Enjoy The Film

One of the sad facts of life about having an impossibly irritating job is how much you yearn to be back home away from it. And that is exactly what I felt today: even on a “good” day when I don’t fuck up, I am still surrounded by fucked-up situations I can’t wash off.

The detailed paper systems in a cinema are both mind-numbingly tedious and unfortunately necessary due to the brain power of the popcorn monkeys employed. A combination of autistic, full of B.O.and lazy losers who are interested in only when their next break is. Opening the cinema involves following operating procedures for the box office, retail, bar and floor. My first job is to see these completed by some of these staff. We’ve only just started and the fun has begun.

Due to the incompetents on shift the night before the cinema was a mess. Excuses poured in with staff leaving early or just refusing to work. How do these people get a job? So I’m sat with the operations manager listing the state of concessions (dirty surfaces, stock run down) when one of the multifunctionals comes in and releases a stream of bile about the poor state of the bar: “it’s fackin’ dirty…I ain’t fackin’ cleanin’ it….it’s a fackin’ joke”, and so on until it was suggested that continued swearing was not going to help her or the situation. Erm, you work here so you will clean the bar. Hell, if you are not in the mood for this then the best thing is to work yourself up into a frenzy and make yourself ill so you can go home.

It’s unclear how the building of a cinema could be so badly screwed up but this one was. There are over two thousand brand new seats, all of which have to be replaced. How it was possible to install illegal seats in the first place is remarkable. So we have these additional staff whose main responsibility is to stand in the screens to make sure they do not burn down; what they are told is to watch out for piracy. Hey, anyone can see a fire coming, we just need someone there to point it out. But that’s too easy so let’s tell them to stare at the customers instead, because, ya know, one of them might spark up a ciggie.

Watching a screen has the added benefit of, yeah, being paid to watch a movie, and they get the same pay grade as multifunctionals who work on tills. Now there’s a company policy deliberately designed to create conflict between staff. Now these guys have a simple job: check the screen is ok, check the sound is ok, check the customers are not filming the movie, and clean it afterwards. Instaed we have numb nuts who just lean on the rails and watch the movie. Hey there is a vertical green line down the screen! Duhh, why doesn’t she report it? If this particular worker actually worked at a quicker pace than a snail, she might get to a manager before the film finished.

Then we have a sound problem in a screen, the first screening of the day. Now this is where the fun really begins. Cue revolting customer, shouting so loud the manager can hear him in his office. “fix the sound or move the film into another cinema, NOW!!” “This is bloody ridiculous!!!” Yeah mate, we’ll just stop a movie in another screen and piss off all those customers too. Anyway, he’s told the lose the attitude or leave the cinema. Now there’s complaining and there’s asking for a fight. Luckily, this guy took the hint. But we were left with lots of customers leaving the screen – so that’s the bottom line screwed.

I walk away and look outside; it’s another beautiful day and I wish I was home.

Then

Tags: manager, multifunctional