I got a frantic phone call this morning from the projectionist; today's duty manger had called in sick and both the senior managers were away for the weekend. This meant that I had to go in as no one else had keys to the safe and thus access to the float and the keys to the tills. The staff had managed to struggle through the morning's kids show with the change in their pockets.
Not a good start to my day but things were to go slowly downhill.
Incident 1: Two kids having just sat through the crap known as The Cat in the Hat (great book, poor movie) decide to let off a stink bomb in the auditorium. Thanks a lot guys, goddam bloody kids.
Incident 2: Yet another staff member goes off sick leaving us further understaffed.
Incident 3: A customer enquiry about The Passion of the Christ.
- Are you showing the Mel Gibson Jesus film?
- No not yet I'm afraid. It starts next friday on the 9th of April.
- I've heard it's quite violent.
- Well yes it is very violent. There are graphic scenes of torture and then there is the crucifiction. (Best to be totally honest with customers about violence as they are likely to complain. I can forsee us getting lots of complaints about the violence by customers who will blame us even though we didn't make the film and it was they who made the informed decision to come and bloody watch it.)
- There's those people that have complained about it haven't they. (I think she is still talking about the violence but oh no.) What do you call them? Oh yeah the Jews.
Incident 4: Even though the system doesn't allow it to happen we oversell Screen 2. We have customers that have booked tickets turning up to find we have no seats for them. Fucking hell. Much apologies, refunds and complimentary tickets later we look through the ticket stubs to find four tickets for an earlier show. Should have bloody thought this would happen as I knew we were four tickets down for that show. Had the cashier made a mistake and sold customers tickets for the wrong show? Later as I watch the customers leave at the end of the show I notice four customers that I knew for certain had bought tickets for the earlier show as it was a ticket sale I had done myself. They had just decided to come for the later one instead, unfortunately this just fucks us up if we are busy, but it is hard to stop them doing it.
Incident 5: To cap off the day from hell the fucking electricity goes out halfway through the last shows of the day. A split second of freaking out before I realise that I can still here the sounds of the movies playing. Luckily the projection boxes are on separate circuits from the rest of the cinema so the customers are none the wiser. After scrabbling around a bit in the dark with torches the projectionist and I are able to sort the problem.
End of the day now and I'm typing this just before I leave for home. Roll on tomorrow and further chaos.
Labels: cinema
