I have a couple of friends who both worked in a porn shop, and they both loved and hated it. They’re both remarkably open-minded individuals. They loved it because they are both very open and warm about their sexuality. They hated it because everyone who shopped there treated them like they were idiots, just because they worked in a porn shop.
I’m going to see them in August and they’re going to show me how much stuff they got with their emplyee discount. Heh heh heh heh.
I never worked in a shop, but I did work for a shipping company in the same city as Adam & Eve (a big catalog porn seller). Every night we’d get their load of merchandise to ship out. Some of the things that amazed me were the number of women who bought this stuff. I always thought it would be about 85-90% male. But the stuff from A & E was about 50-50. The other thing was the volume of stuff some people bought. We would get these huge TV size boxes going out. They were usually too heavy to be something like a costume. Sometimes the boxes would break open and there would be like 50 tapes in there, or like 10 dildos. I would love to meet a woman who is ordering 10 dildos at a time in various sizes and colors. She would probably be a fun date.
I haven’t worked in a porn shop, but I did have a friend who worked in a Love Boutique, and she said that it was a fun job. She said that the only thing that creeped her out were the business men coming in to try on ladies clothing during their lunch break.
A few years ago, one of the local porn store chains here in Phoenix decided to do the .com thing. I took a job as their copywriter, doing catalog descriptions for the web site.
I’d get a jpeg and product sheet for each item and try to come up with something witty and engaging. At first it was a lot of fun (despite the PSYCHOTIC owner and dept. manager), and the staff was great. The 50% discount and free movie rentals didn’t hurt my feelings for the job either.
After a while though, a problem began to rear its ugly head (Sorry, couldn’t resist the pun). There are more than 140 different manufacturers of adult toys. Of course, that translates into each company having A LOT of overlapping similar products.
I’m a pretty creative guy, but I was damnably hard pressed to say something interesting about these things after a while. By the time you write up your 102nd pink 6" jelly filled, ridged multispeed battery operated vibrator or your 138th 4" tapered, non-slip wide based knobbed butt plug, your copy is sounding either derivative or hostile: “Shove it and leave me the hell alone, you pervered freaks! Why the hell don’t you go out on a date and play with a real person, you degenerate loser! I hate you hate you hate you. Bim!” <-- I think that was verbatim for the last set of anal beads I wrote up.
It wasn’t long after that I quit and went into software marketing. Don’t get me started on that one…
'Bout right.
I forgot about the anal beads. We did sell a bunch of them. They came in several sizes, colors, and lengths but it seemed to me that the homosexuals always bought the biggest and longest strings. I had this absolutely beautiful little oriental girl - Japanese or Japanese/Caucasian mix - all of about 5 feet tall complete with long, shiny jet black hair, huge dark eyes and magnificently large chest, custom order a set of anal beads in jade green glass for $50.
Gosh, she was stunning. I had problems with some of the pretty young Asian girls coming in because they had this tendency to be like 28 and look 16. However, the Asian guys had no such tendency. I carded a lot of Asian girls.
It got to be funny at times when teens would come in and do a whole lot of looking. I could not sell them much of anything unless they were 18, but many came in accompanied by ‘big brother,’ who would buy the items. Teenaged guys are hilarious because if they haven’t been in such a store before, it kind of gets to them. I mean, all it takes for a 16 or 17 year old to get an erection is a stiff breeze anyhow and here they are, viewing more explicitly nude and erotic stuff than they ever saw on TV.
Often they came in little groups - the big ‘brother’ obviously standing out. After 15 or 20 minutes, there would be a knot of them jammed in a corner and one or two whispering frantically, someone giggling and then either a couple would hastily leave or they’d face away from everyone and look at the most unsexual stuff we carried for a while. They’d get stiffies!! Then they’d get embarrassed until they managed to get things under control.
Teenaged girls - usually accompanied by their guys, were hilarious. Sometimes they’d come in a knot and look at everything with eyes that got wider and wider, followed by explosive and shocked giggles with quick glances back at me. I’d get this unbelieving whisper ‘arugh! How’d she get that up her?’ or ‘what’s he doing? ---- Oh. *Oh/i]. OH! OH!!’ Followed by explosive giggles hidden behind hands.
I let teens in if they looked over 15 because there was no law against their looking, however, below 15, I kept them out. If accompanied by a parent, I had to let them in but I must say, I did wonder about men and women who brought in 7 and 10 year olds, but that rarely happened.
Sheesh, some interesting stuff there!
Evidently, there is more to the porn business than I thought.
Really, I always thought these “congressmen with hookers” stories were bogus.
Looks like I was wrong!
Interesting to see it through the eyes of a professional.
Not that I’m into porn of course 
RE ‘congressmen with hookers’ comment.
I had a girlfriend years back who was a cute little thing, about 4’ 11’’ and 110 pounds. She had this ‘country and western’ face and this demure attitude. A friend of her boss was a minor player in the Mafia. (Very minor.) He offered her a job making $1000 a night in the small town I lived in then. He wanted her to be a call girl and said that it would be safe, clean and discrete because he would set her up with local heads of the city government and banks. He told her that there would be lots of booze, all the drugs she wanted and nice, expensive clothing. She refused, though she told me that the offer was tempting because she only made $4.50 an hour sitting in a small construction office, taking calls.
I watched town meetings and knew many of the local power base and they all, aside from being really nasty looking, grim men and women, took a firm ‘family values’ base back then. (Unless some major development wanted to build on some ecologically sensitive swamp land, then protests by all ecology groups and neighbors were ignored as big bucks secretly exchanged hands and a condo went up.)
Some of the men looked like lecherous b******s. The girl was 32 but she looked like she was 24 and, with makeup, she could look like she was in her late teens. Pop her in a baby doll outfit and several of those old fat farts would pay big money to diddle her and have her call them ‘daddy.’
This kiddy porn thing is nothing new. We did a good business in baby doll costumes, films with actresses made up to look 16 and magazines showing explicit sex along the same theme. We carried no real kiddy porn, but a pretty good imitation of it. We kept getting requests for Swedish films because, apparently, over there the age of consent was like 14. They would make the girls up to look even younger, and sell the films world wide. We did not carry them. (We got offered some major bucks to order some secretly for certain customers. A reel – yes 8 mm and not video – sold normally for $20. We were offered $100. We did not do it.)
OK, Why a reel?
Dummy! A reel to reel of film is thousands of tiny, perfect pictures. With a minimum of equipment, one can make regular sized photographs out of each section. VCR tape requires expensive gear to do that, plus most such pictures are somewhat fuzzy. (Notice the home camera videos seen on TV from time to time? How ‘odd’ they look? Reel to reel film is still the best medium for movies.)
You buy one reel of kiddy porn, slap frames of it in the enlarger or whatever and you can churn out numerous full color glossies, which you can then sell to other lechers for a nice piece of change! (A friend of mine in high school took photography. He used to do that to his dad’s porno films and sell the glossies at school. He made a nice piece of pocket change.)
Thanks everyone, for sharing. Real neat stuff. I’m not into pron, neevr saw the use, but its really fun to tell my chat friends, who know me, what I’m reading about.
Knew nothing about it before this. Now I do. May be looking for a job, just to bother my parents.
One word, Medea’s Child: Spellchecker.
Speaking of ‘kiddy porn,’ we had a lot of good looking women in their middle ages dropping by to get flicks with young studs in them. I don’t recall the names of the stars, but I did notice back then that these women seemed always to select movies with the youngest looking guys – not those with the biggest equipment. A lot of these horny old gals had no rings on their fingers either. Most were pretty darn good looking. Sex, in whatever form, must keep them young.
Back then the late great John Holmes was popular because (A) of his magnificent schlong size and (B) because he did not treat his costars like crap in the films. A lot of men and women liked him for those attributes. So did I. You never saw him jerking and pulling at the girls, slapping them around, spitting in their mouths, yanking on their hair. He seemed like a real nice guy. (I don’t know how true the recent biography on him is.)
Ron Jeremy, the current producer, big-dick-star, was actually thinner and nicer. He was not as fat and hairy and selfish acting as he is today. He did a phone interview a couple of years ago for a radio station and the SOB was buzzed! I could tell because his rate of speech was way too fast and flippant. (John was bigger, by the way.)
Most of the real professional hookers who used to come into the store, by the way, were not fallen women, trapped into the sleazy profession of sex. These girls chose it, like it, make major bucks and enjoy it. Any of you guys out there deciding to ‘save’ one better make sure just which type you’ve got or forget it. A lot of these women like to keep a guy too. It makes them feel good. They’ll also drop him in a second if he screws up because there’s a whole crapload of ‘pretty boys’ out there just hoping to be kept by one of these girls.
There’s a whole lot of screwed up hookers too. These girls don’t make the $1000 a night with exclusive clients. They chose the profession but you have to be careful about them because they’ll tell you how much they love you as they steal your last dollar for drugs. I’ve met a lot of these beautiful girls, but you aren’t going to do anything for them until they’re ready.
I’ve met male hookers (homosexual), but, to me, they were just plain weird. It’s as if they did not fit very well into the lifestyle somehow.
I like the dancers. They’re pretty stable. Most don’t do the screwing-in-the-parking-lot thing, unless some customer happens to turn them really on. They like to party too. I used to love it when three or four would come into the shop and pick out stuff and sometimes model it for me. (If it was late, and their shift was over, they’d show up crocked. I’d let them stay after I locked up and they’d give me a private show, and I’d give them an employee discount on what they bought. :D.)
I worked in an adult bookstore for about a year…quit when I was told they wanted to make me a manager. I loved the people I worked with, I just hated the corporation that owned the store. Cindy, (or She-Devil, or Her Self) the big important regional manager, was an over-critical wench and I couldn’t stand the thought of reporting to her.
Prism’s covered pretty much everything; stock, clientele, what goes on in the arcade and preview rooms, etc. However, I couldn’t let anyone under 18 through the door. That meant if a couple came in carrying a baby, they had to be turned out. I also had to kick out the people who went trolling in the arcade. Fortunately, we had janitors, and I never had to the icky work.
It was interesting at first. When I told my family and friends where I’d gotten a job, the first thing they all asked me was, “Do you get a discount?” After a while, it was just work. I often worked with Al, who is gay and was (probably still is) living with the manager, Mike. When guys would pay to preview homosexual films, he’d tune into the movie they were watching on our remote TV thing. That was the first time I’d ever seen men having sex with each other, and I watched for a few minutes, just thinking, “Ouch. Not my ass.” He did that often enough, though, that it was just more background. Seeing nakednakednaked everyday got boring, and it pretty much killed my sex drive for about another year after I’d left the job.
Still, I gotta say, it was one my favorite jobs. Pay is better than most, and it was kind of a power rush sometimes, being this little short girl who got to tell these big scary guys to hit it when they ignored the signs that said, “Only ONE person per arcade booth.” 
Plus, I really loved Al…that was in 1995, and at that point, he had full-blown AIDS. He told me, “As long as I get to live to the year 2000, I don’t mind dying.” Haven’t talked to him in a while, but AFAIK, he’s still around. I should get ahold of him.
I did start getting requests for ‘things’ that my boss and I decided it would not be wise to carry because of the major potential for harm to the user by the user. (Besides, two of the items and the description of how they were used made us cringe and grab our crotches.)
Some of the ‘weird’ crowd - sadomasochistic - started asking for surgical probes (sounds) and urinary catheters, both straight and indwelling. We had to ask doctor customers what they were. A sound is a metal probe, somewhat thin but hard, with a blunt, tapered end. It is used on men and women who have urinary blockages. For the male (and you just got to know it was guys who asked) the probe is inserted into the penis until it hits the blockage. Then it is used to either penetrate it or judge how far down it is so something else can be used to open the passage.
It seems that some bright boy discovered the pleasures of sliding one in and out of himself and another discovered how great it is to poke one up there, strike a tuning fork and touch it to the end. The problems here are many. (1) the probe needs to be sterile for medical use or you risk major urethral infection, (2) one can penetrate the urethra and enter the spongy tissues of the penis and cause all sorts of problems, (3) one can enter the bladder and cause a bladder infection which can travel into the kidneys, (4) one can cause an infection to travel into the testes, (5) and one can poke a hole in the bladder itself. (Nice.)
The other thing is a rubber tube with an expandable collar at the business end, which is blunt and has openings. The other end is open and has an injection port, into which a needleless syringe is inserted and sterile water pushed to inflate the collar. (It inflates to about the size of a jawbreaker.) That locks the tube into the bladder so it can stay there as urine drains out. It also has to be sterile.
It turns out that people like poking these 12 to 18 inch rubber things up each other for fun. Most male patients in a hospital will gladly inform you that they are unpleasant to have and not pleasant at all to get. It also turns out that some other idiots decided that pouring wine in the tube and into the bladder (not a wise thing) supposedly gets them drunk. (I don’t know, though I kind of doubt it.) Someone else thought it was fun to fill the bladder with wine and then act like a human carafe and refill glasses from the tube in his pecker. (UGH!) 'Course, what they do not take into consideration here is that the human body produces urine constantly. So, the longer the wine is in the bladder, the more urine goes into it. (The bladder won’t hold much more than a cup an a half of fluid comfortably.)
We decided not to carry the stuff. We decided not to carry those clear, hospital grade, disposable enema bags either – for obvious reasons. (Hey, if they poke wine up their peckers, just what do you think they might do with their asses, which can hold a quart or two?)
Some people are just sick, sick, sick!
One guy asked me if we carried rubber pants – like for diapers, only clear. I said no. I did not ask why. I don’t think I wanted to know.
You know those water filled squeeze tubes kids play with? You can put your finger in the center and it feels, well, it feels ‘familiar’? The sides of the tube roll around? We carried those and they sold very well. I don’t think either kids got them or fingers were poked in the centers.
Sorry, world, for the lack of quality of previous post. One of these days I will learn to type, and then I will be dangerous.
Prism, as to your previous post, uk. Excrement and urine are two of the very few things I refuse to mix with sex.
Ew.
Sounds are not that creepy. Sure, you have to make sure they are sterile but that is pretty much the deal with anything that you would really want to put in your body. You can buy them in DC at one of the local leather stores. They are size graduated and cost about $200. They come with detailed sterilization instructions with and without an autoclave in addition to instructions for their safe usage. I have been tempted to buy a set and play with them but I think it would be too much work for a minimal amount of fun. I do know a lot of people who use them though. The electrical sounds (they produce a charge in the urethra) are extremely creepy as are the electrical butt plugs. There are even worse things out there than the relatively vanilla sounds.
I had been reading this thread since it started. I never had anything worth contributing as I never worked at a “smut shop.” I think it would be a lot of fun but possibly annoying since there are so many ordinances out there designed to keep kids out. I think kids should have access to porn and dildos and such. If they got off more often I think they would be significantly less irritating than they typically are.
HUGS!
Sqrl
I used to love it when some curious guy or girl would come in, make some selections, then wander over to the homosexual racks, study them hastily, then move on, pretending not to be interested. They’d pass that rack several times and when they finally would come up to buy their stuff, there in the middle of all of the heterosexual materials would be a gay or lesbian book. Just curious. They wanted to know how they did it.
When I got to those magazines, guys would often fidget and be looking out of the window, while women would look studiously preoccupied, a little embarrassed and have this somewhat nervous smile on.
I loved it! Especially these little dark haired country girls!
(Speaking of which, a good customer was a bouncer at a country and western bar and was a rather solid, if not massive guy, who knew his job well. He used to tell me that he preferred to toss out drunk guys any day than those drunk little C & W women. He said they fought too dirty.)
Prism, may I say on behalf of all the regular readers of this post, what I fine job you’ve done in responding to the OP.
I look forward to your daily entries like my cup of morning coffee. Informative, humorous, and very, very well written.
Bravo, sir! Bravo!
Thank you! Thank you! (More applause please.)
I did enjoy that job. Now and then one manages to stumble into some position which seems morose and mundane at first glance but turns into a rich slice of life.
My boss ordered in this ‘machine’ for the ladies. Remember, this was quite some time back. It was an electrical powered auto-f**k. It was a small electric motor with a pistoning, adjustable arm and 3 speeds (slow and sloppy, fast and frantic, and WHOOPEE)! On the end of the arm was a base for a rubber dildo and it could accept most commercial rubber dildos. It had a remote control switch on a cord and it plugged into a wall socket with a 3 prong, grounded plug. (Wise move.) It was chrome plated, designed to be easily taken apart and cleaned and weighed about 6 pounds.
I think you can guess it’s function.
It cost $120. Came with two dildos - regular and WOW! Plus a tube of jell and instructions.
It sold. A lesbian bought it. She had parties with it and came in to buy assorted, fresh dildos. My boss and I were stunned. We got another one. It sold also. A gay guy bought it. He came in to buy assorted dildos and lots of jell. We got one more. Another gay guy bought it. We carried one more, and this time a straight girl bought it – she returned it two months later ---- burned out. (She looked absolutely crushed!) We honored the warranty and replaced it and checked with the supply company to find out the problem. They wrote back to state that the machine had been over used while on high speed.
We stopped carrying them because the company folded, but we never looked at that one woman the same way again when she came in now and then. However, she looked happy.
This thread should be retitled, “Ask the smut shop employee.” WoW, there was some stuff in there I didn’t know (or maybe didn’t want to know ;))! Great job Prizmo.
Yeah, really, Prism. You clearly worked for your store longer than I did for mine, and in a better market as well. Des Moines has no shortage of clientele for the adult retail business, but the most interesting things we ever got in were the big two-footer dildos, and the vibrating “fleshlike” vaginas. Whip-its were (and are still, from what I understand) the most popular item we had for sale, and there was no one ‘type’ of person who bought them.
Occasionally we’d have actresses come in to sign video covers or magazines or whatever, but aside from that, there wasn’t much excitement. People’d come in, they’d leave, there were a few regulars. There was this really rotund guy, whom I only knew by the name “Bubbles”…he was a troll, bigtime. He was the only one we never kicked out, and I never quite figured out why. He hung around the store for hours, and he was annoying as shit, but we never busted him for trolling. There was the girl who came in for the first time with a bunch of friends to get stuff for a bachelorette party. She came in about once a week after that and rented gay flicks.
I have a question for ya, though, Prism, from one former smut shop employee to another. Did that job completely kill your sex drive for a while? I know it did mine. I’d come home and my husband (at that point, my fiance) would want sex, and I’d just wrinkle my nose and say, “Ick. I’ve had to look at sex all day. Can’t we just remember sex fondly and call it a night?” I mean, after a while, it was just like any other job, y’know? A person who works at McDonald’s probably doesn’t want to go home and have a burger for supper. Maybe it was just me. All the other employees bought up the store when new stock came in and they all rented movies almost nightly.
It was probably just me.
Well, I’m up a bit late tonight because a tooth abscessed and while I’m on medication for it, it seems to have made me somewhat sick.
Affect my sex drive? I think it did to a certain extent in that I kind of lost my curiosity over ‘odd’ things and did not get all steamed up over hot videos. In other words, I was young then, and I went from wanting to poke everything with knockers and a slit, to being more selective. I got real tired of the ‘messy’ videos and the ‘cum’ shot was just showing up and even today, I dislike that. I mean, I’d rather the guy dump his load inside because I certainly a not interested in viewing his sticky wad. And, they started blowing that sticky wad all over the place, which kind of grossed me out.
I still had an active sex life though, but I was not attached to any one person. For me, just plain, simple sex could be exciting, or using a few candles or a black light. I loved the way new, clean sheets and pillow cases turn bright purple in the glow. Plus it depended on my partner also. Some times after a long day selling smutty sex, all I wanted was a long, slow screw and both my partner and I just out of the shower, smelling of soap and squeaky clean. The purpose then was mainly touchy feely, no rubber dongs, no outfits, no glowing rubbers and no vibrators. Touching, to me anyhow, is very important.
Now, we did hire in some women from time to time. We had two shifts going. The younger women who chose to work there ranged from gorgeous to plain. Some seemed horny all of the time (I found out. :D) while others seemed bored by it all. Same with some guys we hired. Now, younger men seemed to love it, older men seemed to get a bit revitalized by it, but some just got bored.
We had this one great, pretty girl who worked for us and my boss knew that if you put a girl behind the desk at night, you get more guys in. He had me or another guy on the same shift, but we kept out of the way. Well, when we hit a slump because the economy dropped, the TV was full of HERPES commercials and some religious nuts were protesting convenience stores selling exposed Playboy and Cheri books, she saved our asses.
She started dressing up in our costumes. The effect was stunning! She would be behind the register in a jet black thingie like Madonna wears that is part corset and part bra, bikini bottoms (swim suit), stiletto heels, blue, green or impossible red fright wig and ‘Elvira - Mistress of the Dark’ make up, complete with brightly colored stick on nails and wearing our sexiest perfume.
They poured in then! She worked the afternoon to evening shift, and within days, our business was back up – but either my boss or e had to be there with her because guys got grabby. (We threw several out.) Plus, some would wait for her after work, so we would escort her to her car. (By then she was in normal clothing.)
One day she wore the complete Elvira costume, the next she would wear the leather bondage outfit, then a baby doll with pigtails and she liked to model the sexual jewelry we sold – the novelty stuff. Like she wore a tiny tin prick ring, a wristlet made of coupling couples, earrings of tiny men and women doing it in different positions, and a silver plated belt made up of nude women.
We made money when other stores were shutting down!
She did that for about two months, and the boss let her keep the outfits, when she had an offer to go work in some big time strip lounge in Fort Lauderdale. So, she went. I mean, we missed her tremendously, but she wound up making $1500 a night! She used all of those costumes in her act too! After her, we could not really find any girl who wanted to do that dress up, and those that considered it, just did not have the body nor the fun attitude.
Well, my tooth feels better. Time to close it up for now.
You know the big thing we have today about rape and date rape?
Well, we sold rape kits. That is break away blouses and pants, bra and panties. Some girls liked to get raped, or rather, play like they were being raped. Some men liked to pretend they were rapists. One of the more corny kits we could assemble was the ‘sleeping-young-fluff-and-the-nasty-cruel-burgler-man.’ Baby doll outfit – cheapest one (it would shred easily) tear away panties or cheap glitter panties (they tore easily also), black old style Lone Ranger mask, black cloth open faced ‘ski’ mask, (satin -figures doesn’t it)? followed by black satin men’s bikini briefs. Oh yeah, pistol shape squirtgun.
As accessories for that, among other tastes, we carried soft, felt ropes in short lengths and different colors.
A bunch of people used to buy the satin sheet sets, which while pretty and shiny, were not very comfortable at all. Satin is harsh stuff. I never did find any place which would produce a polyester or polyester and cotton blend which would look just as good, but feel a whole lot better. It was the color, the sheen and the hand or drape of the satin sheets that people went for.
Hell, I had them for some time on my waterbed; ruby red, then emerald green, bright blue and bright yellow. They were cool and ladies loved them but I found them too harsh. I switched to colored sheets of a cotton blend which felt a lot better. Now and then I would use the big top sheet of a satin set as sort of a ‘quilt’ when I was having ‘cozy company.’
Someone sold us a case of ‘dirty tea pots’, which were made in the form of a short guy, about 8 inches tall, bald, a big smile on his ugly mug, wearing a T-shirt, hands clasped behind his back. He was the ‘body’ of the tea pot. The spout was this enormous pecker in full erection poking out from in front of him. We priced those things at $20 each and sold out in a week. We only had 20, and the boss paid $15 for the whole case. We never could get any more because the guy who had sold them to us bought them at a garage sale for $5. (Quite a few women bought them. Maybe because of the 8 to 10 inch x 2 in ‘spout’? :D)