#755: You’re A (CD) Loser, Baby

GETTING MORE TALE #755:  You’re A (CD) Loser, Baby

 

I was never surprised but often disappointed with how customers treated their music.  Scratched up CDs were par for the course.  Also broken discs, scuffed or chipped, with beads of dried beer.  But what about empty CD cases?  Anybody ever try to sell those?  Of course!

We saw lots of people coming in with bags of CDs to trade, only for me to go through them and find empty cases in the bag.  Multiple empty cases.  The seller didn’t even know they were empty.  They were always surprised.  I couldn’t fathom how this happened!

I mean, I get it – people leave a CD in a player or changer, forget about it, and lose track of it.  I had a Spiderman: Homecoming DVD in my laptop for over six months.  I understand that’s one way these things get misplaced.  I just couldn’t understand the why, so frequently.  CDs were expensive.  Some still are.  People freak out over a lost pair of cheap sunglasses but not their music?

Now, loaning a CD out to a friend and never getting it back is a whole other thing.  That happens.  The only solution is finding new friends.  But why loan it without the case in the first place?  I still don’t get it.

I very briefly dated a girl who had a habit of losing her music.  She had all the discs in the wrong cases.  If you wanted to listen to Sloan, she had to remember which case she put it in last time.  Again, I don’t get how this habit forms.  She didn’t seem to know either.  All I can tell you is that her copy of Sloan’s 4 Nights at the Palais Royale had one correct disc, and one completely different disc.

People would bring that kind of crap into the store to sell, and then wonder why I passed on a CD set that only had one correct CD.  “Come on man, somebody will buy it,” was a common customer response.  Maybe, but not in this store!

The only time I can remember losing a CD of my own, it was the whole thing, case and all.  And it was because it slid under a car seat.  Unlike most of the masses, I refused to house my CDs in one of those portable CD wallets.  If the CD was coming with me, so was the case (or at least a case of some kind, if the original was fragile or collectable).  When I realized I was missing something from my collection, I remembered I last saw it in the car.  There it was, under the seat, safe and unscratched in its case.

People like me are a small minority.  At least in this town, most people didn’t value or take care of their music.  When I’d see a bunch of empty cases come in from a customer’s collection all I could do was shake my head.  I couldn’t feel sorry for someone like that.

Take pride in your music collection, people!

 

9 comments

  1. I have lost CDs through loaning to folks (case too), but my pal is notorious for having CDs housed in the wrong case… a habit formed from listening to music in his car and throwing the discs in the case that he’s taking a disc out from. Should be simple to track, but not if you rotate, I guess. I know this cause he loaned me some discs and I had maybe 2 of 5 that actually had the correct CD.

    I also picked Tool’s Lateralus from his glove compartment to listen to on a jaunt, but there was a Queens of the Stone Age CD in there. Which was fine. But man, I don’t envy the task of sorting through the collection!

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  2. Couldn’t agree more. Didn’t their parents teach them to take care of their things? For some reason physical media seems to be a target for being mistreates by otherwise responsible people. It’s a disgrace if you ask me. If they world was full of people like us, every used CD ever would be Near Mint condition or better. What a world that would be!

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  3. I get it! I cringe when I see someone pick the CD up wrong or try to pull it out of the case without having your finger in the middle so it doesn’t bow out and snap. The scratches bug the crap out of me. I never understood why you don’t keep them in their cases. My OCD is kicking in, I better stop ranting.

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  5. I must be the odd one in the world because I get more upset when something happens to my music than a cheap pair of sunglasses. What really irks me is when something happens to music I can’t replace. Once, I taped a programme about The Who on the radio only for the cassette to be eaten in the machine 11 years later. I was not a happy camper.

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  6. In college I lent one of my classmate my entire AC/DC CD collection. The week he had them badly stressed me out. It was my fault though because I guess I wanted to show off that I had them all. Thankfully it all came back safe but I’ve never loan out any music since.

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