Former Blockbuster Video Employees Tell ALL Of Blockbuster's Secrets!

Blockbuster Video, the movie rental empire that nearly ruled the world

At its peak popularity in 2004, Blockbuster had over 9,000 stores in the U.S

However, life at the top doesn't last long. So let's be kind and rewind back to a simpler time

when your biggest worry was returning that copy of Rocket Man before the late fees kicked in

What? I didn't do anything. These are the best secrets we've heard as 10 former Blockbuster Video employees tell all

Look, we here at Ranker would never condone theft of any kind. But since Blockbuster is pretty much extinct

we thought it would be finally safe to pass along this little fun fact shared online by a former employee

Turns out, young high school-aged employees working just above minimum wage won't want to put themselves in harm's way if someone tried to walk out with several copies of The Notebook

A lot of people never returned movies, ever. We didn't actually have a collection agency, and our policy for theft was it's not worth caring

You could have taken two handfuls of DVDs every weekend, and we'd just sort of be pissed off

In Hollywood, it's not what you know, it's who you know. Why shouldn't it be the same for a video rental store

Having a friend work behind the blue checkout counter was almost like having a friend in the government

The rules were just a little bit different for you. Late fees suddenly vanish

And if you play your cards right, you might get your hands on a hot new release before anyone else

This former employee shared how being friends with him was like winning the lottery

All it took was a little computer skill. I worked in the game section, and I used to take my friend's Xbox up there and just load games onto it

I also used to wipe out late fees for my friends and just always give them free or discounted rentals Late fees are the bane of existence for any card Blockbuster member It a minor slap on the wrist for a single late return but if you made it a habit those pesky fees added up

and ultimately prevented you from renting movies altogether. Back in the day, it was a fate equivalent

to banishment. But what if we told you there was a sneaky way to avoid late fees all along? A former

employee who dropped some knowledge in an online forum showed all we had to do to avoid late fees

was to put the movie back where you found it. The way to avoid any and all late fees at Blockbuster

was to walk into the store and just put the movie back on the shelf

Every day, the employees had to check for overdue movies on the shelf, and any that were found were just checked in on time

When Blockbuster made the big switch from VHS to DVDs at the start of the 2000s

they were presented with a unique problem. What do they do with the hundreds of obsolete VHS cassettes

Surely there must be some sort of museum or charity organization that could..

Oh, oh, oh, they just smashed them with a hammer. Well, this former employee spills the deets on their dirty deed

We pulled them by the hundreds and put them on sale. After a few weeks, we started pulling them for destruction

It was kind of a shame, but it was fun at the same time. We just smashed the hell out of them behind the counter

I was walking through an ankle-deep layer of black plastic and magnetic tape

Back before the days of DVD, Blockbuster was stocked with shelves and shelves of those VHS cassette tapes

While this method was cheap to produce, it often meant that the lifespan of an often-replayed Blockbuster VHS was very limited

The tape would wear out and could eventually become unplayable. But these were in the og days

So when something broke, there was a chance that you could get in there and tinker with it

This former Blockbuster employee revealed the lengths some stores went to to keep their VHS tapes watchable Just as long as you didn blink I loved unscrewing VHS tapes and cutting out sections that had gotten twisted and then taping them back together

so we could still rent the movie. Nobody ever noticed a few missing frames

and it saved us from having to buy a new copy of the tape. Huh, thought my version of Death Becomes Her was edited

You might've been there, racing against the clock to drop off your rental

before the dreaded noon deadline, questioning if this copy of Jungle to Jungle

was meant to cause you this much stress? In our heads, we might have pictured the collection box locked shut at noon

forbidding any late entrance to its daily count, but it turns out that that deadline, much like a lot of things in Hollywood

is not exactly as it appears. Blockbuster employees are human, so that big noon deadline is more like, I don't know

whenever Joey gets back from his lunch break? Common fact. Though movies were due at noon

you didn't actually get charged a fee until after 3 p.m. They did this to make sure the folks didn't get charged just because the store was busy at lunch or someone forgot to check the box at noon

So as long as you were in by 2.30, you were fine. It's easy to get the rentals and the boxes they go in confused

They're all identical. It's not uncommon to stick your copy of Good Burger in the Devil's Advocate case

Mistakes happen, but what's not so easy is having one of your adult movies make its way inside the blue and white plastic case

Blogbuster isn't the type of video store with a secret beaded curtain back room

so when a dirty movie makes it inside a collection box, it's usually the work of some pranksters

This employee described a typical switcheroo at their branch store. There were always people who returned the wrong VHS inside the box

Many times it would be porn instead of some Disney classic. Working at Blockbuster was like a rite of passage for any young movie fan aspiring to make it in the biz

The free rentals easy workload and relaxed environment made this job a hot commodity in the 90s and early 2000s That why some stores got creative in their hiring process for finding the true movie heads to join

their crew. This former employee and movie buffs billed what her interview entailed. One of the

reasons I got hired was because I answered three movie trivia questions correctly. I can't even

remember the first one, but the second one was what movie gave Halle Berry her Oscar? Monsters

Ball. And the third one was what is the highest grossing movie of all time? Avatar at that time

There's nothing better than a new release day at Blockbuster. For some of the biggest hits, stores would often order many copies of the movie

in order to meet the demand of eager customers. However, after a few weeks, the demand drops

and then a lot of those DVDs are overshadowed by newer releases

In the hard world of retail, space needs to be made on the shelf. One former employee revealed that some surplus DVDs met a fate fit for the horror section

I hated the big new releases because I had to spend so much time

taking an exacto knife to the discs when we didn't need them anymore. They would just have

them destroyed and they'd count them all so you had to destroy them. It sucked. There's a lot more

going on behind those computer checkout screens than you'd like to think. Just like your permanent

record or your credit report, the Blockbuster membership tracks everything about you. Your

rental history, how often you brought things back late, and just how nice you were as a customer

This former employee spilled how your past store behavior followed you around for life

Or, in this case, as long as Blockbuster stayed in business. We kept notes on every customer's account

You'd give us your card and there was your rental history and things we'd type about your visit if necessary

So if you came in begging to have your late fee dropped, we'd have notes on there

how many times you'd done this before, what excuse you used, and your demeanor

If you didn't do it too often and were polite about it, we'd usually help you out