Jun 20, 2007

No confidentiality clause.

I was reading a story about an Arizona man who decided his lovemaking with a dog was an appropriate Kodak moment. Instead of embracing the digital age the canine fucker shot his act on 35mm film and brought it in to a photo lab to be processed. As you can imagine the cops were notified and the man was arrested. No word about the therapy costs for the poor lab worker.

As I've posted about before I used to work in a one hour photo lab years ago. When I tell people this they usually don a smirk and ask something to the effect of "see anything racy?" Yes I saw a lot of nudity at that job. Were they naked pictures that I wanted to see? No. A vast majority of the pics that my eyes ran across ranged from 'meh' to 'oh for the love of everything that is good and holy someone please pour Drano directly into my eyes'.

To give you an idea of the usual naked subject matter that came across the developer most of it was ass shots of people mooning the camera, guys displaying their wieners, and unclothed people getting creative with various devices ranging from marital aids to kitchen utensils. Yes it was not a job for someone with a sensitive constitution.

A couple of times housewives would find a roll of film cleaning out their cars or luggage and drop it off stating that they have no idea what the intended pictures would be. Come to find out that their hubbies were on a business trip and decided to document their extra circular activities. I imagine those negatives became helpful when they made an appointment to see a divorce attorney.

What baffles me to this day is when a customer decided to pick up their photos and they had content involving nakedness they would always ask if we looked at them. When I replied yes the customer's jaw dropped open. Some people weren't too keen on the idea of me looking at their significant others or themselves trying out amateur porn, but I never could understand why they didn't ask that in the first place. Being someone who loves messing with stupid people I would always don a big grin and act all cheerful when ringing up their order. Usually the customer would get all red faced and angry, mostly at themselves for being so naive.

For those of you who haven't embraced the digital age I, Wiwille, have some advice for you. If you chose to take pictures that fit any of the criteria explained above and are too cheap to buy a digital camera, please use a Polaroid. This will make it easier on yourself and the mental health of the photo lab developers. For those of you who have taken in film to be developed and if one of the workers actually likes seeing you naked chances are there are copies of it floating around somewhere. Yes lonely people are doing all sorts of things to themselves to your image. Sleep tight.

"Ah, yes, divorce... from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man's genitals through his wallet." - Robin Williams

The forgotten victims: Wal-Mart photo processing clerks

2 comments:

Miss Ash said...

Haha so funny. I had photos of a very drunk male friend doing the "mangina" and recall the photolab woman smirking at me.

I also had almost naked photos of a friend on a trip. He went skinny dipping while someone stole his clothes. He had to run back to the cottage covering his bits..photos were taken. I was smart this time, and drove my friend to pick them up, asked her to just run in for me and grab them to save myself th embarassement haha.

Scott said...

interesting job... that must have been a good time... well you know, minus the really bad stuff