Behind The Pawn Counter

So far in my pawn shop career I have been working at the cash advance counter, but now I am transitioning over to the pawn counter. As far as I am concerned, this is where all the magic happens. I didn't end up spending much time behind the pawn counter today, but what precious little time I did have there was rich with quality.

When someone comes to the pawn counter, they can do either one of two things : sell their personal belongings or put them up as collateral for a high-interest loan we offer them. As one problem we often come across is that many people never return to pay back their loan and regain their personal belongings (just taking the money they received and calling that good enough), we have to safeguard ourselves from the risk of never having the loan repaid by only offering a fraction of what the item is worth based off original purchase price, depreciated value, and current condition. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't understand this necessary precaution or think their things are worth much more than they actually are. For example, one woman came into the store and was trying to pawn a white Guess purse that was accented with western style seams and patches of leopard print, a men's watch, a digital camera, and a charger for AA batteries. She wanted several hundred dollars for these few items. We offered her a fifty dollar loan, and that was even being generous. She was not happy. She kept giving us these "don't victimize me" eyes and insisting that her things were very expensive and worth much more than fifty dollars. To help decide on how much to offer on pawn transactions, we quickly price items online, but our research proved that the woman either didn't know what she was talking about or purposefully lying to us. She eventually accepted our loan offer when she realized we wouldn't budge and proceeded to tell us how much she hated her boyfriend because he was a liar. Apparently, he promised her several hundred dollars, saying she needed to wait for the money until the check cleared his bank. Needless to say, she never got the money. She kept bouncing around topics from asking us if we were hiring to telling us how she was moving to another town but she kept returning to how much she hated her boyfriend and kept growing angrier with each mention of him and his habitual lying. When she signed her contract for the loan and got her money, her mood switched and she began telling us of all the errands she needed to run--including getting anti-freeze for her car, going to the bank, and getting something to eat at McDonald's.

There was a man (we will call him Man #1) who brought in an air conditioner and set it on our counter. Not even a minute later, a second man (we will call him Man #2) came into the store with two friends, each of which were holding a television in his arms. After a moment, Man #2 looked at the air conditioner, set his TV down, moved closer to the air conditioner and began carefully looking it over, and declared "That's my air conditioner!" He very loudly announced to us, Man #1, and the rest of our customers how he had set it outside his house next to his bed (I think he was moving, otherwise I have no idea why his bed would be outside on the front lawn) and then how it had disappeared. Man #1 didn't seem too concerned about this and told us how he had obtained the air conditioner after seeing a man walking down the street with it. This man, Man #1 said, set it down and left it behind because he was tired of carrying it. Man #2 emphatically called that a lie and repeated his story of it being his and how it had disappeared. At this point, my co-worker asked them to go outside and discuss the matter in a civil manner. The two men went outside and very animatedly discussed the issue, during which time one of Man #2's friends began to provide details about the air conditioner--that it only turned on with the remote because the button was broken and wouldn't work "no matter how hard you push it" (he demonstrated this futile button push even though it wasn't plugged in) and that they had recently dropped a stick of incense down into the unit and that we would find it if we opened it up. Man #1 ended up deserting the air conditioner and Man #2 reclaimed it when he left the store.

I was very disappointed to have missed this, but I was in the back room straightening up a shelf of several hundred DVDs that had grown into a disorganized mess when this incident occurred. Apparently, there was a woman and her young child waiting in line for the pawn counter when her ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend showed up. I was told it started off as a somewhat restrained exchange of rude comments but that the trio--and the poor child caught in the middle of it all--was quickly asked to leave the store when they began yelling at each other from across the store.

This is why I got this job. Well, that and the employee discount.