I teach an Introduction to Film Studies course at a local college here in Savannah, GA., and I rely on Netflix to save the day from time to time with its wide selection of films that help me support the day’s subject matter. I love the architecture of the site. Its ease of use. The categories which help me find film after film by genre, star, director, and so on. Nonetheless, as much as I love Netflix – I recently experienced a minor issue with Netflix concerning my queue.

Last week the inevitable happened to me – my Netflix queue was empty and what do you think happens when your Netflix queue is empty?

A – You get an email alert?
B – You receive a text message?
C – Perhaps, you receive an empty Netflix red film shipping envelop with a note reading – “your queue is now empty and all your outstanding films have been received by Netflix?”
D – None the the above.

Students the answers is D. Nothing happens. Now why is that? Don’t know – but that will be my mission this week to get as high on the food chain at Netflix and find out why there is no empty queue notification option. I suspect postage is behind it. ie – no films shipped – no postage fees incurred. This is just a theory based on nothing.

Anyway, a week goes by and I ask my wife if we’ve received any new films from Netflix and her answer is ‘no.’ Finding that to be strange and knowing Netflix’ reliability I go online and learn that my neighbors are not stealing my mail/films, but the dreaded empty queue syndrome has happened. If none of you have never experienced empty Netflix queue syndrome, let me tell you – it feels like buying a ticket and never getting a ride.