The Redbox

The wonderful movie cache known as Redbox located in your local superstore (such as Walmart, Meijer, Kroger, etc.) has recently provided an interesting experience for my wife and I.

Redbox is awesome because of it's convenience. Personally I live closer to Redbox Caches than I do to places like Blockbuster, so it tends to be faster than driving across town. My wife and I have taken pleasure in using the services of these randomly placed movie dispensers, especially for the price they allow you to rent new films. However, the speed and convenience of Redbox was at a loss last night.

My wife and I pull into "wally world" (aka. Walmart) to pick up some Snapple, Milk, Instant Chocolate Pudding and a movie from Redbox...Do not be disturbed by our selection of goodies--sometimes you just get cravings...When we finally got done picking up our snacks and beverage, we decided to go get our movie at one of the two Redbox machines at the entrances to Walmart. Little did we know that King Indecision and his heir to the throne were standing at the Redbox taking their fat time. I would just like to say that I am usually a patient person, but I had groceries, and my milk was getting warm. So my wife and I (after waiting 5 minutes) went to the other side of the store and tried to get our movie on DVD. We don't own a Blu-ray player, so renting the movie on Blu-ray is pointless. To our dismay, they only had Blu-ray copies of the movie left on this particular machine. Therefore, we went all the way back to the other side of the store to use the other machine. But, as I assume you have guessed, the royal family of indecision were still trying to pick a movie! I don't know if these people realize that they can go online and figure out what they want to rent, but there is no reason that any human being should take 20 minutes in front of the Redbox to decide what they want. Finally, after what seemed to be an eternity, the man and his son left (to my observation having rented absolutely nothing). This was probably one of the most frustrating moments for me. Did this man not know that other people might want to use the device--not wanting to cause conflict by asking them to hurry and make a decision?

Anyway, to cut an even longer story short...The DVD we wanted wasn't even in the Redbox machine and they didn't have Blu-rays either. So Erin and I went back to the other Redbox, rented a Blu-ray version of the movie, went to my parents house and finally watched the movie.

Has anyone else ever had a similar experience? I can only hope that for those of you who read this, you will be challenged to look up movies online at www.redbox.com before you go to the store and use their machine.