Cinema Customer Scoop #4: 'Sir.'

Working at Cinemas have likely been detrimental to my health. Not from eating too much popcorn (can't stand more than a handful of the stuff), or from an overdose of caffeinated beverages, but from those people who seems to mindlessly wander in and expect nothing but my indebted servitude. I've likely lost a few blood vessels in my eyes due to the stress given by the amount of needless stupidity expressed by cinema clientele.

For example, I opened on a Saturday a few weeks back, and for some reason some of the front doors was left unlocked from the night before. Mind you, there you have to go though two sets of doors to enter into the lobby, so there is a small area between the sets of doors, forming a makeshift zoo enclosure. A few people entered into the lobby before we actually opened, and I told them to please wait outside as we were not yet open for business. The first group of people understood and promptly waited outside in front of the box office, sadly the subsequent people did not have the mental capacity to understand and follow such orders.

The next people who came found the first unlocked door, but did not take the time to check all of the doors in the second group, instantly coming to the conclusion that they were trapped. Simply going back out of the door they just walked though never even occurred to them, and they didn't bother to warn any of the poor souls coming in that they too would also be stuck. So, in the span of about five minutes a horde of idiots flooded the small space, only to have walk back outside once the doors were unlocked, as the window where you pay is outside of the lobby, not the other way around.

Upon the day of me writing this, a boy found a way of making my brain explode by doing something so stupid that made my brain nearly perform an illegal operation, and have to shut down. At my theater we have a machine that makes a particular frozen beverage, of which we have two flavors. But, due to the extreme cheapness of our general manager, we rarely (if ever) perform any maintenance on the machine (I wouldn't be surprised if he just took it out of the dumpster from another theater.) So, when it isn't producing soupy drinks, it feels the need to cause the beverage to expand inside of its cup. This has led to many people being given drinks which overflow and spill on the counter. No matter how many times you tell people that it will expand, and that they should drink it, they never listen.

But today was no different. Normally you can catch the expanding drinks before the flow out the top, and dump out the excess in the sink, but some get away. Normally people who get away with an expanding drink notice, and dump the excess in the trash, or down it in one gulp, yet not today. A young lad of Tom Sawyer age had his grandmother buy him a cherry frozen-drink, then went on his merry way. My friend Jerrod and I become occupied with filling out a crossword puzzle when I heard the word "sir" being said in the lobby. I looked up to see the little gremlin standing towards me, holding up his now overflowing drink in the air like the Olympic torch.

He just stood there stupidly holding up his drink, and saying "sir" as though I could enter in a fantastical code that could make his drink stop spilling and go back into his cup. Perhaps he was waiting for me to come around and take it from him, but I guess kids don't believe in counters, seeing as one was standing in between the two of us. In the time it would take me to venture over to where he was, I'm sure he would have found a way to spill the rest of his drink, then set the building on fire. After a few seconds I sighed and told him to bring his drink over to the counter, because apparently he didn't know such a thing was possible. Thankfully someone else took care of his mess as Jerrod and I both had to retreat to the scullery to both laugh hysterically, and become enraged.

The following emotions were so contradictive that my brain melted from exhaustion and had this article written by the Alejandroid 2.0.

Cinema Customer Scoop #3: If Only Phonics Came In Pill Form...

Evidently, the company which owns the theater where I am employed seems to believe that it's employees should both follow the USPS's code, and have the patience of Prometheus. Upon my arrival to work at three PM (Central Time), on Thursday the seventeenth day of March, in the year of our lord two-thousand and eleven I entered into the box office to find my coworker David. I was glad to find that I would not be suffering the wrath of brainless customers alone. Seeing as I would be there until after midnight, I needed all the help I could get. Though David only worked until five, I was later joined by Mattie later in the day, and we both learned to become greatly annoyed a incredibly irking mechincal problem.

To my dismay I discovered a horrible plague which had affected the electronic money machines throughout the course of the day. Apparently the building's internet service went down at some point during the night, an no one noticed or cared and it had gone on unresolved. Because of this, whenever you would enter in a credit card transaction, it would take eighteen seconds of your life away, and not give them back. This led to many a supreme awkward silence as you wait for the computer takes it's merry time printing out the ticket. As it took eighteen miserable seconds for this to transpire, a large portion of my life has been spent not talking to people while holding their debit cards.


But eventually the day came to an end, and I went home for a handful of hours, only to return to the theater at ten-thirty the next morning. To my great disappointment(and expectation) the internet had not been repaired, and card transactions still ate away a third of a minute of time away from me. According to one of the managers who called the company's corporate office telling them about the fact that the machines were acting so slowly, and likely was causing the company to lose money by simply accepting cards despite the fact that the information could not be sent out to the card companies the card made a purchase. The head office said they might get around to it on Tuesday. Showing that the company doesn't even care about earning money at this point, we decided to simply continue on possibly losing money.

Eventually the internet became operational again (thanks to some elves I guess) and I was able to send customers away quickly, instead of being forced to stare at their meaty faces longer than needed. Once again I was given Mattie as a cell-mate, but we also received several visitors, who would eventually crowd the box like a phone booth filled with 1920's college students. Around four thirty Bow came in to take away the cash monies from my drawer so I wouldn't have to work for the last half hour. But as she was pulling the cash from the drawer a rather portly and ape like man waddled up to the window. Sensing that something stupid was coming she rapidly said "Someone get them" many a time, but it was to no effect. It was bad enough when customers come up to the employee who is obviously busy with something that is not helping a customer, and demand satisfaction, but this was historically different.

The man came up to the window, looked down at Bow, read her nametag and decided for some unknown reason to shout out "Me Bow!" like a Neanderthal. This led to four grown men to shuffle out of site and laugh themselves stupid. After hearing the customer Bow's jaw tightened to an extent that it could make diamonds out of coal. A happy moment I will treasure forever.


After the not-Gieco cave man left, I still had about twenty-five minutes before my shift ended, and there was no money in my register. Unfortunately a line started to build up in front of Mattie, so I had to go back and work on my impoverished computer. Despite me constantly informing the line that I had no cash in the drawer, and was only able to process credit or debit cards they still came up clutching those pieces of green paper.

Eventually Bow decided to write a sign telling customers that I was only able to accept those wallet dwelling plastic planes. But this would require customers to actually read something, which as we know is one of their least developed skills. Hell most of them don't even know to put the money into the opening at the bottom of the window, a surprisingly large number of them press the money up to the glass, only to find that there is some kind of shield between me and them.

After the addition of the sign, I still had to constantly point and inform people that my line would not accept cash. Eventually another apish man came up to me and tried to give me cash money, to which I told him I would only accept cards. Apparently this was believed to be a verbal attack on him so he quipped at me with a mighty "Well, where does it say that?!" to which I pointed to the piece of paper which appeared to float above my left shoulder. So he countered with a crushing "Well you should get a bigger sign!" Granted the sign was not the largest size possible, customers still would not have read it anyways. Apparently reading is a chore to them. So, to assist them I place the note directly in front of my face, but apparently this was still not subtle enough for them. If people actually cared about reading, Hooked on Phonics would make a fortune off of nearly illiterate baby boomers.