Blame Danny Boyle, not me!

A lady approached me with a copy of Slumdog Millionaire in her hand. She placed it on the counter and said in a stern voice "Now, this is a crap copy".

Doing my usual thing (ie my job) I took the disc and asked what the problem was. She told me that it was skipping. From the look of it I believed her and so I apologised and issued some credit onto her account. All good.

An issue handled calmly and effectively... but then she made a follow-up complaint; that she was being ripped off because the film was in letterbox format. She claimed that she was getting less picture because the top and bottom of the screen were "chopped off" and that the subtitles were too small for her to read. 

She was becoming more aggitated the more she kept talking. I let her say her peice and then began to explain what letterbox was. I will assume that most of you know what widescreen is so I wont bore you with a lesson, suffice to say I tried to explain that it actually offers more picture and the movie is presented in the same format as a cinema. She kept interjecting with comments like "thats rediculous" or "how stupid" etc.

I realised that nothing I explained was going to change her mind. She was pissed off and apparently the format of the film was something I had to rectify for her. "I am sorry but a video store has no control over the way films are made and presented, we simply offer them for viewing". Those were my exact words which REALLY got under her skin. She replied in a smug voice "there's no need to get defensive"... and this is where my threshold was reached.

"I am sorry. But when you come in all guns a blazing and tell me that our movie is a crap copy the way you did, then my defenses will be up from the getgo (even though they weren't up at all until this point). As for the widescreen format, just about every film is presented this way and have been for years now."

She responded with "and you have a problem with me saying it's a crap copy, do you?" and i replied "a friendly 'there is something wrong with this'" would have been nicer. Next time you come in, you can grab a free new release".

She left in a huff and I am left craving my anual leave!