Boxed in

I quickly parked and ran into McDonald’s, thankful that the Redbox line was only one person. I needed to return a movie, which takes all of two seconds, and I hate when three families, each with three kids are in line in front of me because, of course, each kid gets to sift through all the movies and select the one he or she wants. This takes 10 minutes each. That means 40 minutes later, I’m finally returning my movie.

The guy in front of me had two movies. He inserted his first one...waited, waited, waited. "Your DVD has been successfully returned." And then he inserted—or tried to—his second one. The thing wouldn’t go in. After multiple tries and a few sighs and whispered "what?"s from him, the screen said, "Sorry. This Redbox full. Please return your DVD at another Redbox location." I think the guy was actually relieved to see this because that way he knew I was no longer thinking the problem was a Redbox user error. That maybe his wrist wasn't positioned correctly as he tried to slide the movie in or something...

But anyways, the guy turned around and looked at me with his shoulders up and a sheepish grin. "Sorry," he said. Really? A Redbox can be full? And really? Right now? I was in a hurry! He said he guessed he’d just head over to Cub and return his other one there. My mental GPS went into action trying to figure out what my best options were. I wish I had thought to give him my movie and say "here, you return this! It’s your fault that Redbox is full! You just HAD to return Transformers!"

As I walked out, I found myself trying to envision what the inside of a Redbox looks like. Are the DVDs stacked horizontally? Vertically? And how exactly are they organized? Alpha order? Release date? How many boxes could a Redbox hold if a Redbox could hold boxes? I researched. I didn’t get all my answers, but here’s what I did discover...

A Redbox can hold 700 DVDs.

On average, one Redbox kiosk is opening each hour throughout the country.

Last month, more than 4 million people swiped their credit card through a Redbox. I was one of them.

Netflix may be in trouble.

You can purchase used movies at a Redbox for $7.

When your Redbox is full (holding 700 movies because the weather's nice and no one's inside watching a movie, especially on a week night), you can head to one of the 12,899 others.