rekkidblogga

Fast times at FPK

While the job I have now is the best "professional" job I've ever had (not to mention the only "professional" job I've ever had), the single BEST job I've had was working as the assistant manager at the Turtle's Records & Tapes three miles from my house.

If you grew up in ATL, you remember Turtle's. That hippy-dippy logo lettering? Those funky, shiny, heavy fake gold-looking gift coins emblazoned with the smiling half-stoned turtle mascot that were grooved like a record? That wiggy dark green and blindness-inducing yellow colorscheme screaming at you in all our stores? The silver turnstiles right AT the front door for... hell, even I don't know why? And oh yes -- THE quintessential Turtle's experience: Double Stamps On Wednesdays.

You know how we rolled. We unlocked the cassette drawers JUST for you (such precious stock, cassettes!) and diligently restocked the record bins when you couldn't be bothered to put that Ramones album back and you stuck it in with N.W.A. We knew Dr. Dre and Dee Dee wouldn't care, but our district manager would. Best of all, you never cared that we blatantly hung out behind our neon yellow front counter right by the cash register (and, natch, the stereo) throughout our entire shift, hardly bothering to venture onto the green-carpeted sales floor to ask if you needed help. We KNEW y'all needed help -- just not with buying records.

Some of y'all ripped us off and that sucked but most of y'all loved us and helped us threateningly stand over punk would-be shoplifters because we were YOUR neighborhood record store. Also, those discounted movie rentals we spotted you helped. Remember that time when we wouldn't give the one guy a refund on that fake cassette he tried to say came from our store? (Yeah -- like, NO receipt and the cover ink was still wet from the Xerox machine.) When we said "Oh HELL no!," but in a much nicer retail-ish way, he THREW the tape at my coworker's head and you yelled out "KICK HIS ASS, STEVE!" Right in front of a line of Grateful Dead ticket buyers. Steve never forgot that moment and I didn't, either. It warmed our hearts. Scared the hippies, but touched our souls.

Working at Turtle's all those was like having our own grimy personal hangout stocked with CDs, cassettes and records and aside from the fact that our store never EVER made a profit -- OK, there was that one Christmas when we made a little money and our manager took us all out to eat at Red Lobster, which was cool -- we loved that place. We loved that store. We knew everything about it and nobody disrespected our store. We hung out there after hours. We said we hated coming in to work some days but we lied. Good old Store #11.

Now some independent urban music store has moved into our old space and it's not right. Do they know about all the old smashed LPs up in the ceiling that are there because we used them as frisbees when we got bored on long, hot summer nights when we kept the front doors open even though our managers just hated it when we did that? Because we did that. We did that all the time.

posted by rekkidbraka @ 10:14 PM