Goodbye Cherokee 16!

Cherokee 16 has a high turnover rate. According to my general manager, we get a new crew every year or so. People either move on to better jobs, go off to college, or simply get bored with the place. That being said, I think my time at the theater has come to an end.

I only took this job because I desperately needed gas money to get to school and back and they were the first people to call me back. I was hoping for a job at a restaurant or in retail, but I was in such need that I jumped on the first thing that took the bait. I never intended to stay more than a few months. Now, here I am, almost exactly a year later.

Now, generally, one year does not seem to hold this much weight. For goodness sake, I’ve been in college for nearly two years and that has flown by. However, at the theater, the dead end nature of my position is literally weighing on me.

There is no way I could live on the money I am making now, nor could I live on my own with an assistant manager’s salary. I don’t think success is measured by monetary gain, but at the same time, I do believe that financial security is pretty important when all you want to do is write. It seems to me, that poverty would kill any spirit I had for writing. If at all possible, I would like a position that would somehow set me on a path to a salary I can live on, not lavishly, just enough to get by. This cannot be found sitting aimlessly in a box office.

My only hesitation lies in the people of Cherokee 16. I get along well with the floor staff and the management. According to my peers, this is a rare find and it should be treasured. I obviously understand that long term this place is not a great place to be, but that won’t make leaving them behind any easier. At how many work places can you write a blog about the “dark side” of a business and expect the manager to read it and laugh? (Hi Sarah!) My guess is not many.

Then again, I am excited about moving onto something a bit more serious. While I will miss the reading time, Carl, and the endless sea of yellow cups, I am ready to get out and grow up. Time to pass the baton onto someone else.

Enjoy it while it lasts, its a good year.

Oil and Water- The Concession Stand

The concession stand is, without a doubt, the grossest of places. This fact is emphasized by the constant, greasy film that covers the tiles behind the counter. I have gone through three pairs of shoes since I started, each pair surrendering to the mixture of salt and oil that envelop them.

Yes, despite the endless efforts to sweep/wipe down/disinfect every surface in the stand, the immediate accumulation is inevitable. There is a mysterious source of filth that slowly and steadily leaks into the surrounding area. It is frustrating.

However, yesterday, I believe my coworkers and I found the source of it all.

It was an incredibly slow day, “Horton Hears a Who” has been out for awhile and “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” is a bit too much for the Towne Lake crowd. Out of sheer boredom, and because I want next weekend off, we pulled out the popcorn popper to clean the side counters and the wall behind the glass. There on the floor was a giant, yellow, gelatinous mass. I have no idea how long it has been there, but I had heard rumors of a “Carl,” a glob that lived beneath the counters.

Was this the mysterious being that excreted filth all over my clean floor? Maybe.

Normally, I would simply push the popper back in place and forget about the blob, but as I said before, I really wanted next weekend off. Therefore, I grabbed a pair of gloves and some paper towels and set to work. Several laden, torn paper towels later, I decided I needed more equipment.

“Hey, Travis. Bring me the tongs, a scrapper, and a dustpan!” I said, peaking my head around the popper.

These items were quickly brought to me, and again I went on the offensive. I jabbed with the tongs, and, one small pinch at a time, I killed Carl. Yes, the monster Grendel was dead. Travis did not share in my enthusiastic celebration, consisting of ceremoniously dumping the glob into the nearest trash can within sight of an assistant manager, but I could not have been happier.

Yesterday, my friends, I earned my $6.00 an hour.

Ball and Chain- Door

Before I begin I do believe it is necessary to define “door.” One of the most disheartening sounds in the world is a manager yelling, “You are on door!” Essentially, it consists of being chained to/standing in front of a raising box for up to nine hours tearing tickets and telling people which way to go to view their movie. “Hi, welco- ok thanks- this will be on YOUR left.” (Yes the emphasis is completely necessary or mass confusion is inevitable.) It is the most boring job available and it is generally accepted that managment only place the most annoying and incompetent of employees on door.  To make matters worse, there is a large digital clock suspended approxiamately three feet above your head on the opposing wall. It is universally known as the torture clock, and it is almost impossible to ignore it. Rather you are left counting down.

“Four, three, two, one! Awesome. Only 254 more countdowns before I get to go home!”

Luckily, we have developped a system of games and time-suckers over the years. Here survives the only written catalog.

The first is that most simple of games “try-to-guess-what-they-are-watching-by-common-stereotyping.” This is best enjoyed when someone in the concession stand is in on the game. The secret lies not in observing the individual patrons, but rather by indentifying their groups and singling out the leader of that group. The most outspoken member is generally the one who chooses the movie. Children are always the deciding factor. If the child is a boy, you can bet they are seeing “Horton Hears a Who.” Girls are a little trickier. They could be seeing “Horton Hears a Who”, but “Nim’s Island” is also a possibility. I have observed that if the girl is accompanied by her mother they are most likely going to “Nim’s Island.” The moms love Gerard Butler.

The second game can only happen between the hours of 4-5 PM or 7-8 PM, during the afternoon and evening rushes. At this point, a line developes around your raised box as people are forced to hand you every single ticket and  you are forced to make eye-contact with and smile at everyone who approaches. They swiftly become irritated and hurried. They have no time to listen to you as you give them bogus directions.

“Hi, thank you! This will be up!”

“Welcome. This will be to HER lower left.”

“Yes, it is a nice day. Thank you. This will be backwards.”

etc.

 

 

Moody Solitude Part III

Week Three: “Everything is Illuminated”

I broke my resolution. I watched the movie first. I could not help it. There I was wandering the aisles in Blockbuster, mindlessly scanning the titles, when the cover caught my eye. It was Elijah Wood wearing a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, each lens covered in clouds. Behind him, there were sunflowers, a solid wallpaper of sunflowers in full bloom.

I’m sure there are many wonderful movies out there that I have missed because their covers were less than intriguing. I don’t know if that is the result of an overly professional marketing team or if the concept is too lofty for anything other than a black-and-white picture of the principal character and a blurb from the “New York Times.” (“The best action/romance/drama I’ve seen this week!”)

The movie was…fine. I think. To be honest, I do not remember watching most of it. All I did remember was the ending, which seemed inevitable and rushed all at the same time. This I will not discuss any more, but rather, leave it to you, the reader, to determine whether or not I have decent taste in movies. Have fun.

Several months after indulging in the film, I was wandering the aisles in Borders, mindlessly scanning the titles when a cover caught my eye. It was a bright blue, darker than cyan and a little lighter than royal blue. Written across the front cover, the back cover, and the spine were yellow sentences, if you could call them that. They were more like incoherent phrases apparently copied my a kindergartener. The title was barely distinguishable from the rest of the writing, but it was there, in larger print: “Everything is Illuminated.”

 This was approxiametely three hours before my shift began.

Seven hours later, amid the nine o’clock stragglers, I finished it, torn between extreme depression and story-telling envy. I have also resolved that all reading on the clock should be purely academic and minimally engrossing. “Everything is Illuminated” did not aid my already shaken customer service skills.

“I would like two adults and one child to 21.”

“Mmhmm”

“Miss?”

“Hold on one second. I’m almost through with this paragraph.”

Luckily, the assistant manager on duty is a comparative literature major. God bless him!

Bargaining Chips

Amid the ranks of Cherokee 16’s floor staff there is an established hierarchy.

At the bottom of the food chain there are the newcomers, the newbies, the freshman, or whatever else you want to call them. They are marked by their silence. They have come to work to simply work. They do their jobs, admittedly well, and then return to their outside lives. It’s a wonder that they stick around past the first few weeks. For, as they are attempting to impress the management, the rest of the staff is simply trying to get them to say something that is in no way related to popcorn, oil, soda syrup, or line length. Their resistance is usually strong and stubborn, lasting approximately a month.

When their first month has come and gone, however, I do believe that the newcomer realizes that he has, indeed, been sucked into the movie theaters schedule. His weekends are consumed with nine hour shifts and midnight movie premiers. His holidays are bargaining chips.

“If you work Thanksgiving, you can have Christmas Eve off.”

“Great. What about Christmas Day?”

“Yea right. You already told me you’re in town.”

“But, I have family coming in!”

Then the general manager stares at the newcomer, a sad smile stretching across his face. “We all do, son. We all do.”

At some point down the line, he will become resigned his simpler existence. He will go to school. He will work. He will sleep. No longer will he indulge in weekend parties or late-night movie-marathons. There is not time to enjoy the free movies that come with the job. He will wake up, survive, and go back to sleep. The intelligent ones dream of their college days, when freedom will be presented to them in the form of a dorm key and student loan. The others, myself included, will go to school close to home and spend their days prattling away about their perpetual job search that has gone nowhere. This is how life works for the minimum wage worker.

Now, get back to work. This place needs to look decent before the Fourth of July.

The Attention Span Narrows

Last week the one boss who found me entertaining left. She now has her own theater somewhere in Southern Georgia, where her position as general manager (GM) will give her just enough of a raise to break even while paying rent. Luckily, if she proves herself a worthy manager at this dollar theater, she will be promoted to a theater with six auditoriums. From there, she would move onto eight, twelve, sixteen, and then, eventually, she will be arrive at the 20 auditorium theater, having reached her career’s zenith before reaching forty. Oh, the ambition!

Apparently, this dream is not that uncommon in the ranks of Georgia Theater Company’s middle managers. Also, most of them achieve some level of success within the company before ultimately quitting. Upper-class management is an obtainable goal. My departing manager might actually have a chance.

This is one of the many things I must consider before taking the offered promotion upstairs.

Do I want to be a manager? I feel as though I am being prepped for it, and an assistant manager who is approximately my age has said that he went through the same process and passed the same silent tests that the general manager now seems to be casting in my direction.

Ultimately, I do not want to stay at this company for any extended period of time. I have worked there for nearly a year now, and while the job is relatively easy and my coworkers tolerable, I am convinced that if I took a semi-permanent position there I would end a suicide risk. The boss who is leaving, let’s call her Minnie, might have very little in sight for the years past her 35th birthday, but I cannot resign myself to 15 years of sweeping popcorn and yelling at teenagers. I enjoy manipulating the English language, and coming up with new ways to curse the floor staff would not be satisfying for any length of time.

That, and if I wanted to leave, it would be a much more involved process. As it stands, I sit ready to cut my ties when the moment presents itself. If I were to play along with the GM’s expectations, I think I would find the adhesive a bit too strong.

Moody Solitude Part II

Week Two: “Othello”

British Literature, while interesting, is notorious for long, boring reads. Yes, I am aware of the contradiction in that sentence. I would like to read John Milton…in theory. Sadly, “Yes, that would be fun and would assist in my quest to become more cultured” becomes “Oh my word, please say this is the last poem!” while I am trapped in the box office. The musings of Satan and his various counterparts is less than interesting in normal circumstances, much less while already bored out of my mind in the box.

Luckily, there was a brief, treasured break in the monotony that is epic poetry. This descended from Heaven in the form of a small, navy blue book: “Othello.” How I treasured those hours of Shakespearean sense and escape. The musings of the Machiavellian Iago beat out the ramblings of Machiavellian Satan any day. My spirits soured (somewhat disturbingly) through the monologues, deception, and murder contained within the folio’s binding.

The customers who were lucky enough to interrupt my Shakespearean euphoria were greeted with a buoyant “Hi!” The ESPECIALLY lucky ones were subject to my attempt at Iago-esque one-liners.

“O, beware, my lord, of jealousy! It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock The meat it feeds on.”

was made to compete with:

“Enjoy ‘Jumper’ for the somewhat mediocre escape only lasts one hour and forty-eight minutes.”

Having attempted this, I plunged into depression for the remainder of my shift. Shakespeare I am not.

Moody Solitude

Nine times out of ten I am scheduled to run the box office. I believe I have covered the solitary confinement issue in a previous post, but there is always one way to mix up the lonely experience that is a nine-hour box shift.

We are allowed to read on the clock. This is the primary reason that I have put up with this job for nearly a year. On the clock I have been able to cover everything from “Othello” to “The Devil Wears Prada” in the last three months. However, there is an unfortunate side effect.

CAUTION: Reading on the clock may cause drowsiness, irrational happiness, or unnecessary gloom. What follows in the next couple of posts is the documentation of my book selections from the last month and the resulting mood swings.

Week One: “Atonement” by Ian McEwan

I follow a rigid guideline when attending a movie. First, you must find out if the movie is based on a novel, short story, or newspaper article. “No?” Enjoy the movie. “Yes?” You have reading to do. This aids me in after-movie discussion, allowing me to speak with some authority and pass myself off as an expert analyst. Also, if applicable, I can genuinely rant on and on with my fellow English majors about how “The book was so much better than the movie!” I value integrity in all things, and if reading “Lord of the Rings” takes me so long I have to wait for the second one to come out on DVD, then I will read and wait.

Anyway, it was this thought process that brought me to purchase “Atonement.” It was ruffly 350 pages long, and therefore, I planned on finishing it in two-three days, depending on the author’s skill and my tolerance level. I sat beside the computer, made myself comfortable by sitting Indian-style in the provided office chair, and prepared myself for an uneventful, customer-free afternoon. Thursdays are sparsely populated.

The first third of the book was terribly engrossing. I enjoyed the analysis and philosophy of the eleven-year-old character Briony. She was eery and thought provoking, and Ian McEwan interested me in everything from her dollhouse to her sentimental plays. Meanwhile, he maintained an almost playful, incredibly insightful tone that continued all the way through the climactic confrontation at the end of the first act.

I was interrupted once by an elderly gentlemen, who bought a ticket for “No Country for Old Men.” I commended his choice, ran the transaction, and repositioned myself on my chair.

The second act was not as engrossing, partly because I hate war books and partly because Briony had apparently given up on her melodramatic stipulations. Yet, I would not allow Briony to grow up in my mind, let alone attend to World War II soldiers. Therefore, all I could picture in my head was an eleven-year-old running around scouring bedpans and speaking French to random injured soldiers. She was too young for the occupation, and the resulting distress was damaging to the book’s appeal. Overall, the story lost the wit that I had so enjoyed in the first act.

There were several customers that interrupted this section. I was reading slower, and four o’clock is THE time to watch a movie with your kids.

Act three….I do not think it would be morally right for me to talk too much about act three and it’s aftermath. Just allow me to say that the members of the nine o’clock rush probably thought I was suicidal, or at the very least, that I had just lost my favorite pet to Towne Lake Parkway.

The Occasional Seat – Ushering

There is a sinking feeling that hits every time the auditorium door opens. With each person that steps through the threshold into the lobby, it grows more intense. It is only alleviated when that one person looks at you and smiles before promptly discarding their popcorn tub filled with their Junior Mints and Twizzlers into the giant trashcan that seems attached to your right arm. Yes, they are the godsends, the angels. However, that one bright spot is but a wave in a sea of gloom. For, as soon as the theater has emptied, it is your responsibility to venture into the abyss that is waiting just beyond the railing.

After inserting the light key, the first thing that hits you is the sheer volume of cups. They are everywhere. That familiar orange, large cup highlights the break between each seat, and you are left wondering: how much effort does it take to carry your cup down the stairs to the trashcan below? No, most seem to be too busy discussing the wonderful way James McAvoy’s hair hits his forehead or quoting the funniest lines from “27 Dresses”. No, you as the usher, are to learn how to stack at least 7 cups on your arms, balanced between your elbows, shoulder blades, forehead, or whatever appendage happens to be present and capable. When you have been working for a few months, you become really talented.

Of course, the cups are only a small part of the liter flooding your once pristine auditorium. Wedged between the seat and the armrest, lying on the stairs, and balanced on the hand railings are kids packs, Airheads, and that most villainous of candy: Sour Patch Kids. These multicolored gobs of sugary goo are sure to stick everywhere. First, they are lodged between the cupholder and the chair attached to it. Then, they make their way onto the floor as you vigorously swing your broom at the evil lump. This can now go one of two ways. Either the Sour Patch Kid will end up decorating your uniform or it will become a permanent broom accessory. Consequently, when you have been employed as an usher for a few months, you will be asked to sign a petition asking for the replacement of Sour Patch Kids with something a bit easier to clean.

Ah yes, now that the cups are cleared and the candy disguised within the broom bristles it is time to move onto the primary purpose of your job. It is time for you to run to the back of the theater and slowing make your way down, zig-zagging between rows as you go. Now, you are sweeping the endless mounds of popcorn. It seems odd to me that a theater filled with mostly grown adults would know how to transport one handful of popcorn to their faces without dumping it all over themselves and the surrounding area.  Yet, this clumsiness does not account for the large piles of popcorn that appear every three or four rows. Perhaps these pockets of filth are left by a dissatisfied customer. Perhaps, an audience member was so scared in their horror film that they accidentally threw their tub in the air. Perhaps, two feuding siblings decided to tug and pull at the tub of popcorn, instead of sharing, and the container exploded.

At the end of the day, it might surprise you that suburban adults can be so irresponsibly messy. However, as your shift comes to an end at 10:30 PM,  you must realize that this is what you are paid to do. There is no logic behind it, and if we haven’t figured out how to stop the perpetual filth by now we most likely will never solve that problem. Rather, I suggest you enjoy your $5.75 an hour. You have surely earned it, my friend!

Deep Reflection and Thursdays

I generally work every Thursday. From the hours of 3:15 PM and 11:30 PM, I am locked away in the box office. Surrounding me are three whitewashed walls and a tinted glass window. In the six foot void between the two sits my chair, a computer, and a jutting microphone. These are my instruments of torture, my slow and painful death.

First, there is the chair. It’s more of a stool with a plank serving as the “back.” This plank is neither padded or stable. The slightest amount of pressure applied to it sends the whole chair flying backwards, and it is difficult to serve a customer while lounging Roman-style.

What is, perhaps, more painful than anything else is the computer. It taunts. There are a total of two pages to stare at. The first is twelve solid, gray blocks, each displaying one of the sixteen odd movies the theater is playing that week. On the second, there are approximately six blocks, each one an R rated feature, each promising a terrible delay and almost certain embarrassment as I am forced to ask for the ID of everyone appearing under 30.

Of course, there is the occasional interruption. My manager’s sometimes walk in, but their visits consist of thirty-second niceties before thrusting a times list or a schedule at me. They inquire about my school or my sister, but the look on their faces is blank and gray. For they, like myself, have been trapped inside the box that is the back office for longer than I have, and talking to another human after several hours of solitude is awkward.

“Hey, Megan.”

“Oh, hey ___.”

“How are you doing today? How was school?”

I stare mindlessly at the parking lot. “Fine.”

“Good. Here are the times for tonight.”

“Thanks.”

No, socialization is entirely confined to opening and the weekend. Then we are fresh, or at least busy. Our mouths are well lubricated and running nonstop. Between customers there is no moment to catch your breath. Rather, you continually plead with the snake-like line creeping around the building. “I can take the next person in line! Over here! In the middle! I am still open!” In the brief span between the seven o’clock and eight o’clock movies, our brains are already running full force and chatting becomes fun, relaxing, and necessary.

This is not true of Thursdays. No, Thursdays are the days of quiet reflection and endless contemplation. They are the days of small children viewing “Alvin and the Chipmunks” with their grandparents. They are the days when the popcorn goes stale, and that which is lucky enough to be served is the batch we made at three o’clock that afternoon, cleverly disguised by a teaspoon of salt and warm bags. They are the days when the cashier counts the gray boxes on the computer screen.