Redbox

By G. E. Shuman

I’m sure you all have noticed the several big red boxes which have popped up in our area lately. I’m also pretty sure you’ve used one by now, or at least know what those red boxes are for. If you have no idea what they do, which is about as likely as your not knowing what seat belts do, well, this is what they do. You stand in front of the big Redbox and use its touch screen to pick a DVD movie you would like to rent. Then you swipe your credit card on the machine and it dispenses your movie, all for just a dollar, plus tax.

Personally, I think Redbox is a great idea! It is a novel, inexpensive, convenient way to rent a video. And I like novel, inexpensive, convenient things, especially the inexpensive part. The people who invented Redbox must be very imaginative thinkers to figure out how to make such complicated electronic devices work, then build, ship and fill the machines, and make the whole system profitable. I would take my hat off to the Redbox people, but I really hate hats. I do wish they had saved a bit of their imagination for when it came time to name their wonderful product. I think they ran out of steam on that one. But, I suppose a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, and a red box by any fancier name would dispense no more sweetly.

My wife and I are a bit slow when it comes to trying most new electronic devices. We were dragged along into computer ownership, (several years ago and several times now) by the necessity of having one to run businesses. We were, shortly thereafter, similarly pulled into the internet by both our grown and growing children. E-mail and information websites eventually led us to online services like e-Bay and Netflix. (I will tell you that we will be the last two holdouts in the United States not to use Facebook. Silly us.) But, please, understand what we have witnessed over the years. Not that many years ago we had pagers, which were soon replaced by cell phones. We once owned Walkmans, (Walkmen? Whatever.) that have become MP3 players and I-Pods. We have also witnessed the death of 35mm cameras and tape-type video recorders. These have been replaced by tiny little devices that take pictures, make phone calls, record videos, play music and games, send text messages, surf the internet, and I have no idea what else, and keep all this information on a little chip which needs a postage-stamp size adapter so that it becomes ‘big’ enough to insert in a tiny slot in our computer.

I’m getting old, and I digress. I wanted to tell you that all of our foot-dragging, or at least most of it, when it comes to electronic ‘internet stuff’, is my wife’s fault. No, it really is. Lorna has an almost paralyzing paranoia, (Okay, maybe that’s too strong.) or at least a frightful fear of giving out credit card numbers on the internet. She is, possibly justifiably, afraid of us becoming victims of identity theft. I’m not as cautious, and would probably do much more online purchasing than she ever will, because I can’t believe anyone else would want to be us. So, you might understand that it did take us a while to try Redbox.

Ah yes, Redbox is a wonderful idea. Rent a movie for just a buck a day, watch it as many times as you want, and bring it back to any Redbox location. Rent an evening’s entertainment for less than buying a soda from a Coke machine, which happens to be the ‘other’ red box. How could you possibly beat that? Well, nothing is perfect, and that includes you and me, and Redbox. I might tell you of the time I stood under cover, but still in the rain, at a local Redbox. I eventually picked a movie, swiped my plastic, and the machine wouldn’t accept the card. Or the other time when we picked out a movie the kids really wanted to see and the machine did accept our card, but had “a problem” dispensing the disk. The screen said “Please choose another title.” or something like that. We chose to go home and watch something we already owned. But we still like Redbox.

I would have to say that the biggest drawback to the big red boxes is that using them is a one-at-a-time kind of thing. You look for a movie, try to read its descriptive paragraph, make a decision, and swipe your card, all with people standing in line right behind you. Once in a while you turn and smile at them, but you know what they’re thinking. You know they are wishing you would just give up and leave, so they can have their turn feeling the eyes of the person behind them burning into the back of their head while they use the machine. Talk about paralyzing paranoia. In this way, using a Redbox is similar to using a porta-potty, although I hope you never confuse the two. They’re similar in size and in the fact that everyone in line behind you knows what you’re there for, and while no one will say it, they all wish you would hurry up! But Redbox is worse, because there are few decisions to be made at a porta-potty, and your entire transaction is done behind a flimsy but opaque, semi-locked door. (A quick caution about using a porta-potty: Remember that whatever sound is made inside one of those things, whether of solid, liquid, gaseous or vocal origin, will immediately go, happily, trumpeting up that plastic stink pipe like something from a Dr. Seuss movie. So, be careful.)

The other day I was in line at a Redbox at a local supermarket. I was trying very hard to not make the pretty lady in front of me nervous, as I stood right behind her, watching her backside. I mean, watching the back of her head. She would occasionally look my way and I would look up at the ceiling or at my grocery list or something. She would then look back at the screen and I would continue staring at the back of her head, until such time when she looked back at me again. I could tell she was hurriedly checking for a movie, and was very conscious that I was standing behind her. But, what else could I do? All I wanted was to return a Redbox movie, and you need to stand in line to do that, too. Eventually the pretty lady got a movie and actually turned and apologized to me. I told her “Don’t worry about it.”, or “It was my pleasure.” or something else stupid, and she left. Could you blame her? I was sorry, but as uncomfortable as it can be to pick a movie while some stranger waits behind you, it’s even more uncomfortable to lose your place in line. I learned that lesson one time at a porta-potty.


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