I spent a lot of time in the retail trenches, and while I may miss it
sometimes with a certain wistful nostalgia, it’s pretty unlikely that I’ll
ever jump at the chance to return. I’m only half-joking when I say that I’ll
pick up pop cans from the side of the road for a living before I work retail
hours again.

That said, I have plenty of strange stories of my experiences to tell.
Here’s another one.

Creepy Videographers

Client loyalty is great, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that sometimes you
don’t always get to pick the clients who decide that you’re their favorite
salesperson.

Back in the days of analog video there was a pair of clients who between
them bought tens of thousands of dollars of Hi8 decks, editing consoles,
monitors and videotapes from me. They both had a creeper-with-a-combover
vibe, and I was never able to get a handle on their relationship; whether
they were related, just buddies or something more.

Mind you they never dropped hints or gave me any real reason to think they
were up to something gross (at least when the outlaw bikers came in from the
strip club across from the mall to buy boxes of Hi8 cassettes I knew what
they were doing). Maybe their weirdness came from being avid trainspotters
or birdwatchers. I just don’t know.

In hindsight, perhaps the strangest thing about them was that they never
made the migration from analog to digital. As MiniDV gained popularity Sony
discontinued their Hi8 decks and consoles. I sold the last of my store’s
demo models to these guys at a great package price, and they disappeared,
never to be seen again.