Sally Forth and the Fotomat

Actually, a Fotomat would be more like living inside a shed, since the absence of any indoor plumbing (or even a franchise-provided “Foto-vat” bucket) meant the lone employee would have to make a mad dash to the nearby shopping mall public restroom, only to be thwarted by an arriving customer or the vicious guard dog the owner put outside the Footman to ensure a full day’s work. Eventually, the rise of the one-hour photo service within those very malls put an end to having to wait a full day to find out your film had been lost in the mail, and so Fotomat (this is true) briefly moved into the videotape rental industry. Alas, the shack’s limited retail space meant each store could only hold 14 copies of Troop Beverly Hills and a single box of Sno-Caps, which the employee ate as their only means of sustenance as they stared out the window for hours on end, giving backstories to their only friends, the clouds.