So if I transfer to another city with the same company, it counts as a separate job. I had this happen two other times in my life. Those jobs will be coming up later. (I'm glad I didn't work for someplace like McDonald's. If you move up the ladder in that chain, it's not uncommon to wind up working at several different stores in the span of a few years.)
I was both looking forward to and dreading helping Landmark open a new movie theatre. I wanted to experience the excitement surrounding a brand new venue for films in such a large market, meeting new people, showing my chops as a supervisor and possibly moving up to become a House Manager. In Denver, there were only two theatres, but there would be five in San Diego. And since they just replaced three House Managers in the previous six months, my chances were looking pretty good.
The part I was dreading was that I had heard stories about how Landmark had a tendency to rush theatres into opening when they were not fully ready. One of the tales involved the Mayan and how crews were sweeping garbage out the back door just as paying customers were walking in the front door. However, this was a theatre that had been built from the ground up. Landmark typically would restore older movie palaces, but they were getting in the business of creating new multi-plexes. They had built the Goldwyn Pavilions in Los Angeles from the ground up just a few years before. (The original manager of the Mayan opened that theatre.) I had hoped that Landmark had figured out what needed to be done when opening up a new place.
I was wrong on both counts. SO VERY WRONG.
When I first toured the construction of the new theatre, I was expecting it to be near completion. I thought that most of the work had been done and it was just going to be a matter of installing the projection and concession equipment and we would be able to do dry runs and train our new staff in the next few weeks. I was shocked to see that the walls hadn't been painted, the screens hadn't been set up, there were no seats in the auditoriums and they hadn't even started constructing the concession stand. This was when I knew that we would also be sweeping stuff out the back door as customers were coming in.
In the meantime, Anz the Manager started interviewing applicants for our staff. When I was Assistant Manager at the Mayan, I had an active role in helping determine who we hired. However, Anz had no interest in allowing me to be part of this process, even though I asked if I could assist. This would become the first clue that I was not going to have as friendly a relationship as I'd had with my previous Managers, Mr. M, Mr. W and Mr. R. In the meantime, Ved had me working on other projects associated with opening the theatre.
One of the things I did was manage a few shifts at the Park Theatre, which was a single screen. I did a little bit of training beforehand. I had met the House Manager when Kird and I came to see "Barton Fink." When I trained with him, I noticed it took him two hours to count all the money from the box office and concession. At the Mayan, it usually took about an hour on a busy night. I wondered why it was taking him so long. What I saw he was doing was counting, re-counting and counting again. I guess he got stung really bad once by a deposit and became OCD about making certain everything balanced. When I closed up my first shift, it only took me 15 minutes.
During one of the shifts that I managed, we had simultaneous problems with the concession stand, the box office and the projector. I was able to make quick decisions and instruct the staff what to do. The person working the box office at the time would be coming to Hillcrest. I later told him that kind of situation comes up at a multi-plex ALL THE TIME! I'm pretty certain their regular manager would have had a nervous break-down at that point.
Two weeks before the theatre opened, Anz had called for a staff meeting. She invited everyone she hired to come over to the Park Theatre. As everyone was arriving and helping themselves to the coffee, juice and donuts we had provided, Anz had them pair off into groups of two. A few minutes after the meeting was supposed to start, we had one employee who didn't have a partner. Anz had me pair up with her. I didn't like this because it was presenting me as a member of the crew when I felt I needed to be recognized as authority. She could have just formed one group of three people. I don't know why she didn't do that. After we started, the last employee finally showed up. I thought Anz would either have that employee team up with the one she put me with or pair up herself. However, what she did was put that person with an existing pair to create a group of three. I know I tried hard not to show it, but I was absolutely FUMING.
The meeting went okay and Anz told everyone she would be in touch about training. But there were issues on the construction side. The crew was going to need assistance. Anz called up a few of the employees to come help out at the theatre and put me in charge of them. Basically, we had to take care of a lot of minor cleaning details and taking out the trash. However, we also had to construct the lockers for the employee room and help load concession supplies. We paid the employees $5 an hour for doing this, which was above the standard minimum wage. But I was getting resentful our employees were getting paid $5 an hour to do what the construction crew members were getting paid $15 an hour NOT to do.
When I worked at the Mayan Theatre, Pacific Concessions was our concession supplier. If there was something we needed in addition to popcorn, soda, coffee and candy, they would make sure we got it. This included napkin dispensers, straw holders, etc. Anz and Ved were discussing getting these items and where she could go to buy them. I chimed in and asked, "Doesn't Pacific Concessions supply that?" They both looked at me for a second and went back to talking like what I said had no impact on their conversation. This happened a couple of other times in which I mentioned Pacific Concessions. Anz and Ved ignored me and continued their discussion without giving me any additional information. The night before we opened the theatre, a couple of the other House Managers were discussing concessions. One of them asked if we were dealing with Pacific Concessions. The other one said that Landmark was providing the concessions for the Hillcrest Cinemas. The other four theatres in San Diego were still dealing with Pacific until the end of the contract, which would be terminated in the coming year. My thought was, "WHY DIDN'T ANZ AND VED SIMPLY TELL ME THAT?"
This would have explained a lot of issues I'd had with Pacific Concessions while working at the Mayan. We were aware that the contract was about to end and we were getting really cruddy service from them. I was wondering why they would do that. Weren't they interested in renewing our contract? Apparently, the contract did not extend when Landmark opened the Goldwyn Pavilions in Los Angeles. This meant that Pacific Concessions realized at the time that the contract was never going to be renewed for all the theatres in the chain. In fact, the Cove Theatre had sent one of its registers back to Pacific Concessions to be repaired. When the contract was about to end, the manager called them up to see if they were going to get the register sent back. Pacific Concessions told him no, they weren't going to fix it or send it back. This left them with only one working register, which caused problems when they were busy.
The people in charge had expected the theatre to be completed enough that the crews wouldn't be around on a certain date, so Anz put out the call to employees to show up for training. As it turned out, we still had a lot of construction workers doing things. We weren't even close. We had to send everyone away and had them come back to work the ceremonial soft open that had been planned for the night before we opened to the public.
Leading up to the grand opening, our theatre got a lot of publicity. Several members of the local media came by, interviewed Ved and Anz and took photos of them and of the construction in progress. I was left out of all that and had to supervise our employees while it was going on.
On top of all that, we had District Managers and a few House Managers from across California come in to take part and help out with the open. One of those who came was Maud from Denver. If I was starting to feel irrelevant before, her presence cemented that feeling for me. We just returned to the old dynamic we had at the Mayan and she joined in with Anz in telling me what to do. They would both tell me separate things that needed to be done. While I know Anz was busy with a lot of stuff, the things Maud was telling me to do were projects she could have done herself, but she seem more interested in socializing with the District and House Managers than actually helping us.
I recall when the safe had been delivered to the manager's office. It had two compartments with two separate combinations. There was the main compartment and a smaller one for quick drops. I fiddled around with the doors a couple of times. Later that day, Anz sheepishly came up to me and asked me if I remembered the combination to the safe. She apparently tried fiddling with it and wound up locking the piece of paper with the combinations inside. Fortunately, I remembered. The funny thing is that if that happened today, I might not remember the combination so easily.
The day we had our ceremonial Grand Opening for select city dignitaries was the day they were finally laying down the carpeting. FOR THE ENTIRE THEATRE! I was in the manager's office and needed to go downstairs. However, the Vice President of Landmark told me I couldn't leave while they were putting down the carpet. I waited a few minutes, but I really had to leave because I had to go home and get dressed. I figured they were done and walked down the stairs. The Vice President angrily stared at me and shouted, "THANKS FOR PAYING ATTENTION!" I shrugged my shoulders and walked off.
I went home, took a shower and got dressed for the big event. When I returned there, they had set up this large balloon arch and spotlights. There was going to be a big presentation before we let people in. While the speeches were going on, Maud had me and an employee (whom we will know later as Abed) go up to the third floor of the shopping center where the Hillcrest Cinemas was located to throw down confetti when they started letting people in. I felt like Maud was just shoving me away from the action. She could have picked any other employee to do it with Abed. We went up to the third floor. After a couple of minutes, a security guard approached us and told us no one was supposed to be up there. I told him we were instructed to come up, but it was fine because I didn't want to be up there anyway. Abed and I went down and threw the confetti all over the place.
Even though we were showing three movies that night, there were two auditoriums that didn't even have their screens up. (I'm glad they didn't plan five movies.) After an hour of people helping themselves to wine, soda and hors d'oeurves, we started the films. Once the lobby was cleared out, we attempted to train all the employees on the popcorn machine. It didn't go well, because the person who was charged with setting the automatic oil delivery system had put the level too high. By the time we figured out the problem, it was time for everyone to go home. SO THAT MEANS THAT NO ONE RECEIVED ANY REAL TRAINING. WE WERE OPENING THE NEXT DAY WITH A STAFF WHO HAD NO IDEA WHAT THEY WERE DOING.
While we were all getting ready to leave, Anz appeared slightly inebriated from the wine. She told me that she was impressed by the way I was able to handle so many things at once. It would turn out to be the only time she would pay me an unsolicited compliment.
I went to bed that night and expected the worst for the next day. More on that tomorrow.
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