you want to know about what we eat?" So I was taken aback, because it was just small talk, but I explained that we both liked to cook and I was interested in recipes. She was quite curmudgeonly for a twenty-something married person. She also never said "Thank You" or "You're Welcome," explaining when I mentioned it one time, that it "wasn't necessary" to do with other employees, just customers. I remember that clearly despite it being almost 30 years ago. WTF. Rude People, am I right?

Soho Video was much better by all accounts. It doesn't exist anymore, the owner having moved to California, but at the time it was the best, most complete and eclectic indie video store in Southwest Portland. The East side featured a similar place, Movie Madness, which was much bigger, still exists today, and is now owner (I think) of the Historic Hollywood Theater

I liked working at Soho so much, I remember thinking I could be content to stop going to school if I could only work there full time. To give an example of how cool Soho video was, I once signed up Gus Van Sant as a customer for a new account. How cool is that. The best part was that I made a friend for life in Adrienne, the owner's daughter who worked there on her college breaks. She now lives in Mexico, but we text regularly. I don't remember how much I made per hour, but there were always videos to borrow for free, as well as screeners of new movies (VHS only ... this was on the cusp of DVDs and the store closed before they were mainstream, so the owner never added any to the inventory). Peace and Love, and may all your retail experiences be either behind you, or going well.