In last Thursday's post, I had succeeded in attaining the level of Assistant Manager of the Mayan Theatre. The only thing I had to do was wait for either the Manager of the Mayan or the Esquire to move somewhere else. Little did I know that things would remain stagnant for the next ten months.
Not that remaining in one place was a bad thing. I still enjoyed being in the position of Assistant Manager and had no intention of going anywhere else to look for a job. But the difference in pay between being an Assistant Manager and a House Manager was staggering. There was a house in my neighborhood that had been up for sale for the longest time. It had an asking price of about $37,000. (This was in 1991.) The one thing I liked about it was that there was no grass in the yard. It was all rocks, so that meant I would never have to mow it. But I certainly wouldn't be qualify for a mortgage based on my hourly rate.
We did have a change in command, but it was the type that did not result in everyone moving up. In fact, a couple of people had to take a move down. During a regular management meeting, Maud announced that Mynd was going to move to Houston and be the House Manger at the Landmark theatre there. There was only one Landmark theatre in that city. Then Maud announced that she was being removed from her duties as District Manager and would be the City Manager. She didn't say what happened first, whether she was told she was going to have to step down or if Mynd decided to move to Texas. Maud started acting like she was going to cry when she was trying to tell us that her change in position was only temporary and that she expected to be a District Manager again. I got the idea that Maud's position was taken away from her and she was told she would have to transfer to another city, like Houston, where there was an opening. Mynd likely decided to step down so that Maud could remain in Denver.
The only problem with this was that Maud seemed to think that the two theatres in Denver were pretty much self sufficient and didn't need her help. She just continued to act like a District Manager that had no responsibilities. Very often, when we needed something, we couldn't get a hold of her. Of course, we knew the reason we couldn't get a hold of her. She had started up a relationship with Mr. C, the manager of the Esquire. We have no idea how that even started. It was funny when she later tried to chastise the Esquire's Assistant Manager, who had recently started up a relationship with one of the employees. It became an issue because that employee was a candidate to be the next Chief of Staff.
And what surprised me was how they went about figuring out who that Chief of Staff was going to be. They actually held interviews with all those who were interested in the position. I thought, "Wait, when I became Chief of Staff, it wasn't this big a deal. Why is this such a major production now?" In fact, the Mayan had trouble finding someone who wanted to do it a few months earlier. That's how I wound up with the job. On top of that, even though I had to interview for Assistant Manager AND be told during the interview that I wasn't ready, they were offering the position to any returning employee who happened to walk through the door.
Meanwhile, Mr. M and I had a problem with staffing at the Mayan. It seemed like we were always getting slogged with our underperforming employees on our shifts. It was very hard to run the theatre when you don't have at least one person capable of picking up the slack. We soon discovered why. Cheld was in charge of the scheduling. She would always put our best people on her shifts. What would happen is if an employee rubbed her the wrong way, she just didn't want to work with them. It was funny how she couldn't get along with the staff members who happened to be below par.
One day, Mr. M told me that Maud and Ald, who had returned to being our District Manager, were discussing the possibility of having me move out to Newport Beach, CA to be the Manager of a single-screen theatre. Apparently, the current Manager had messed up a few things and they wanted to replace him ASAP. Mr. M said they were looking to me, but there was one thing I had to do: I had to cut my hair. I told him I'd think about it. I went home, called directory assistance and got the number to the movie theatre. I called the recording and listened to it. At the time, they were playing "An Angel at My Table."
I thought about it, and I decided that I wasn't ready to be the Manager of a theatre I wasn't familiar with. I remember how I didn't like how Mr. M came in and made a lot of changes to our procedures at the Mayan without consulting those of us on the management team. I didn't want to go in and be that guy, so I just came in to work the next day without cutting my hair and went about my business as normal.
This actually stunned Maud and Mr. M. He later told me that Maud remarked that I was the kind of employee who did anything that was asked of me, and if I didn't do this one thing, then she believed that I didn't think I was ready. I thought that was rather intuitive of her, but it was a shame she didn't use that intuition to figure out I had a social problem that I had no control over.
In the meantime, Cheld decided to step down from being the 2nd Assistant Manager and went to the Esquire to be the Chief of Staff. We got their Chief of Staff. (She was the one who had landed the position a few months earlier through all the interviews.) I swear I butted heads with her more than I did Cheld. I really didn't like having to deal with her.
But I didn't have to put up for that situation for very long. Mr. M told me that the City Manager in Palo Alto was looking to hire a new Manager. I found out later that Mr. R had been fired. The rumor was that he was caught doing something he did while he was at the Mayan: He would "borrow" money from petty cash to tide him over until payday. On a Monday morning, I went to the Mayan and got out the Landmark phone list. I looked up the office number of the woman who was the City Manager and called her. She wasn't in her office yet. I went downstairs into the lobby. Maud had arrived and she asked me to come down into her office. She wanted to talk to me.
She told me that there were three opportunities for me in San Diego. One was a Manger position at the Guild Theatre, which was a run-down single screen with lots of character. Another was the Manager position at the Ken Cinema, which was a repertory house than showed classic films with some esoteric new releases that ran for a week. The third was a brand new theatre Landmark was building from the ground up that would have five screens, but that was only an Assistant Manager position. I weighed the options. I didn't like having to deal with a lot of maintenance issues, so that meant the Guild was out. I liked the idea of the repertory theatre, but I didn't like that I would be responsible for ad sales in the Ken's quarterly publication. A brand new theatre appealed to me and I wouldn't have to worry about being the ultimate boss there. I also figured that with turnaround like that, it wouldn't be long before I moved up to a Manager position after I'd settled into the new location. I told Maud that I was more interested in the new theatre.
Over the course of the next few weeks, there was a series of discussions going on between myself and Ved, who was the City Manager in San Diego. Ved had recently been named Landmark's Manager of the Year. His background was similar to mine in that he became the Chief of Staff at the Ken after working there three months and he quickly worked his way up.
He finally told me that I would be the Assistant Manager after they had determined that the Hillcrest Cinemas would be opening during the third week in November. Landmark would pay for my moving expenses. He said I needed to be there during the first week in November to help get everything ready for the big opening.
As it happened, Mr. C announced he was leaving the Esquire fairly soon after it had been determined that I was going to San Diego. When I heard this, I just went, "CRAAAAAP!!!!" If I wasn't moving, I could have become Manager and bought that house nearby. This really got me down for awhile before I left Denver. Eventually, I came to realize that, more than anything, Maud contributed to a toxic environment. Getting away from that would probably be better for me in the long run.
But as it turned out, I just jumped from one toxic environment to another. And it was that second one that ate me alive. It's going to be awhile before I get there in this blog. I still have plenty of experiences from my time in Denver to write about.
Meanwhile, I'll update what happened to some of the major players from this period in my life. Maud left the Landmark Theatre Corporation in 2002 after having worked there 23 years. According to her profile on LinkedIn, she is an artist and filmmaker. She also works as a studio director for the Anderson Medical Center in the Houston area. She got a Master's Degree in Fine and Studio Arts in 2009 from New York University. But her website that shows her works hasn't been updated since 2009. At some point, she had a little girl and the girl appears to be involved in gymnastics.
I cannot find anyone else. Either their names are too common or they didn't do anything of note on the Internet. While I couldn't find Cheld, I did find her brother (who had worked at the Mayan while I was there). He has been employed as an animator and story artist for Pixar, Dreamworks Animation and Paramount Animation. I remember his ability to draw. It's nice to see that someone from that era made some actual headway into filmmaking.
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