text: Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death. Anais Nin The theater opened at precisely 8:30 in the A.M. every day except on the weekends, and then it opened at 8 o'clock sharp. Projectors were readied for the onslaught of movie starved patrons waiting to batter down the Plexiglas and steel doors barricading them from cloth stadium seats and fresh popcorn. Managers arrived at seven and the normal workers arrived at 7:30 because there was much to do to be ready. Butter flavoring had to be refilled out of jugs that were normally reserved at the plastic plant for pesticides oozed out their fat into steel bowls heated to 180 degrees. Popcorn consistently popped so that the sound never left the theater, but instead enveloped it like a thick gray fog. Doors were unlocked and cupboards were thrown open violently as employees pressed fingerprints on to touch screens. Brooms and butlers fell into the open, scared out by the sounds of ushers waiting to pounce on any stray garbage. Crown Plaza Theater was ready to serve its customers. That is, if it had any customers to begin with. The theater is a place of few patrons since the rise of DVDs and pirates. Pirates are not a new invention but their technology is. The video camera has destroyed the movie going experience. From the privacy of a family computer and a simple software program, people can avoid the entire process of the movie theater. They save on gas, tickets, and concessions, which meant the theater has become less of a destination and more of a wayside tavern, with its own regulars and characters. We were prepared though. There were three different groups of people at the Crown. Every employee called the theater the Crown because it was both an abbreviation and an ironic statement on the richness of the place. The Crown had modeled itself as a neon beacon to the world. From the outside there was no feature that was in any way memorable. The theater was the Levittown model of building on a much grander scale. Hypothetically, a knife could cut the building right down the middle and every part was identical to the other side. There were eight theaters on each, sixteen in all. Theaters eight and nine were the largest and both held precisely 357 seats. On the opposite ends were Theaters one and sixteen both of which held just a paltry 97 seats. With the exception of theaters five and thirteen all theaters seating numbers ended in a seven. Seven was J.P. Marcus' favorite number and as the founder, he worked the number into every part of the theater's construction. Each bathroom had seven stalls and the sinks all came out to be divisible by seven. About the only part of the Crown that wasn't divisible were its employees. We were a prime number usually and the hierarchy was concrete. At the top was the general manager. Brad Smith had been the acting general manager for just shy three years and under his direction the theater had moved away from Pepsi and M&M's toward Coke, Milk Duds and the promised land. He was a short, heavyset man with red hair when it wasn't in a military cut. Freckles were all over his face and his brow was constantly set at an angle that made him seem perpetually displeased, which was generally his actual feeling toward the world. Brad seemed to be the child who got picked last for dodge ball too many times back in grade school and was now taking it out on the world. Right below him were the two managers, Ben and Sarah. Management at the Crown had several different personalities. There was one type A, Ben, who was obsessive compulsive about making sure that the counters were clean. At close every night that he worked, he came around and wiped a finger over every surface that could be clean. If it was dirty, the entire operation had to be shut down until this one eye sore that was a butter stain could be fixed. Fortunately for the shift workers, Ben didn't close often. The main night manager was Sarah. At about 24 and with her life slipping away every time the Superman clock behind the service desk clicked off another second, Sarah was slowly coming to terms with her failure in life. She had a sense of humor about it though, but was prone to random mood swings. Even with this issue, she made certain to remind us all that the doctor had informed her that bipolar did not run in the family. This never made a lot of sense but as employees we let it go as another piece of comic genius that was above us. On the days that Sarah was not working, she came to the Crown in Slayer T- shirts and sweat pants, ready to party and to mosh in the back of The Devil Wears Prada. Her lower back was covered by a tattoo of a butterfly exiting the cocoon. Red cage bars that represented tree branches crossed over the Monarch and the three-color design of the cocoon. Apparently it was a personal design that was symbolic of struggle and beauty. Most male employees took it as a big "I'm Ready" sign. I was not easily moved by Sarah's display of sexuality. Her face was old, with wrinkles already forming around the eyes because she had to squint to see her the amount of money to her name. At one point the eyes were a pretty blue but time had made the oceans evaporate leaving just tiny lakes to see out of. I had been working at Crown for about three months, though it felt much longer. In the concession stand you don't move forward in time, but feel it propelling you slowly, straining against dimensions and boredom to hurtle you to the next second. Schopenhauer calls our entire reality just a collection of moments and at Crown that rang true. I had been reading some of his work recently because I try to remain on top of my thoughts, and he was an author that was good to read on breaks. Generally I worked in concessions and helped clean out the occasional theater, though the shift leaders said soon I would be working as an usher. "You haven't been trained yet? Well Ben said that tomorrow Jason is getting trained. Of course there are three Jasons, but I'm certain that it'll be you. Jason M. got trained on Saturday and Jason H. did too I think. Well maybe not, but don't worry." Tomorrow rolled around and I'd be forgotten behind a register as the theater continued to oil the various parts of its machinery. A movie theater is perhaps the illustration of how persuasion and anticipation lead to success. For us in the business, it is the only way to make money at all. Every time a customer comes up, a cast member (the staff gets a fancy title) asks them, "Hello Sir. Would you like to try a combo today?" "No thanks," would be the immediate reply and then right after the customer would rattle off three items and a cast member would push the number 2-combo button and all would be well with the world. It was almost shocking to see the automation of the place. The cogs and wheels were on the walls right out in the open turning slowly at every combo purchase or drink order. Crown's mission statement was all about efficiency. After making sure the customer loves the theater enough to come back, efficiency was our top priority. As a theater we were batting .500. Every part of the theater moved quickly. The box office churned out tickets with a smile and plea for a donation to charity. Concessions charmingly smiled and took orders and change and made pleas for donations to charity. Inside the theater the screen played different "Behind the Scenes" of upcoming films and charity artists, and a smiling usher asked for donations to charity. The trouble with Crown was that less people were filing into the seats, and even less were willing to donate to charity, regardless of the friendliness of those asking. Some cast members thought it was because they didn't want to give out more money. That was wrong though, none of the people minded giving away money. After all, most of them held popcorn in their hands that had the capability to feed small villages in the third world for a week. They chased it down their throats with pop so tall it scratched the sky and quenched its thirst at the same time. All of this food was expensive and many customers let the concessionists know this before purchasing even more food, blissfully unaware of the law of supply and demand at work. Cast members worked so that there was always an even number to divide down the middle of the theater. Two ushers worked on both sides and there were always six concessionists prepared to take orders from customers. Most of the time concessions were overstocked and people in line would turn to one another and ask, "Are they expecting to be busy on a Wednesday night?" "They must be, I can see several of them just standing around." To be honest the Crown was never expecting to be busy. We convinced ourselves on a regular basis that the next moment people would simply appear in the lobby and if we weren't ready, concessions would be flooded by the wave. That was why popcorn was always sitting out and ready, why pretzels that went unsold were restocked, why hot dogs were reheated, and why every one of us looked at the clock and prayed that the second hand moved faster so we could go home. After all, even failing theaters have to keep up appearances. On Saturdays, the theater picked up a little bit, but most of the time even Saturdays were beginning to become stale and routine. There was a feeling of malaise that even succeeded in overpowering the butter smell on occasion. I sensed the feeling of depression and melancholy everywhere as I walked in, even in the repetitive advertisements for buying Coca-Cola and using a MasterCard to pay for the transaction. My first day was a Saturday. I walked in expecting the place to be busy as I was working from four to close, but that was mostly a false hope. The bricks on the outside of the building even signaled boredom by turning different shades of brown to pass the time. Sometimes it's funny what you remember about certain times and places. Last Friday for instance, I suddenly remembered this time in third grade when three other kids and myself went out swinging at recess. Most of the time I played touch football, not tackle because that led to injury. Anyway, I had gotten fed up with playing football because my team was losing so I cut out of the game, taking the quarterback and two receivers with me. We were on the swings and all of a sudden one said, "Hey I dare you to try and jump to the grass." This was a tall dare. The grass was about fifteen feet away and few third graders had the strength to reach the necessary height on the swings. "You're on." I said, surprising myself both at the time and in the recollection. So I began to kick hard, rising higher and higher, trying to make the gravel below me seem as small as ants, which is was, but at the time I was going for the feeling. I was trying to fly so high that when I let go I'd float across the playground and finally hit the soft moist grass at the end. I must have been 10 to 15 feet in the air when I let go. The jump was a good one. It was completely fluid from my head to my feet. When jumping off a swing, it is very important to make sure that all of your body is on the same page. The body must be a well oiled machine, even if that machine is a small, skinny, third grader. I flew. Then, the wood smashed into my jaw. The entire playground was encircled by a retaining wall made of wood that separated the gravel from the grass. In a way, the wall was the boundary between the playground and the outside world, keeping us safe, and keeping us in. It was not at all friendly either. I had extended my arms to try and break the fall so it did not catch me square, but the gash was right on the top of my head. I did not cry though. There are certain types of pain that make crying seem more of a problem than a convinence. The gash was two inches long and about an eighth of inch wide. Seemingly inconsequential on paper, in practice, to put it bluntly, it bled like hell. I stood up and walked back to the swings though. The group looked sickened. Our quarterback had actually turned his back. "What's wrong guys? I got close didn't I? Who's next?" Kids. The Saturday was overcast with a slight drizzle coming down, the pleasant kind that are great to run in because you can still see and they cool you down. There were small collections of rainwater around the parking lot by the drains who had suddenly began to reassess whether falling down a hole was really in the molecules best interest. I had parked my car in the side parking lot because it was less crowded and I did not know any better than to think that the side lot was for employees only. The first thing I remember was that I parked next to a gray Porsche. It was fairly old, but still in great condition. The spoiler was a recent addition and seemed out of place with the overall engineering. There are things that shouldn't be messed with. Soup Kitchens, Churches, a Man's drink, and Porsches all fall under that banner. The license plate started with an M. The doors were freshly cleaned and smelled like paint thinner. That was the worst part about remembering my first day, the smell. Paint thinner is a corrosive smell. It eats away at every other thought in your mind until the only part left is the thought of the smell. Paint thinner is always recognizable and is probably the only smell in existence besides sulfur that people recoil from. Perhaps it was a bit ironic that on my first day, the Crown smelt like paint thinner. "Hello Jason." Brad's voice greeted me coolly. He seemed detached from the conversation to begin with. "Let's get you outfitted with a nametag and then you'll be working concessions." We went to the office to get the nametags. The part that you pin on a shirt was in a green box that usually held index cards. My mother used a gray one to organize coupons. "How do you spell your name again?" "J.A.S.O.N." "No silent L?" He was joking, but I had a strong desire to hit him for that remark. "There you go. Here's your new nametag. Have a good day." He showed me the door and I headed back to the concession stand. "Excuse me. Sir? Are you open?" I had been daydreaming again. Tapping the register, I turned off the screensaver and logged in. It's funny how certain instances make your mind wander to wherever it wants to go. Scientists have studied this process I'm sure, but it's probably progressing as fast as them figuring out why we yawned. "Sorry about that ma'am. Yes. Would you like to try a combo today?" Today needed to be over. She ordered some Goobers and a small coke. Goobers are the bad kind of Nestle candy. Chocolate covered peanuts look about as appetizing as dead fish to me but to each his own. The total was seven dollars but she did not even use correct change. I remember that she gave me eight dollars for a seven-dollar order. "It's only seven dollars ma'am but would you like to donate this one to charity today." She paused for only a moment. "No." She picked up the pop and the candy and put it into what appeared to be a faux alligator purse. Part of the taco I had eaten earlier came into my throat. I'm not an animal rights activists or a fashion expert or anything. It was her tone of that No, like she was put upon. Then the flood began. "And I'd really appreciate it if you and the other employees would not keep asking me if I want to donate. They asked me at the door, now you guys asked me, and the last time I was in a movie they came in and addressed the audience about it. What do you have about taking other people's hard earned money? If you want to get donation go to the government, Christ they tax us enough. 10% is good enough for God, why can't it be good enough for the government?" With that she turned and stormed. I remember she was a bit overweight, but at least it was Diet Coke. In her hurry to make a good exit, she had left George Washington on the counter. I opened the Charity cylinder and threw it in yelling out, "Thank you very much for your generous donation ma'am! Would you like us to add your name to the list of donors?" I don't think she heard me and that's a good thing because I probably would have been fired. Still, I felt annoyed. The entitlement of customers is astonishing. I can stand to be sworn at on occasion, not my favorite experience but livable. However, entitlement to cop a line from Tarantino, isn't the same game, isn't the same stadium, it isn't even the same sport. Where but in the suburbs at a movie theater can someone spend seventeen dollars to go see entertainment they probably will not enjoy and still complain that they are being put upon to donate a dollar to the Red cross? Sometimes it's funny what you remember. (I WOULD LIKE TO FLESH THIS OUT FARTHER) The moon was out in full force, shining strong beams of white light onto the earth. Astronomers will tell you that the moon does not have beams because it does not have its own light source. All the moon does is reflect the sun's light back at the earth. Beyond the fact that Astronomers must be the biggest killjoys on the planet, they also are missing the point entirely on why the moon doing this is fine. All things reflect upon something or someone else. Our finest buildings today are simply a reflection of past advances, as are our homes, roads, books, and athletics. The really great ideas that happen in our society are not what can be built, but what could be built. That is why God invented the movies. A theater is the reflection to the rest of the world what our society is about. The language is obviously more stylized and the people more beautiful and fictional, but who doesn't look into the mirror and accentuate their good features from time to time? Now the reason that I had left the theater at such a late hour was because I was closing. At my age, most sane people wouldn't trust me at all, because the statistics are against me. I had a talk with my insurance agent about that once. He said that the reason my insurance was higher had nothing to do with me personally. I paid more for my State Farm Good Neighbor guarantee because I was male. There is some irony there that the insurance marketer missed when he came up with that at a brainstorming session. Girls pay less than I do because a male is more likely to get into a car accident, though the agent was nice enough to inform me that girls were catching up fast. Reassuring. I was not originally scheduled to close because my shift was supposed to end at 11, but I decided to switch with someone that day because he had to get up early the next morning and it was only his second day on the job. Terrence Campbell was his name, and he made sure everyone knew it. I met him first right after the managers because I had stopped in to check my schedule. The schedule was on a clipboard behind the front desk and was comparable to the Bible, Qu'ran, Torah and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in terms of importance to our little society. Every part of the Crown moved because of the schedule. There was one time when Sarah was unable to complete the full two weeks because she had been on vacation and all hell broke loose. Employees didn't know whether to usher, be in concessions, at the door or even at the theater all together. Since then, the schedule has always been completed two weeks in advance and put in on a special hook where I retrieved it. He came over and stood next to me. "Hello man. How ya doing? The name's Terrence Campbell and I just started here today. What's yours?" "Jason." "Cool man. How long have you been working here?" He was a big guy, maybe 240 or so and jovial as all hell. One of those people that walk into a room and all eyes collectively shift toward him, but in a positive way. He was tall as well and black as night. He went to Glacier High School and was their starting center. Terrence could have been a D-1 player if he had practiced more, but seemed content enough walking all over other schools in the area. "About three or four weeks now." "Cool man. Do you like it here?" Terrance was new to the theater and if that wasn't made clear by the previous statements, this one screamed that fact to the world. No one liked the Crown, but they merely tolerated the place. "It's a job and it pays so I can't complain too much about it." "Cool man. This is my first job so I'm pretty excited you know. I had to fill out a lot of paper work though man. W-4 forms and Social Security forms and Emergency forms, you know of what kind of accidents could happen here?" He met it truly. Terrance repeated the same phrases over and over but he was always genuinely interested in what people had to say. He was a sponge for information and imitation. As such I answered in the only way I knew how. "The kettle could break and fall on top of you, and burn out your eyes I suppose." I said this with sarcasm dripping as much as the buttery topping behind the stand. He laughed at that one. Terrance did not have a real laugh though. Not that he didn't show enjoyment and move his mouth so you couldn't tell, but it was not Santa by any means. I have an odd laugh too, sort of a machine gun crossed with heavy breathing, but Terrance was just a single noise. It was piercing and scorching like a smoker's cough but without the side effects. "Man that's funny. So this job isn't hard at all is it?" "Not really, if you can stand the mind numbing boredom and low pay, the job is actually quite decent." He laughed again at that, and then turned serious. "Is it true that a bunch of people just walked off the job?" "I don't know." I lied to him about that. Six people had left the Crown in a week and a half all at once. The managers had been working double time to try and find replacements for all of their shifts, even going so far as to pay time and a half for some of the late ones. There had been an employee meeting to discuss respect and proper procedure and then a code of Omerta had been placed over the employees. "Well I heard that. If it's true that's not right. A job is a responsibility that has to be kept. Walking off man, that's just not right." Terrence had gone to work right away and on his second day had been sent home early because he had sold a large number of combos. Ben didn't say the number over the walkie-talkie so the other employees could hear, but it must have been in the upper fifties. I took over on his register for him and volunteered to stay a bit later. I approached my car and surveyed the parking lot. The lot was massive, holding well over 1000 parking spaces. Now that seemed like over kill but less than five years ago, the lot didn't have enough, so customers spilled over into Taco Bell and Walgreen's trying to see a movie. The movies were better than too. Everything is better in the past except when life was harder and there were more diseases. It is probably because the past is not concrete like we believe. Instead, the past is malleable to our own wishes and dreams and thoughts. The past is a protective covering of our own lives that envelops us when it must to give us a better beat or a shoulder to lean on. It was better back then, because I can't think how it could have been worse. Something inside of me burned, not an actual organ but a feeling. I could not isolate if it was jealousy or exhaustion but both of them were coming on strong. I had to work my whole shift on my second day at work even though I sold eighty combos, except that number may be a bit low. I don't remember the past after all is never set in stone. The Crown made sure that its authority remained on top. Terrence after two days had gotten on the good side, and I was still in first gear, stuck behind concessions as the kettle constantly churned out fresh popcorn. Quitting seemed a legitimate option at 12:17 in the morning but I suppressed the thought because it would not have done any good. I had a responsibility, even though looking back was a lot more appealing than looking ahead. The moon fell off behind some clouds, its beams being obscured, casting the car in a shadow as I drove back to the house. The job was harder than I thought, but I decided not to tell Terrence why. Perhaps there are some times that try men's souls in ways that they do not really understand as they are occurring. Certain emotions of ours can be read in a variety of ways. Take the face that you make for sadness. They've, the experts that is, have done tests on how to read different expressions. Apparently adults have a much higher percentage of correct answers of what kind of face the expression is than teenagers. Teenagers are apt to see different faces as always angry, regardless of whether they are sad, depressed, or even expressionless. On the surface, that makes a lot of sense, after all teenagers haven't been around all that long to learn these faces. But at the same time, there is a possibility that the face I recognize as anger may in fact be right. Facial expressions are not just limited to humans. If one ever wanted to show evolutionary theory to someone who has never heard of what the theory is should just show him or her primates faces. Surprisingly, primates register many of the same emotions that humans do, but they do so in a more primitive and direct fashion. That does not make their faces or actions any easier to read. Monkeys throw feces around the cage at the zoo and everybody thinks that they are fighting. However, throwing feces could just be a fun game or even a sign of passion, the proverbial readiness to rock and roll. And before you say that's disgusting think about your life and then try to tell someone with a straight face that you've never thrown shit around. Brad was great at throwing shit around. He did it consistently around work to throw around his weight. Authority was a fundamental right to his position and he made sure to exercise it frequently. The butter machine was a classic example. At the employee meeting of the month, Brad went through the usual list. Don't sneak people into the theaters, sell combos, actually do the theater checks (which always got a grown from the ushers) and then moved onto the butter machine. "Alright guys, last thing today before everybody gets up and goes. Concessions. From now on do not ask whether a customer wants butter on their popcorn. We are not McDonald's. Have a good day everyone." He'd end any meeting with a friendly goodbye, and generally started off with a friendly hello, his way of making you feel comfortable. The real problem was that it was completely outside of his personality. The greeting came off as pure misdirection, to distract an employee from the bombshell that was about to hit the ground and send shockwaves ten feet wide. Employees who were new or had gotten lucky enough to stay out of his wrath were trapped like dolphins in a tuna fish net and left for dead by the rest of the cast members. Beth was confused. I liked Beth. We all liked Beth at the Crown because Beth could still laugh. Back at the time I had been reading some Kesey and he wrote that laughter is what keeps a person grounded, sane if you will. If a person is capable of laughing at a situation then he's got the world beat, one up in the long battle of attrition on his soul. Enough one ups and eventually he comes out ahead at the end of the game. The Crown was just the driver's exam before the road of life, but few of us were passing with flying colors. Beth generally had a way of making bad situations humorous. I had been on the job for about two days when I was asked to clean the side counters. To an untrained observer, this appears to be an easy job. Take a paper towel and a spray bottle and wipe down the counter right? Wrong. There is an important first step that many people fail to learn and that is to wipe all of the salt off the counter before spraying because otherwise the counter will develop streaks. Having not been informed of this fact, and unable to read minds to know of it, I sprayed before I wiped. Streaks developed almost immediately making an X shape in the middle of the counter. Beth walked over, took one look and deadpanned, "So that's where the treasure was." It was funny at the time at least. The meeting was over and the employees were filing out, some of them heading home, and most staying behind to open the theater up. Beth turned to John and made a face and then left. To me that seemed like the end of the situation, but I was wrong. The next morning was cool and damp, wrapped in a sleeping bag of thin fog and drizzle. The day was chilly as well for that time of year and most animals had gone into their own shelters to avoid the air. I walked into the door to begin to open the theater. Tuesdays were half price movie ticket days because the Crown was trying to keep customers in the seats. The idea wasn't exactly a hit, but more people came in that day than usual because of the weather. The movies are made to see on overcast days. They are Batman's light in the sky signaling all people in the vicinity to come enjoy a show in one of sixteen different theaters. Unlike most shifts at the Crown, mine was only two hours long on Tuesdays because that was the catch up day for hours. I generally gave as many hours as I could away, because while I wanted to make money, I could only work on some days. The theater's largest problem was how it destroyed the will to work in an employee. On the first day, a new cast member is ready to go, always trying to say the proper phrases to customers. By the end of the first week, he's growing tired of the job and starting to watch the clock. If you were at my stage of work, the clock became your best friend, best girl, and hottest thing on the planet all crammed together into a diameter of sixteen inches with two pieces of metal being used as Gods. The main problem with losing the will to work is that some days, it is impossible to go in and do a good job. Always trying your best only applies insofar as a person wants to give his best to begin with. Customers began to filter in around 10 and every time one of them approached the concession stand to take an hour Sarah would ask, "Sir/Madam, Would you like butter on your popcorn?" Most of the customers said yes and were treated to several shots of buttery topping onto their popcorn. Our "butter" was actually coconut oil and vegetable oil mixed together. Most concessionists saw no reason why any customer willingly put it onto their order, which was already too expensive to be fouling up with coconut oil. I understood the buttery topping on a different level. The oil inside of the butter machine counteracted the dry, stale state of the popcorn in normal conditions. Brad heard Beth continually asking the same question and came over. "Hello Beth How are you."' Before she had a chance to respond to the question he continued, "I was wondering if you had forgotten the theater's new policy regarding the butter machine "I did not Brad, I heard every word of it." "Ok, so why have you asked every customer so far if they wanted butter." "I just think that it's a common courtesy for them. After all every customer deserves to be treated like a King and asking if they want topping on their popcorn is just one way of achieving that goal." "That is an interesting idea Beth, but it is important that all employee's follow company policy. I can't have insubordination among the cast members." "Brad, the rule does not make any sense. We have three butter machines that are primed and readied every morning. Doesn't it make sense to use them?" "You will use them if a customer asks. Beth the theater does not need to keep restocking butter behind concessions because all concessionists are using too much." "But we are a movie theater that sells popcorn. Butter is integral to that experience and I think that we are denying customers a chance to experience that and if we continue to not offer butter, they will grow tired here." "Beth just follow the damn rule or I'll write you up." He was losing his cool quickly. Small beads of sweat began to appear on his brow because of his proximity to the butter machine. "What are you going to write me up for Brad? Insubordination? That should be a good one to explain to the district manager. Bethany Williams failed to follow the rule that employees are not supposed to ask customers if they want butter." She was in her element at that moment, right next to the edge. It was true that the rule was stupid, but it was Brad's rule and he was very particular about making sure they were followed. He probably would have written her up if a customer had not walked up at that very moment. "Excuse me Sir, this popcorn does not have butter on it and I was wondering if you could put some on. They didn't even ask me at the concession stand the first time so I assumed it was there. You should talk to your employees about making sure that they ask the customer what they want the first time." "I am very sorry about that Sir," Bethany said with a face that could only have been interpreted as gloating. Brad's was more difficult to read, as it was a mixture of anger, annoyance, and two different shades of purple and red respectively. As the customer started walking away, Beth began laughing under her breath. "Are you still going to write me up for not following the rule Brad?" she asked with a smirk. He didn't respond to that, but instead made another face that would have made most two year olds cry and run to their mothers. Turning quickly, Brad left concessions and went back to the service desk where he was confronted with several more complaints about the concessionists not asking about butter. Beth laughed throughout the day and I learned that not only was she sane, but the Movie Theater and McDonald's had more than I thought in common. The neon lights were out in full force again at 8:30 and the theater had begun to spring to life again. I had been on the job three weeks and had been toying with the idea of quitting for the whole time. The employees were standing around the kettle discussing the recent problems raised at the last employee meeting. "Emergency procedures may have been the funniest meeting I can remember in a long time. 'If one or more of you is on fire please stay away from any flammable materials in the theater as it would only increase the problem.' That's a no brainier." Ryan was in full force with a captive audience, except captive may not have been the right word. Bored to tears and looking to run was probably a better description. Ryan was the person in the room who did not know how to tell story. He held onto to sentences whose mothers had kicked them out of their houses in his brain long ago. Ryan wore Star Trek shirts that prominently advertised both his geekiness and ego. Flaunting Star Trek gear in public is not for the faint of heart, and Ryan's insistence on always having some form on managed to bother all of us. He was 23 and still lived with his parents, probably in the same room that he had covered with posters of Spock and Data five years before. Ryan had brown hair and sideburns that were carefully clipped to produce a straight-line effect on his countenance. He had been at the Crown for seven months and made the same amount of money as the rest of us, though he tried to ignore that fact. He wore a nametag that claimed he was an information director at the Crown, but none of us had any idea what that meant. Instead, we merely assumed that he had made the title up as a way of making himself different than the other cast members. Being different is necessary for very few people in our life. I can count on one hand the amount of different people that I know. That does not mean that being different is some type of ideal for us to put on a pedestal and worship. Different is possibly the worst expletive in the world. I'll elaborate. Different is not the same idea as individualism. Individualism is the ignorant belief that there is some reason to separate our own self from every other self consciously, even though by being a self, we are inherently different from one another. Individualism is different from individual though and it is important to not get the two confused. An individual is nothing. There is no one aspect of our lives that is so disconnected from someone else as to call it an individual aspect. We have shades that define us as humans, not traits. Different though is reveling in the underbelly of culture and unpredictability. A different person is an odd person, one that does not fit in because of his or her own volition and only encourages bad behavior. Ryan was different. "I suppose so man," Terrence had chimed in to the conversation but Ryan would not let him get far. "Think about it though. If I am on fire why would I go near other parts of the theater, it's just common sense and after all how would we get on fire in the theater anyway." "Well man the kettle could fall on you and you could catch fire." "That is a ridiculous notion Terrence. The kettle is screwed on to the top of the machine and is built solely to tip at a certain point. You are dumb aren't you?" The end of the sentence was classic Ryan. It was also why there were quite a few employees who wouldn't have minded seeing him catch on fire. Michael interjected quickly, partially to take Terrence's mind of Ryan's remark. "That wasn't the best part. That had to have been the emergency procedure in case we get robbed. Who wants to rob a movie theater anyway?" "Man why not. This place would be great to rob. I bet it's completely insured for that kind of stuff." "Jason," (not me Jason M), "Stop quoting Tarantino." "Still it'd be funny Mike." "Exactly man. A robber comes in and all we can say is 'I'm sorry sir. The register only opens if you make a sale' or something." Terrence was back to his smiling again. "Ok," feigned Michael in the voice of a thirty-year-old grizzled man. "I'll take a number three combo but upsize the drink!" Everyone doubled over as if torn apart by cannon fire and cried out with laughter. The laugh was a real laugh too, not simply by a single person, but as a single entity all its own. The sound came, not from the throat, but of the belly of every employee standing around, a hopeful cry from a group of tired cast members who were not yet ready to put on the act for the customer. After all, the clock only said 8:30. Ryan was the only employee not engaged in such primitive behavior. To him, laughter was beneath his station. That was why he kept talking, because taking in the absurdity of life was painful for him. Each morning he put on his information director badge and came into work, confident that he could keep up a one sided conversation and be the head usher that everyone at the theater looked up too. It was possible to mistake this emotion as confidence, but most cast members had quickly figured out that it was merely an irrational response to his situation. "You should stop laughing and get back to work again guys. There is water that needs to be filled and the pop towers still are not operational." "Thanks for pointing that out Ryan." Jason M sprayed sarcasm like buckshot in Ryan's general vicinity, hoping that some might actually hit him. Ryan did not notice though. He never noticed that his presence was growing wearisome on others. It was why he still lived with his mother. "Hey guys. Party over here." Sarah spoke half-heartedly and her eyes betrayed her level of comprehension. "Now remember that today is Free Morning Film Day, so get in as many combos as possible. We're getting close to our charity goals for the month and it would be nice to finish them today." Her voice stayed monotonous throughout this entire briefing. Sarah spoke with a vocal pattern that made every word seem less important than it was. Her pitch raised on the wrong syllables that made her seem depressed. The fact that she was probably taking Zoloft did not help this problem. "Oh by the way. Jason. No not you. You. We're going to get you trained in for usher today so at about 10, head on over to the usher station." "No problem Sarah." It was hard to hide the excitement in my enunciation, which came in contrast to hers because I was legitimately excited. Sometime excitement does not have to be about an event that is groundbreaking. It is the small moments that make us feel excited. As Schopenhauer says, the world is unknowable, so we should take heart in the moments of pleasure. At 10 I headed over to the usher station to meet up with Aaron. Aaron was seventeen. He had been working at the Crown for just under a year. He was a smartass. If you can understand those three facts, then Aaron becomes much easier to understand as a person. He was thin and average height, but always looked tall. There are some people that look smaller than they are because of their posture. Aaron managed to always seem taller from a distance and it was only when you were right next to him that he revealed himself to be on the short side. He had blonde hair that was prematurely graying and was content to do nothing about it. Aaron was from the south and shopped at Wal-Mart. He was a mixture of German and Scandinavian and he was funny as hell. I liked Aaron. He and Beth were great friends and they were almost always together on the job. I headed over to the station and he showed me the basics of the job. "Alright. So this is the theater checklist. Basically we're supposed to go into theaters with this flashlight and walk up the aisles with it. Oh shit what time is it?" He glanced at his watch and scribbled his initials on the paper. "What are you doing that for?" "Missed a check three minutes ago. But you didn't know that. Anyway, when the movie gets out wait until everybody is gone and then go clean up. Sometimes there are people that like to watch all the credits so you have to check before you start sweeping shit." "Seems pretty easy then?" "Is there any job at this theater that seems hard?" "No." "Touché." "I don't think that is applicable there." "I don't really care." As I said I liked Aaron. After eleven months on the job, he was able to reduce any job to its bare elements, a decomposer in human form that returns matter back to a reusable state. Too often, people make microcosms into complex construction sites complete with piles of bricks made of words and situations that are brittle to the touch. They see the construction and not the finished product. Aaron got the finished product. He and Beth were fast becoming the emergency exits from the tedium of the Crown. I respected them for that, for their ability to be in the moment, to understand what was important. I told myself that I needed to read more Schopenhauer. Even the Crown employees should keep up on that stuff. "All right want to hear a story? So my dad lifts plane engines for a living, he fixes them too but he lifts them. Means that he's a lot stronger than people think because he isn't that big of a guy. He's 5'10" without his shoes on and pretty skinny. But his arms are just huge, mainly because he's a black belt in karate. The thing is the karate hasn't taught him the art of calmness or whatever the hell you call it and his temper is really short. For a while he joked that the military made him take a bunch of steroid pills. Anyway, yesterday we're driving down the interstate when all of a sudden this guy comes right next to us and cuts us off. Now my dad is at the steering wheel and he flips the guy off. I look over and see that this guy looks gigantic, maybe 6' 4" and as menacing as one can be behind a Lexus SUV. The guy pulls over about 2 minutes later and gets out of his car. My dad says 'Sir, get back in your car.' But the guy doesn't take the hint and he comes over swearing up a storm. Shits and Fucks and Motherfuckers and Bitch are coming out of him like they're going out of style at the mall so they're having a clearance sale. He gets to my dad and looks down at him and then snorts and for a second it was possible to see the alcohol in his breath. Now dad's staying calm at this point but his jaw is beginning to clench. They argue for a little bit more and then all of a sudden the guy takes a swing at him. However, my dad's in karate so he moves to the side and puts his hand into the sign language for E and hits the man so hard that you can see his teeth come out of his cheek and pierce my dad's hand. All 240 pounds of this man crumple at once as if all of his bones have turned to oatmeal and blood is pouring into ground so parched it disappears soon after. My dad grabbed the guy and threw him back into his SUV, took out his cell phone and called 911. "Hello. I am next to mile marker 101 and there has been an accident. A man appears to have slid over the side of the highway and crashed his head against the steering wheel. No ma'am he does not appear to be wearing a seat belt. Yes an ambulance seems to be necessary. No ma'am it was not a problem to inform you, I just consider myself a Good Samaritan." Aaron finished telling me his story and slid back against the wall, proud to have produced a story that left his entire audience as slack jawed as the man in the SUV. There were four of us sitting by the Kronos machine in the hallway behind the concession area. The Kronos was the machine that everyone clocked into when they began their day of work at the Crown. It served one purpose, but most of the time it failed. It was a swipe card machine, red in color, with several different functions. The machine could show when an employee last punched in, how long a person had been away and when they were scheduled to clock out. Unfortunately, only by swiping a security card through the side of the machine could the data be accessed. My card only actually worked about 50% of the time and normally, there would be a constant struggle to make the machine actually read a card. Some employees were better than others. Peter never had a problem. He always said that 'I have the touch with this machine,' but most of us just assumed it was because his card was the oldest. Peter had been with the Crown for almost four years. For most of us that was an eternity. Shifts generally ran for eight hours. In the interview, Sarah said that the pay was competitive. After receiving the first paycheck, many employees began questioning whom the Crown was competing with. It used to be tempting to say that it was with Gerard's, the old theater that was demolished to make way for a Super Target, but that wasn't right. I'd say it was similar to drugs but it isn't. Drugs get you high and keep customers coming back. The Crown couldn't keep people in the seats. Our prices were slashed once again and at some point I imagined we would end up putting up a dollar menu or maybe a sign: "Popcorn, small bag $4.50. Large bag. $5.25. Please buy. Willing to haggle on price. Every bit must go before 11 PM tonight." For myself personally, I felt that we were competitive with a fast food restaurant. A theater and McDonald's share a surprising amount in common. Both of them serve people with food that most raccoons stay away from for exorbitant prices because people will pay them for a good time. Employees are paid as low as possible and are mostly teenagers. There is the occasional old timer who knows all the ropes but still isn't promoted because the manager needs an employee they can lean on who's "just another employee." The experienced one has authority that even a shift leader or manager does not have. He gets paid the same wages as everyone else at the theater that has been recently hired but he keeps returning every day. Normally he works over 30 hours a week and seems to be a regular guy. He is the one that shows all the new hires how to work the cash register and when he's finished, they realize that a baby seal could work it just as well and probably sell more combos on account of cuteness. Peter was that guy for the Crown and he knew it. Deep down, he realized that the best he could hope for was head shift leader and another .25 cents an hour to his paycheck. There was a part of him that always seemed to sag lower than the others as if he had an invisible broken leg that required him to limp. "You're making that shit up. Do you mean the cops didn't do anything to him?" Dan spoke with an air of both amusement and detachment. Do you mean the cops didn't do anything to him?" "What were they going to do?» Aaron replied. "We had gotten off of the on ramp into some park when it happened and no one else was around. The other man had started it and I was the only witness. The cops can't do anything to him. Besides why would I make that up?" He continued, "That was one of those moments when you see into the soul of a person though. There are certain times in a person's lifetime where he gets to go inside of a man and peer around into the machinery that makes him tick. All of us are really just large, walking, clocks. Every different tiny piece makes us who we are. Really we are simply billions of billions of tiny cells that form around liquids and blood and organs. Each organ is made up of even more tiny pieces of machinery that people say God put together. Most of the time though, our eyes do not recognize that. Instead I see emotion and action and words go through the air around us. But when he was sitting over that guy, he had this look in his eye, just for a second, it was power man, power. He knew he was stronger. It was primal, physical. It made me realize that one more smart ass comment and I could be next." "That's deep man." Said Peter, "Now get back to work. Theater 11 needs to be cleaned." We scattered immediately, fearful not only of Peter, but of ourselves. If a full grown man can return to the state of nature, what does that say about four teenagers with little to do on the weekends? Superman Returns credits were just beginning as I entered into the dimly lit theater with the image of mashed faces still burned into my brain. New employees were always looked for at the Crown. Mainly it was because of the turnover rate. There were few employees like Peter, most of us worked during the summer, maybe on occasion in the fall too. Few made it passed the first three months. They were simply a death trap for most, who entered, except without the camouflage. There was no hole in the ground with leaves and Vietcong in the bushes. The theater advertised as much. Its mission statement summed up the feeling nicely. The Crown Theater exists to provide customers with a good viewing experience while keeping costs low and profits high for its shareholders. It was simple and succinct and understandable and damning to every employee that read the sentence. A mission statement can't be long. Any decent statement must follow the 30-second rule. That is, a business owner should be able to describe his business during a 30 second elevator ride. The mission statement is the answer to the person standing next to him that is making conversation. Of course, the 30-second rule never factored in whether or not the other passenger was paying attention to the answer. It is highly probable that the man standing is waiting for the third floor button to light up and get out. A mission statement does not care about that. Summer was the busy season for the theaters. All the big budget blockbusters come out in the summer because they have the largest audience at that time. Economics is all that goes into it. If a studio believes it has an Oscar worthy entry, the movie usually premiers in October. When a studio feels that have a hit, that movie is released in the middle of July. By extension, summer was also a big deal for the theater and the wanted signs went out to all the necessary papers. Sarah usually did the actual hiring, while Brad did the firing. They were the angels of light and death on a microscopic scale, or the fates of ancient Greece, measuring out the string and preparing to cut when necessary, at which point another string is measured. Hiring new employees was a constant process. There were several employees who left before anyone met them. To me that was a terrible occurrence because everybody has to know someone. Without any connections to a place, it is quickly forgotten, destroyed by the consistent change of synapses in the brain that need to be used elsewhere. The filing cabinet of the brain has not had time to create a folder and date for a life experience. Yet it is experience that is all we have as individuals. Without it, what are we but a machine that moves slowly and robotically from one place to the next, never stopping to understand what is going on before our eyes. Life drives a car without brakes, but the least we can do is look out the window. Beth had been hired on the 4th of July, an ironic statement on independence to be sure. She was the perfect movie theater employee. She smoked, which to the Crown, was as important as knowing how to add. Marlboro was who brand of choice, though always lights, because as she said, "They taste better and are proven to have less heath side effects than regular cigarettes." She carried two packs in her purse. The packages were white, with a blue trim advertising "New Soft Pack though I never understood what that meant. I don't smoke, which at the Crown was as original as an extra toe. Cigarettes were a means of establishing connections with others. They were a bond that was not easily broken with either one's self or with others. Many conversations were started with, "Do you have a cigarette?" If there was an extra one available and it left your possession, a person was in. There was intimacy in the sharing of cigarettes. Beth craved intimacy because she was a social person. Contact was as important as speaking, because only through contact did she know you were real. There was nothing esoteric about it, to Beth; it was a fact of life. She had auburn hair that curled at the ends when the humidity was high or concessions got particularly hot. It was soft with no added chemicals. She advertised this to anyone who wanted to get on the subject of hygiene. Not surprisingly, Beth loved to talk. You could see that in her face when she began to speak. Her eyes opened up and her face became brighter and calmer. Words were as much of an addiction as nicotine. But smoking was not the only reason Beth was a good employee of the crown. She could pass time better than anyone on staff, except maybe Peter, but he had a head start over everyone that worked there. Unlike other cast members, Beth knew how to think by herself. As much as she enjoyed talking, at heart she was an introvert. Her cash register was a place of refuge from the clutter of life. It was there that she could put the puzzle pieces in order of size and shape and then begin to make sense out of them. We all tried to do this in one way or another, to understand our existence, why we settled for six dollars an hour, but not in the same way Beth did. I spoke to her before that act occurred in the break room. "How are you doing today?" the conversation would invariably start, an icebreaker and a crutch delivered without a bit of sincerity. Generally Beth picked up the invitation. "I'm doing all right today, though I was a bit late today and the nicotine fix this morning was fierce. Forgot my lighter at home. You don't have one…wait you don't smoke, never mind. Yesterday though I figured it out why we take this job though. It's only because people say that it is easy." "Well the job is easy. After all, we don't actually do anything besides sit and wait for people to show up to see a show." "See," Beth said beginning to become animated, "That is the problem right there. We've convinced ourselves that our job is easy. It isn't. Our job is a piece of shit. That's all the job will ever be, shit. But as society, we promote and label our line of work as easy because as a society, we're fundamentally lazy. Think about all the times every day that you say like Justin, about fifty, maybe more. Why do we say like?" "Because we don't know what we're describing?" "No, because we are too lazy to come up with a descriptor. It is no different saying 'she was like,' or 'she said.' In that case uttering 'she said' is much shorter, but it takes more time. Semantics really. Now say society denotes a job as easy, well lazy people now think, 'Hey there's a job for me." "Well what about working as a garbage man?" I asked. "That's an easy job, all they do is pick up garbage bins and they make about fifty grand a year." "Wrong Justin. A garbage man is, pardon the pun, a shitty job. Society has deemed it as dirty and nasty and the job has become an outcast, ostracized from the very people that depend on it, ironic huh? Why don't we all want to be janitors? That job is easy, at least in description. So why don't you want to be one?" "Well it's a nasty job, like you said." "Precisely, so is this one. Working as a concessionist is never anyone's career, well maybe Peter's, but no one else. We fool ourselves into thinking its easy, and that makes it passable. Hell, we fool ourselves into a lot of things here." With that statement, she got up and walked out the door back to her shift. Rarely was a shift busy during the weekday. Mainly, it was the problem of being a multiplex theater. The theater was simply too large for the amount of people that were likely to enter into its lobby and peer up at the plastic ceiling. The movie theater recently added a large big screen in the middle of the lobby to even make that into some type of theater. It was all an allusion to movies. People came to a movie to escape their lives, at least that is what Hollywood had been selling for the past 100 years. Movies are the ultimate confidence schemes. In them, actors get paid millions of dollars to play someone else, while customers sit in the stadium seats and wish that they could be actors. The truth is, even though most of us hide from its searing glare, is that we are all actors. Take a school for instance. High school is a movie for the new generation, just as it was for the old. Teen comedies can only dream about the average high school, and teen dramas water the subplots into full-grown melodrama with a perfume as pungent and disgusting as sulfur. Every single student must fulfill a certain part or a certain role. However, instead of "Introducing," it is a more subtle part, the kind that is at the end of the credits. Preppy kid number seven is seen much more often than the big name or star because schools do not have stars. There are many more Average Joe number eights. But that of course is life, even if our teachers choose not to admit the fact to us. The world has many more leaders than followers and few can be President. The movies are our ticket out of that reality though; they transport us to a different place, one of excitement and happiness. It is through them, through any story, that it becomes possible to get inside another person's skin. Great actors are not great because they are attractive or because they can speak in several accents, but they are great because they understand being another person. The average con artists are great actors, but the con artists that are never brought to justice are the great actors. They pretend to be someone they are not, and make millions doing so. What do the lack of good movies say about our culture? To me, the good movies just became hard to find. There required a long drive to an indie theater somewhere on a college campus to unearth the diamond in the rough of Americana. The Crown though was a Wal Mart without the money, selling many different items, but all that could be stripped to the same cookie cutter model of consistency and predictability. For a movie employee, this presents a challenge, because like the Hollywood style of old, when we do our jobs correctly, no one is supposed to remember us. Every cast member wore a nametag, but when a customer referred to you by name it was disorienting. Sometimes, we are not so lucky. I had not yet been fully immersed in the art of customer service. Since I had only been a cast member for a little over two weeks, I had not yet learned the lesson of the constant smile. The constant smile is rule number two in the business, right after the customer is always wrong. Right now it is time for you the reader to forget the adage the customer is always right. The customer is never right. In fact, the customer is more than just wrong, they are dumb as well. When a potential customer walks up to the concession stand, a friendly greeting and a statement regardless of their order greet them. "Would you like to upgrade this order?" While phrased as a question, this is anything but. As employees we are taught to always increase profits. No theater, or any place that sells food makes money by the food; they make money by the container. All costs are measured in paper products, not by the food. For the Crown, overhead was based on a simple formula. One cup cost about thirty-five cents to make, and we sold that cup for $4. Employees were encouraged to sell combos because the corporate office had decided that this was the way to make money. Combo selling was written into the job description as well, right next to the wage competitiveness and the fashionable uniform. Cast members wore a blue shirt, khaki pants and black shoes. It made the environment predictable, and also made employees invisible. This wasn't to say that customers couldn't find us. The uniform stuck out in the crowd. It was as visible as Mick Jagger, James Dean, Carmen Electra and Robocop all rolled into one. But it also meant that we were invisible to them, the patron, even when there was a broom and butler in our hands, sweeping up the popcorn they left behind. The broom was short, with rope bristles that frequently fell out, victims of a seal that left much to be desired. Several of their fellow soldiers died on the battlefield of the lobby every time they were called for duty. Predictable was why the uniforms were the same, why the nametags were the same, why the Crown had five people named Chris or Alex on staff. The movie employee has to stay out of the way. Customers do not like uncertainty. They have the normal human response of flight because uncertainty is fear and fear is evil. This overarching theme played itself out during many different unrelated events. Customers walked up to the counter and flew back violently. "Dude, they finally got new candy!" Dude was also observing this phenomenon and after a second nod approvingly. "About damn time, don't you think? Milk Duds and movies go hand in hand, the new M&M's for a generation I think." At about this point the concessionist chimed in: "Would you like to try a combo today?" The customer was still stupid. For a while I tried to break the monotony of response to the customer. During the down time between the movie runs, I would walk around to the other side of the counter and ask John about why we were supposed to do that. "Think about it, there's no reason to get a combo. We make less money off them because of the charity and there's no discount to the customer." "That's the whole point though. A combo is not about a discount to the customer. Why do you think we don't put our prices for them up on the board? Individual bags of popcorn are there, our candy has a placard in front of each box. The reason is that customers get fooled. When they walk up to the counter, a customer sees the smiling employee and his mind goes blank. That's why you sell him a combo." Conversations with John usually ended at this junction. John was one of the new team leaders at the multiplex and under his careful eye popcorn got made and set out for the rushes. He didn't do much else, besides occasionally ask an unfortunate concessionist to go wash the side counters, or clean the butter machine. He constructed his sentences, as thoughts within themselves, not open to doubt, criticism, or additions. Conversation was a guerilla war for his mind, fighting boredom and the haze of smoke that has filtered from his lungs to his body. John was a chain smoker, and his break always had a ten-minute allotment to feed the beast for that day. Michael tried to pick up the pieces of crushed talk from the recently wiped tile and begin again. "I always try to sell the combos though, get more points for the team." I suppose I should add some background information here. Theaters are competitive by nature. Literally speaking, a theater tries to attract customers to come out and watch a movie for three hours. The business is cutthroat and painful to those that fail. Gerard's demise was the best example. For several years the theater had been struggling, but still managing to scrape by. Then all of a sudden it imploded on itself. One day no customer showed up. Jason, the guy that usually worked door, used to work at Gerard's and he told me all about it. "That first day, people were a little freaked out, and right they should have been you know. Shit when no people come into a movie when its 95 some degrees outside and humidity so high you sweat just standing, then a business has a problem. But the managers waived it off as a freak accident. 'Maybe we forgot to take down the closed sign,' bullshit like that. Then the same thing happened again. There were no cars in the parking lot, people were going to the WhataBurger across the street, but no one was coming to see a movie. It went on for a week until I just left." Jason worked three jobs around town and was the father of two little babies with two different women, so I trusted him to tell the truth about matters such as these. Deep down, that fear was within all of us, that one day, the managers would throw open the doors and no one would show up. All of the employees would sit there all day and not a soul would enter. The theater becomes a prison at times when no one is around, strapping us into an isolated world with just the people around you, who I never made an effort to know. That is fear. That is why we sold combos, because if we didn't try to get their business once, then that opportunity was gone. Matter destroyed because of a failure to ask about a combo. The Crown was scared. The Crown had received a message from on high. Our Moses had come down from the Mount with the 10 commandments of concessions in his hands and unlike the Jews the first time around, we accepted. Granted Jared, the district manager, was to be followed no matter what he sent us, but still, we accepted. The list was a framework of ideas designed to "continue," success for the Crown concession staff. Compiled from strategies across the country, the document was cut and edited to five bullet points that for one weekend, we were supposed to accomplish. "Hello everyone," Brad boomed as he walked into concessions. "I hope everyone has read the memo so that we are all on the same page. It is very important that all of you continue to try and sell combos and upsize." Part of the memorandum was the notion of suggestive selling or upsizing. The Crown and management were attempting to prove that the concept worked. Proof though seemed to be a bit of a stretch. In the history of modern science, the American public, and our management have failed to understand the history of proof. To them proof was that if all of us tried really hard more people bought drinks that could allow Calcutta to never suffer dehydration. I had a slightly different idea of the power of suggestive selling. Take nachos for instance. Suggestive selling allowed a choice, small or large nachos. If I felt like making a bigger profit, I cut out the small tray option. No customer noticed. "No problem Brad. I have already informed everyone about the memo and also the plan to counter our theft issue." John spoke carefully, choosing his words for maximum comprehension. They came out with a measured delivery that rivaled molasses in speed. Theft was a large problem at the Crown. It was part of the reason that the management had introduced security measures into the process. Of course, no one should have been surprised that theft was an issue. Less than a year ago, five employees had been caught taking candy and selling it outside of work for 50 cents per box. The scam was brilliant. They did not have to pay for the product and all of the money for the candy was profit. Beyond that, they were also able to undercut any other price in the area. All of them got greedy though. It started simply, just take a box here and there, because no one misses one box. They just go through a restock and properly spaced out, the theft goes unnoticed. As crimes go, embezzlement in small doses carries both the maximum amount of profit and a minimal chance of being apprehended. The system failed because one box became two and then two boxes became four. Management became suspicious and finally caught one of them in the act. I wasn't around but I heard that he gave up the rest in less than fifteen minutes. We used to have three managers, but the third was so crushed by the problem, she was a friend that she quit the same day. Since then the Crown had been stringent on enforcement of possible theft. This did not mean that crime had ceased. For the past month, the theater had been short between ten and fifty dollars on the total take each week and there were several discrepancies between the product sold and the product itself. That was partly why the memo existed in the first place. "Very good then. Everyone that has yet to read the memo please do so when you have a break today so that everyone has an understanding of company policy and our goals. Let's try to exceed them." Brad ended his statement on a positive and left through the left swivel door, almost slamming into Jason who had just walked in. I turned and walked over to the back counter to read the memo. It was two pages long and written in bullets. The font was slightly smaller than usual and there was a noticeable coffee stain on the top left corner. I picked it up and glanced down. The theater business is becoming even more cutthroat recently and because of this; the Crown Corporation has redoubled its efforts to maximize profit in various concession sectors by increasing the amount of product sold. To measure this efficiency, it is suggested that management compare any of the two following items sold (popcorn, nachos, or medium drinks) with last year's output. I stopped reading. Sometimes technical writing hurts my eyes so I skim instead. I looked down farther. To ensure maximum efficiency, all employees should fill the registers to an optimal level and management and shift leaders should fill in on the excess registers. I suppose that to reach upper management in a theater it isn't required that you write well, though my knowledge of company policy was not at all increase. I went back to the registers. State law mandates that all corporations allow their workers a break every five hours they work. This break needs to be at least twenty minutes in length and usually longer. Working more than five hours at a time is likely to get a company sued. The Crown followed this policy to the letter. I generally walked across the street to the grocery store and picked up some food. I was too lazy to make food at home and usually was willing to part with four dollars if it meant that I got a large lunch or dinner. Breaks happened on a strict schedule to ensure that the Crown continued to function. It could be expressed as a mathematical law where X is the number of employees. X<4 behind concessions=The Crown is fucked. Thanks to this detailed mathematical law, shift leaders wrote out the break schedule at the beginning of the day for all employees. I usually volunteered for the early break because I could read in peace. The Crown break room was well suited for reading. I had been trying to read more improving books and being alone with some turkey was well suited. Today I wasn't so lucky. Jason had already volunteered because he needed a smoke break. I had been foiled by nicotine. "Everyone listen up!" John yelled from over the popping kettle. "Each one of you has an assigned register today. Do not leave that register. Do not go on someone else's register. Any money that is short in that register comes out of the logged in employee's paycheck. Understood? Good. The assignments are right here." He pointed to a small piece of paper in his hand, which smelled of cigarettes. On it was a spreadsheet with each register labeled. I was assigned to register four. The concession stand numbered the registers from left to right in a way to make the whole system easy to understand. Register four only got business when there were rushes. I was happy with my assignment. Next to me was Katie. I liked Katie because Katie was funny. She was a blonde with a great figure that she flaunted continually. Her khakis were always tight to accentuate the fact that she had good legs. Those khakis were a good metaphor for Katie. She always accentuated the good parts of the people she liked. Frequently she commented on the great thoughts of her boyfriends and their ability to play sports. Also, she was wrapped around their hips very tightly very frequently. We went bowling once with some mutual friends. She bowled in socks and with a red ball because "It's so much luckier than the rest of them." She came with three of her friends and left with my ride. I was stranded but apparently he had a good night. I still liked Katie. "Hey, it's really hot back here." She generally had a problem with the heat. I thought it was because they made her tuck in her shirt. "It's not too bad today I suppose, did you work yesterday?" "No. Was it bad?" "Terrible, we didn't even have to mop because of the sweat." "Really?" Katie was rather gullible. She went back to helping a customer making sure to ask for a combo. That was bullet point number seven. The memo explained the reason. Customers are always willing to accept an authoritative voice for their specific order. Therefore all cast members (they always used cast members in memos) should ask if they would like a large combo because this will both give the customer a satisfying experience and give the Crown a winning sale. Bullet point seven was being enforced with the threat of being written up if a combo was not asked for every customer. This became a bit of a challenge because customers are always in a hurry to see their movie. I had to sneak the words "Would you like a combo," into the transaction in creative ways. "Hey, do you have a car here today?" Katie had turned back to me. "Ya I always do." The suburbs do not have the option of bus travel and I lived far enough away that a car was a viable option. My car was nothing to brag about. Peter talked about his constantly because he was into hot rodding. He had a Civic that he had modified to increase the speed, something about the transmission and moving wires. When he started talking about it, I mentally checked out. I have a 1994 Taurus, green in color and that's the biggest selling point of the car. There is no air conditioning that makes hot days almost unbearable. It also does not have an effective heating system so in the winter the car is miserable to drive in. The windshield wipers take almost thirty seconds to respond which means that rain can be very hazardous. I hadn't changed the tires since I bought the car for $600 because after depreciation, a tire change was worth more than the car. "Cool. Do you want to go get lunch together? I kind of want to go to Subway." "Sure." I liked Katie so going to lunch wasn't a bad idea. I also liked Subway. We left on break at around noon after a brief search to find her purse and in my car to find some change. Subway was generally crowded at lunch hour because it was situated at the half waypoint between Town Center and the Business Plaza. Both areas sent masses of people toward the chain, making it very profitable. The store had several plaques that proudly displayed this fact. Katie and I walked in and were greeted with a line of thirty people. In front of us was Kristen. Kristen was an usher and a poor employee. That was an accomplishment at the Crown because most of us were slackers to begin with. Being a bad employee at the Crown was like failing summer school, it was so hard to do that those who did wore it as a badge of honor. Kristen knew that she was a terrible employee, and did nothing to change that fact. Today though she seemed rather distressed. I thought it was because she left her cigarettes at home again. Kristen was a chain smoker. On days that she couldn't have more than four cigarettes she was a pain to work with. That was why she was usually an ushers, she stayed away from the rest of the employees. "Hey guys." She greeted us warily. "What's up? Did you forget your cigarettes again?" Katie inquired. "No. They're in my pocket. Why?" "You seem agitated." "Ha-ha." She laughed bitterly and then looked around the Subway, scouring each table until she was satisfied that no one important was around. "I'm really pissed guys. You know Peter and Ryan. Ok so I was doing a normal theater check today in 12 and Ryan was just sitting in a chair in the back looking at me. So I had some Skittles and I put one of them in my mouth and my walkie was on line six because I had just finished talking to Sarah and I hear Ryan's voice. He said 'Kristen just ate a Skittle.' I mean ever since last week they've been acting a bit shady to everyone you know but now I know why. They're spying on us to the managers." "You aren't serious?" Katie and I were shocked. Brad was a dick but this was crossing the line. Katie spoke up again, "You don't…" She looked around Subway again and continued, "You don't think they're paying them." "I bet they are. I mean Jason would you spy on someone?" "Hell no. That's not ok. But I don't think it's not possible. A lot of companies do this. It's probably because of the theft." "Still," Kristen continued now completely oblivious to the fact that other people were around. "I bet they are getting paid. That's not right." "Can you believe that? They're getting paid to spy on us. Peter is my friend. What the hell?" Katie was not even touching her ham sandwich. My turkey was also growing stale; something about the situation certainly wasn't kosher. "Now Kristen could be wrong about the whole thing." "She heard it on the walkie. God I can't believe this." We walked into the break room and were greeted with five other cast member's faces. "Dude what are you guys doing here?" Aaron said from his position on the floor. He had a Wendy's hamburger in his hand. "Where did you get Wendy's? I didn't know there was one around there." I asked. "It's just down the road man, over by Canyon." "Huh." "Ya." "Guys." Katie spoke up again. "We were just talking to Kristen and she said that some bad shit is going down." "What?" Jason had just walked in to the room. "I don't even want to talk about. Jason was there too, no not you, Jason S. tell him" "Ok. So Kristen was cleaning 12 and she ate a Skittle and she heard Ryan tell Brad that she had eaten one. He was checking up on her and it seems that Peter is in on it too." "Spying. Are you serious?" Aaron stopped eating his hamburger. "That's not cool man." Terrence got up out of his chair to throw away a taco wrapper. "Spying on the employees." "I'm going to text Peter about this." Katie was in full flow now, her anger matching her red laces. "Are you sure though? They could just have been checking up after Kristen." Tom had spoken up from the table. He had been at the Crown for about a year and had just been promoted to shift leader. It was widely known that if you could score weed for Tom, then you were exempted from tasks. I had no desire to score weed. "We should test it man. Just walk by Peter and be like, 'Hey I'm going to go eat some popcorn." Aaron laughed. "Ya dude. Turn the walkie to line 6." He made a pantomime of flipping stations. "Hello, anyone there? Is that you Ryan? Ya I'm just going to have some Skittles now. Keep it on the down low." "He just texted back. Peter said, 'I already told you about this and I don't want to talk about this." "What man? That doesn't even make sense Katie." "I'm texting him again. Really blatant this time so he gets it." "If it's true though, I'm quitting dudes. That's not ok that they have moles in the system." Aaron had grown really serious. Usually he was always smiling, but that expression had left the building completely. Jason spoke up, "I guess if this was like Communist China, then I'd be ok with it. But this isn't Communist China." "Well of course man," said Terrence, "If we were in Communist China this kind of behavior would be totally legit." He was also dejected. The "man" came out with noticeably less vigor and force than usual. The entire room had grown quiet and a gloom had fallen like fog and was enveloping all who walked in. Nine employees had heard the news and were gathered in a circle, making small conversation with their minds, contemplating the prospects of quitting. "We should all just quit together. Not even put in two weeks notice, just quit. Oh he's texted again." Katie opened up her buzzing phone and read, "I already told you about this so I don't get why you have this reaction and I don't want to talk about this now. Fuck that. I'm calling him." She pressed a key to access her phonebook and pressed his number. "Hello? Peter? Hey what's up with this whole spying thing? Don't play dumb? No I'm not talking about the driveway. No this isn't about the time in your car in the driveway, what?" We all burst out laughing. It was a deep laugh, united together more in alleviating the gloom we all felt than anything about Katie. Sarah walked into the room to grab something out of her locker. The break room also had four rows of lockers for employees to use. There was a sign in sheet on the door but it was an unwritten rule that managers always had access to the middle four lockers. The laugh ended abruptly and awkwardly with most of the staff looking at the shoes trying in vain to find the meaning of life in their laces. "What's wrong with you guys? She asked taking out a pack of Camel lights. The gray box projected a desert oasis, but I did not feel like escaping on the camel. Terrence spoke up, "We heard some weird stuff Sarah. Is it true that you have moles looking at the employees? Is this because of the theft stuff?" "What are you talking about Terrence?" "We heard that you were paying some people extra to report on employees actions." Katie forcefully interjected. "Is it true? Are there people spying on us?" "No, why would we do that? Management can see everything ourselves." I didn't believe her. She was moving the box back and forth. The camel was disappearing on each pass and I thought that an ostrich was more appropriate for the situation. Her weight shifted with each throw. "Do I have to get Brad to tell you this? Management is not paying off employees to spy on other employees. End of discussion." She walked out immediately, in her mind stopping the conversation. Thoughts though are not destroyed just because authority commands them to be extinguished. It raged through the Crown like a desert fire, no employee could escape its path and finally by the end of the hour, every employee was angered by the prospect. Ryan was oblivious as usual to others thoughts of him and he continued to walk around the theater, only increasing suspicion. At around four Brad approached concessions. "Hello everyone. I have heard that there is a rumor going around that the Crown is paying certain employees to watch over others. This, while a fun scenario to think about is simply fiction. We have no reason to pay extra for employees to do a job we are very capable to of doing ourselves. So remember this rumor is simply wrong." He turned and walked away, pleased with the misguided notion that he had ended the rumor. I knew better. Peter and Ryan had been acting a bit strange. John put perspective on it. "Maybe they are and maybe they aren't. If they are though, than Brad and I will have some words and those words will be expletives." "Ya it seems shady as hell and if it's true than Peter and I will have issues. Ryan is a tool so I can see him being a mole. At the same time though, spying and making sure we are actually doing our jobs seems sort of ok. I mean we are getting paid to do them correctly." No one much cared for Tom's spin. The rumor did not end there, but the rest of the day we paid special attention to where Peter and Ryan were at all times. Sometimes you can't be too careful, especially when you are being honest. It is important that all cast members do their jobs to the fullest extent possible so that every part of the theater can work in perfect order. Hopefully all cast members will complete their roles on their own, but if not some incentive should be provided and supervision for supportive reasons should be implemented. The movies are all about how you interpret them. "…No system is perfect after all when they are cheaters to screw it up. Look at America. Everybody hates us around the world. We have the third lowest approval rating. Do you know who's beating us? Sudan and Zimbabwe. That's it. Why because America portrays a life that simply is at odds with reality. Blonde movie stars and cowboys (who know are gay to add diversity) come together with ghetto culture personified on MTV to create our culture and for what? Culture is a cesspool where all of our thoughts go to die. Culture becomes pop culture that ceases into nothingness. How does that work? We are the richest country in the world and we can't even buy good music." Ryan was talking again. This was by no means a new occurrence. Ryan always talked. He loved the sound of his own voice, the deep syllables and the blending of consonants and vowels together. Unlike the other employees though, Ryan did not hold the same reverence for words. He was careless with them, throwing them onto the lobby tiles as if they were just a used paper napkin, something to sweep into a butler and whisk away. Ryan was not the only one throwing away words, but he was the only one who didn't treasure them. Ryan's lack of modesty towards conversation led him to breed unnecessary familiarity with everyone around him, even to those who had no interest in the conversation. He was ranting again. No one was paying attention. The concession stand was concerned with restocking. Product does not magically appear out of tubes in the floor, nor is it pumped towards the concession stand. The Crown had an entire room for extra food. Boxes of all different sizes congregated behind a purple gray door labeled "Private." They were a shining example of diversity, chips next to Skittles, popcorn tubs in line with five-gallon bags of Coca-Cola and Sprite. Few were allowed back behind the door, as employees had to reach shift leader before they were granted access. Shift leaders were themselves a diverse crowd. Their attitudes toward the theater differed greatly, though only a minority actually appreciated their jobs. The real difference was in the little areas. In the Restock Room, cup lids of different sizes stacked in a corner, their labels out on the left breast, shiny as a military medal. "See I was watching television yesterday and they played some jazz music on one of the classic channels. Some saxophone guy?" "Coltrane perhaps?" "Who?" Sometimes it's best to let the uninformed develop ignorant opinions. "Never mind." "Whatever Jason," Ryan continued his animated assault on the brainwashers and culture destroyers of America. "It was a documentary about him and he played a song which was brilliant and short. I don't know anywhere where that happens now, where songs are either brilliant or short. Clear Channel owns every single radio station in the country, except for K130." "K130 sucks." Beth had walked into concessions nametag in hand trying to pin the small item on a shirt that was as nervous as a three-year old getting his haircut for the first time. Her hair was up in a tired ponytail and she seemed disheveled for some reasons. My sister, who's two years older than I am, told me once that women put up their hair when they either haven't showered or didn't care enough to make it look pretty. "K130 is the last beacon of real music in this country. No one else plays music that has any relevance anymore. Instead we're force-fed rap music and Christina Aguilera with a little pop country thrown in on occasion. That is not music. That is destroying the culture that we live in." "Ryan, you watch Star Trek, don't tell me you know about culture or relevance anymore." "Of course I do. Star Trek is real culture, the writing is great, and the writers fleshed out characters to make them real. It has its own language." "The acting is terrible, the show is a poor excuse for science fiction that bastardizes the great tradition of Asimov and Huxley and is not culture. K130 plays the same tired play list of the "hit indie" band of the moment that has been on a major for two years and doesn't delve deeply into the album. Beyond that, since you are not in concessions, why the fuck are you back here?" "I'm on break." "Ryan your shirt is still on which denotes you as a worker. Now finish filling up your drink and get out of here. Jason let's go grab Sarah and do restock." Ryan finished draining pop out of one of the beasts in front of concessions and stomped off, knowing that he had been beaten in an odd battle of wills. Beth and Ryan were two polarizing personalities, but Beth managed to make people like her. There was a distinct dichotomy of both good and evil and right and wrong in the minds of cast members. Ryan was bad and evil, not because of anything inherently wrong with him, but because of how he carried himself. Beth didn't do what Ryan did and so was good and right, proof by negation as it were. We left out the left door from the back of concessions, pausing only to wait until Michael moved out of the way from where he was cleaning. The doors and cabinets were the task of the day. Each day, the shift leaders designated one task to be completed. Usually the tasks were more complex on the slower days, when the concessions stand was barren and employees were just standing around. The theater had adopted the policy that paying workers minimum wage meant that the workers had an obligation to always be busy. Brad enforced this rule with glee. He took pleasure out of finding disgusting tasks to occupy the stray cast member who had become complacent and stood in the middle of the stand with nothing to do. Kristen hated Brad. "What's up Mike?" "Beth, I thought you quit, your card was turned upside down." "I know John was being a dick." "Oh." There had been rumors that Beth had gotten a better job somewhere else. The movie theater had a fairly high turnover rate and this wasn't out of the question. Usually employees put in two-week notices, but sometimes they simply forgot or more likely purposely didn't. The latter left management in a precarious position. It upset the order and forced them to call in people to cover shifts. When I quit I don't think I'll put in a two-week notice either. He moved out of our way with a flourish, bowing perilously low to the floor as Beth walked past, a courtesy that a servant bestows a master, or a subject bestows a queen. Beth hit him on the shoulder. Leaving the back alley, I was ambushed by a wave of cool air. The Crown had an air conditioning system designed by the same people who created VCR manuals. Air conditioning was an unpredictable beast. On hot days, the shock created by sudden exposure threw patron backwards to their cars, returning with blankets and sweatshirts. Air emitted from the ceiling into each theater, but no theater was ever at the same temperature. Supposedly, the system cut down on the cost of air conditioning and heating, but I suspected more sinister motives. I followed Beth to the restock room as Sarah strolled up to us. She was relaxed and confident; I suspected a recent experience with nicotine. Sarah rarely strolled; usually she had a short, brisk walk. Her feet stayed on the ground while her legs moved as if magnetized. A person's walk tells a lot about their state of mind at the time. Sarah's tight walk was a performance of angst for the entire world as well as apathy. She could not be bothered to exert energy to actually move her legs across the room. Today though, her stride was full, letting her entire body move rhythmically onto the multicolored carpet that is normally found in hotel lobbies. The arms that normally hung unused and forgotten at her side were now first chair violins in her philharmonic stroll. "Do you have the list?" She motioned to Beth in the middle of her sentence as her hands opened up to reveal a weathered palm that was streaked with black pen. Her eyes had small markings on the edges indicating deep concentration. Sarah played Sudoko in the mornings and was pretty good. I watched her play once. The object of the game is simple. There are nine boxes within one box, a magic trick concealed as a game. Each of the nine boxes had nine more boxes for numbers. Boxes upon boxes upon boxes allowed you to fully concentrate because each new box had a discovery of more boxes. Inside each small box, the player placed a number one through nine so that each box was filled with all of these numbers. But it was not that simple, no fad is. The numbers had to be placed so that the big box had each number only once in every horizontal and vertical column. The game was easy to play, difficult to master and to me, boring to learn. Sarah had been awakened from a difficult game. "What are you doing?" Sarah's voice penetrated through me, stopping me with a Skittle Box in my hand. I did not bother to finish the transfer from one hand to the next and the box fell to earth. It crashed into the floor with a satisfying thud. Skittles sprayed out of the box like Special Forces hitting the desert, ready to face off against potential attackers. "Sorry." I said. "Only managers and shift leaders can touch the boxes. Brad's orders." "But I touch the boxes in concessions." "That's wonderful. I don't care. Since last week, only managers and shift leaders can touch the boxes." "Is this part of the new campaign against theft?" Beth replied while picking up the crushed box and assessing the damage to the three Skittles that had left their old home. "Yes. Management is just increasing accountability. Did you send Ryan out of concessions." "Yes he was distracting employees who were trying to work and he said he was on break. I was under the impression that employees were not allowed to wear their shirts or be behind concessions on break or has that changed with the new theft policy as well." Her tone was biting, but was blunted somewhat by her facial expression. Beth did not like Ryan and that fact was well known to the management. They were generally placed on opposite sides of the theater whenever possible. "Both Ryan and Peter have volunteered to test out the possibility of twenty minute breaks. For the last several months, it seems that employees have been increasing the breaks by five to ten minutes and I think we know why?" Sarah looked into Beth's front pocket where the Marlboro logo was clearly visible. Beth adjusted the pack so that the title disappeared into her shirt pocket. "Beth," continued Sarah, "It is important that every system we put in place is actually followed to the letter." "Yes Sarah I understand, John says that we need some more Twix bars and a few more packages of M&M's. We also need cups and lids." "Beth. I have the list, I passed first grade, which means I know how to read." "True, but you are also lazy, so I'm double checking that you got all the information." "Well the list is complicated." "Exactly, and I didn't want you to get confused because it's only about 10:30." "10:36, and you are thirty-five minutes late today. This is the second time you have been late in the last month. We need everyone here on time to effectively serve customers." "Are you going to tell Brad?" "Haven't decided yet" No system is perfect. I looked down at my hand and noticed that it was bleeding where the box had slid through. The blood was coming out in a tiny stream that created a boundary throughout my palm, dividing the lower half from the upper like some peace agreement. The blood was red but stained with sweat to produce a brown hue when the stream moved farther along, water picking up the properties of what it swallows. The contrast was striking, blood and water, the breath of life and the Holy Spirit, the salvation of our world and a symbol of destruction. Even through the differences were noticeable, both substances came from the same source. Blood normally made me squeamish, but I was curious today. I stared at my hand in more depth, making out the small square building blocks of skin that stretched and contracted as one, the first assembly line, each one only as strong as the other. The blood had shattered the world around them, violently forcing a new set of challenges to deal with. Beth eyed my hand as well. "It's blood. You've seen it before. Get a Band-Aid when we get back to concessions and wash that out." "Is it actually a Band-Aid?" Sarah asked Beth. "I think so. You do know what I'm talking about right? The thing that goes over cuts." "That's a bandage Beth, a Band-Aid is a brand of bandage that became popular so culture stole the name and changed its meaning. A Band-Aid is now a symbol of healing, but not of a corporation." "Thanks for the history lesson. Can I go smoke when we finish this?" "Not if you get snippy again." She closed the door as Beth exited pushing a cart loaded with various boxes that mixed intermittingly. The labels were all the same though, purifying the different boxes so that there was some commonality between them. Sarah strolled off. "They're spying on us." I said. "Who are?" Beth was confused. I understood because she had been gone the day before. "Ryan and Peter. Sarah said that they weren't but I am pretty sure they are." "No they aren't. If they were than all of us would be. Brad doesn't single out the shift leaders. Besides, Ryan may be a tool, but if he were a spy the management would have to talk to him and they don't want to." Beth had a way of easing fears through her voice. It crackled at the end of long streams of words like an antique radio. The crackling was more a sign that she smoked than anything else, but it had a calming feeling to me. "You're sure about this?" "Yes. Grab the cups and put them away now, I'm heading off for a smoke." "I thought you had to bring them back to concessions." "Are you going to steal anything?" "No." "Good. I'm going to smoke." No system is perfect, especially when there are honest people like Beth to screw it up. "It's hot as the Devil's armpit back here man." Terrence had walked in to the stand and was realizing what those of us who had been there since opening already understood. It was hot. We are used to hot at the Crown, but this was ridiculous. For three days in a row, the thermometer had read a number well above 90 degrees and reasonable living standards. The popcorn was sweating to think nothing of the people. If one looked hard enough, it was possible to see suspended particles of popcorn salt that had been trapped by condensation. "No shit man." Jason responded from behind the kettle. "If you think it is hot over there, you should trying making and bagging some popcorn." The kettle itself was actually two different kettles. To be exact, one should call the place the "Kettle area," but not many of us were specific during the summer. Summer heat does that to a person. It makes the most intelligent, coherent, and engaging individuals turn into gibbering idiots, because their vocabulary had shrunk to just four words: like, um, and you know. One kettle cooked at a higher temperature than the other. The problem with this was that popcorn became a guessing game. In customer service, guessing is simply not an option. Let a batch out too soon and all popcorn turns into mush, soggy and overflowing with vegetable oil. But woe to he who dumps a batch too late, for then the entire 20 oz of popcorn seed is ruined, its scarred shells bearing remnants of burns and the bubonic plague. Jason was finding it difficult to concentrate because of the heat. The kettles were sending of wave after wave of blistering warmth in a five-foot circle around the kettle. I had positioned myself in the far corner of the concession stand where the heat was not as painful. Pain was really the only expression. Several employees had left to help the ushers or trade off taking and ripping tickets to avoid it, but to no avail. The heat permeated throughout the theater like a fine perfume, and when Terrence arrived at six o'clock, it had ensconced itself in every crack of the Crown. Peter was on break from door and the lobby was experiencing little traffic. Since Peter was on break box office was ripping the tickets to keep records. The Crown always kept records of the number of tickets sold. Brad supposedly counted them too. A customer with dark brown hair and a gray shirt walked down the end of the counter as I began to count the bills in my register. The theater mandated that every bill have its face to the left of the register. At any one time, there were at least fifteen to twenty different bills that were not in my register. Managers usually were not pleased but had recently become very irate. They were known to do this, Ben especially. Managers were generally very friendly people. I liked them because they usually had a couple of decent jokes or put themselves in humorous situations. One time Ben was the check off manager for close and was in a very bad mood, though he was wearing his best suit. I had always found this odd because suits, especially good ones, make people happy. They are sign of power and of self-confidence. The suit was blue with white stripes that were reminiscent of a 1930s gangster. Ben had on a power tie as well; something straight out of a Land's End catalog that he usually wore when the district manager came. When we first saw it, the entire staff became one single cleaning machine. There was not a hint of dust anywhere in the concession stand. He had fooled us and since then wore it a variety of times to the point where we always had to be a bit on edge. When Ben got angry, he pursed his lips constantly. They made a smacking sound each time he began a sentence. I hated that noise; a gun shot that flew right through your brain, leaving a person in an utter state of paralysis. He walked into concessions and began yelling immediately. "There are several counters that haven't been wiped in at least an hour. Can someone please answer a stupid question? Anyone? Anyone?" We stood in silence, waiting for the next move. Actually making a move to answer him was out of the question. That would have only led to further problems. "People. I guess this will be a question for the general staff then as opposed to a specific person. Here it is. Please be advised it is stupid." He began smacking vigorously; making a percussive pause between each word as his volume began to rise as well. "Why. Has. No. One. Been. Doing." He took a step forward for greater emphasis. "Any." There was pile of salt on the ground that was supposed to be covering water that Ben completely ignored. "Work." His left foot came into contact with the puddle and buckled, sending him to the floor. Tiles released their own concoctions of popcorn and water onto his best suit. The stripes changed from white to a soggy gray and the suit itself had gone limp from the shock of water. Ben's hair was full of different particles. There was not a sound among the employees. All of us were deadly still waiting for next outburst of fury from Ben. A voice broke the calm. "Would you like a combo with that today?" "Clean the fucking side counters." Ben said getting up to wash off his suit, "They better not be like this when I get back." The lady at the end of the counter broke the daydream. "I just put four dollars on this at the box office. It should take the money." Her voice was calm and patient, like a mother explaining to her son why he can't have a cookie. It was mildly condescending. Terrence responded, "I'm sorry ma'am. It is telling me that there is no money on this card." He was a little distressed by how the conversation was beginning to turn out. Customer service was Terrence's specialty when they were happy. He could laugh and joke and "cool man," anyone who came in. The problem was when they were not thrilled to begin with. "You don't have the money? Are you sure? Because I just put four dollars there at the box office." It is always interesting how when a situation is not going well people seem to repeat themselves. Perhaps the reaction is one that is comforting to a person, reinforcing what they already knew and keeping them calm, like counting to ten and taking a deep breath. They go through the motions on the road to normalcy, and much like driving, going through the motions usually leads to a traffic accident. "No ma'am, this card has no money on it right now. I can call a manager if you like." "That would be a good idea because I just put four dollars on the card at the box office." I wonder if Neville Chamberlain kept repeating "peace in our time," after that collapsed? Ben came over from the service desk to the stand. "Yes? Is there something I can do for you?" "Yes there is. This card is not reading on the machine but I just put four dollars onto it." "Ma'am if the card isn't being read by the machine then it probably is the fault of the card." "It's the card's fault that the machine isn't reading my money?" She was beginning to grow agitated and while it was hot, the sweat lines down the side of her face were not from the heat. "Are you telling me that there is nothing you can do for me here? That's it the card won't read. This is bullshit." In the hallway behind concessions is a sign about dealing with unruly customers. Basically there are four rules. Rule number 1: Always remain calm so there is a constant presence throughout the conversation. Ben was following rule number 1. "I can call box office and see how the transaction worked." "But that is not going to get my money back is it? No calling the box office won't matter. Do you expect those idiots up there to understand this problem? They sold me the wrong ticket twice, first for the wrong movie and then the wrong time and they're going to remember a transaction that happened ten minutes ago? They couldn't remember information two seconds after it was given to them!" Rule number 2. Always remember the customer is right, no matter what they say to the contrary. The goal of mitigating any crisis is to understand where the other party is coming from. I was taught that in peer mediation. That strategy didn't work then and did not work here. "I understand your concern. I can call over the general manager." "Is this really what a problem is to you people. It is just a hot potato that you can pass among the various levels of bureaucracy? I just want my four dollars back." "No. Your problem is important to us and I will call the general manager to see if he can rectify the situation." "Are you incapable of doing so yourself? Is that not part of your job description? Does the general manager have some great power that you as a simple grasshopper have not yet learned?" Sometimes rule number 2 can be very hard to follow. Ben bit his lip. "No, but he is able to access the transaction statements." He spoke into the walkie-talkie, "Hey Brad. There's a customer who needs attention about an irregularity with her card." Rule number 3. Always smile when dealing with a customer because it shows that you are interested and engaged but calm. Calm is very important with anger. It is a cold shower, which seemed like a good idea at the time. "Hello. How are you doing today?" Brad had already begun radiating his used car salesman persona before he and the customer had made eye contact. The entire concession stand had now paused to watch the stand off. I half expected tumbleweed to whisk by in the interval. "How am I doing today? How do you think I am doing? You would not have to be here if I was doing great. I'd be watching my movie." Brad smiled in a failed attempt to defuse the situation. "What are you smiling for? There's nothing to smile about here. I came to your movie theater to watch a movie and spend a nice afternoon. Instead, the box office could not get my ticket right, the concession stand won't read my card and I have four dollars that has just disappeared or been kidnapped on the way to my card because apparently it does not exist." Brad tried to bring the situation back under control. "I can give you a refund ma'am on your ticket and movie pass for any date and time if that will suit you." "What will suit me is making sure that my four dollars comes back onto this card." "Let's go to the service desk and try to work this out?" "Try? I thought that you have been trying for the last five minutes." They walked over to the service desk with Brad in the lead and the woman following. I got a better look than I had the first time. To me, having a second look is always an opportunity for learning that is not normally given. God's way of giving you a second chance I guess. A lot of the times, we don't even realize what a momentous achievement it is. She was wearing black sweat pants that were cut off like capris just below the knee. They had "HOTT" written in cursive on the seat, which was ironic. Her hair was split and parted down the middle, held back by her ears and several hair clips. Even though she had moved to the service desk, the conversation was no different. "I was in here just about four minutes ago. Are you not going to do anything about this?" Brad had appeared to open up box office records from the last hour. "Ten minutes ago?" "Yes it was ten minutes ago." "Can you come point out the employee that issued you your ticket?" "Fine." They walked out to the box office. The Crown was set up so that the box office was set up a faux front. There was the building itself and then inside the doors was another building. The architects thought the idea contributed to the perceived nostalgia of the building. Separating the cast members from the customers was a thin sheet of Plexiglas. Employees in box spoke through microphones that had constant distortion of various degrees. During the winter, the microphones would be almost completely useless because the cold seemed to freeze the wires, preventing sound from traveling across them, like an avalanche over a highway. James came out to the service from the hidden door in the wall. The architects' thought this helped make the walls consistent, we thought it was cool that the wall opened up. Brad and the customer came back around. "Did you put money on this woman's card?" "No sir. I don't remember anyone asking to put money on the card." "Did you give her the ticket to the wrong movie?" "No sir. " "Ma'am can I see your ticket?" The customer had begun to shift her weight from side to side nervously. "I threw it away." "Well ma'am I cannot give you a refund unless you can show proof of purchase. Did you keep the receipt?" "He did not give me receipt." "Then he couldn't have sold you a ticket." Brad had become visibly annoyed by the customer's behavior. While we disliked him intensely, employees in the concession relished their front row seats at what was fast becoming the best show in the theater. "I don't believe that you bought a ticket ma'am. To be honest I think that you were trying to get a free movie and concessions for free and I do not appreciate this type of behavior" The customer was dumbfounded. She feigned anger. "I can not believe you would accuse me of trying to rip off your theater because it is poorly managed so that these situations occur." "Ma'am these situations do not occur unless one of my employees does something wrong or a person is trying to skirt the system. None of my employees did anything wrong which leaves the latter. I would appreciate it if you would leave the theater and not return. The door is that way." Rule number 4. When finished resolving the conflict extend a hand to show appreciation for a customer's business and patience. "It's as hot as the devil's ass back here." "You've changed the phrase already Terrence." "It's gotten hotter." (RIGHT HERE I NEED A CONFLICT BETWEEN MANAGEMENT AND CUSTOMER PROBABLY BECAUSE THE PICTURE DIDN'T WORK. OR MAYBE THE GUY WHO WAS COLD AND ASKED FOR A SWEATER.) It must have been a Friday afternoon in late June. The concession stand was radiating heat to the rest of the building. We had two fans going on both sides trying to cool off the shift leaders behind the kettle. As hot as it was by the registers, there was no comparison to being behind the kettle. The theater had decided that to save on money air conditioning only was pumped into the actual theaters. Everywhere else had to deal with the normal air. To me it seemed like a sly way to get people into the seats faster than normal and to keep the lobby clear for the next rush. Around 2:30, we were scheduled to receive an onslaught, or at least a steady trickle of customers looking to be shaded from the dry summer heat. Beth was ushering at that point and she was working with Ryan. Ryan was the Crown's very own annoyance. He was knowledgeable about every part of the theater and that was the problem. Ryan upset the hierarchy of employees on a constant basis. His basic attitude towards other cast members was a mixture of patronizing and scorn at every decisions. All the shift leaders hated them, and informed new employees to disregard any order he might give. Beth particularly disliked him. Even though she had been working less than a month, Beth had learned a deep-seated resentment of people like Ryan. Ryan had spent the morning in concessions and only because an employee scheduled to usher had called in sick were we able to seek relief. He immediately began giving orders to Beth, which she made a point to tell everyone about. "I've cleaned the lobby twice today. Twice man. What is his problem?" We had the same question she did. The rush had just died down and the theater was empty, save for a few kids messing around the arcade machine with the claw that drops down into a pit of stuffed animals and always comes up empty. I had watched them for three minutes drop several quarters that could have gone into charity into that game, hoping that the odds may one- day change. For now though, the house was collecting their change left and right, leaving them cursing and fishing in pockets for several more portraits of George Washington. Feeling thirsty, I pressed the Logout button on the register and made my way to the hallway behind concessions, where we hid the refrigerator that contained hot dogs and our drinks. The Crown allowed us to have as much pop as we wanted if we brought our own container and most employees made use of this. I threw open the door and turned and caught the end of a rant that Beth was throwing at Ryan. Every word was an icicle and most seemed to be piercing his protective bubble. He appeared to have been taking this for about a minute and some words flew back at me. Lobby, cleaned, and various expletives came out clearly while the rest of them seemed to evaporate as soon as they left her mouth. Ryan finally snapped. "Back Off!" he said, and came at her, with rage that had never been seen by us before. Some part of him had snapped for no reason and every decision that he made brutally reflected that. The scene became a blur. I remember that he swung his left hand back and brought it down violently to her shoulder. She collapsed backwards into the boxes of Diet Coke, which were stacked in rows by date to use in the towers. Several cases fell to the sticky tile floor, making a screeching sound as the five-gallon containers flopped around inside the boxes. Nick, another employee, had walked out right as Ryan reared back and grabbed him immediately. I rushed over to Beth, who had gotten up and shot fire and brimstone at Ryan. She made a run at him, but I held her back. Words became a fog around the combatants as both of them attacked each other with the only projectiles that they possessed. Then it was over. The managers were back and had sent both away. Statements had to be filled out as each eyewitness gave his own version of the story. Ryan shuffled around the lobby, nervous as a five year old before the first day of kindergarten. At the end of the day though his job was safe. Beth was not as lucky. She left just over a month after she came leaving behind cigarette butts and customers. The employees learned something though. As Ryan walked around fearing unemployment, I knew that the Crown was the only thing he had, the only thing that was real. His life, his heroes, even his friends were fantasy, but the Crown was his job. He was scared. Beth wasn't. She walked out of the theater and marched to her car, leaving only to strike up a Marlboro with her lighter. She understood her role and the job, even if she was no longer being paid to do it. The pain in her shoulder was all she needed to show us as proof. It was the only thing that could prove she had been here. It was our own connection to her. They clean up the cigarette butts, but that shoulder proved that she was real. Even though she was leaving and collecting her last paycheck, it seemed like a victory. She beat the job, and she beat Ryan, and she beat the Crown. Wouldn't we all like to be so lucky? NEED POPCORN MACHINE BREAKING ANOTHER STORY CLEANING THE PARKING LOT POT AS ECONOMIC TOOL CONTINUE THE POSSIBILITY OF A SPY IN THE ORGANIZATION POSSIBLE ROBBERY? FIVE PROJECTORS BREAKING DOWN IN ONE DAY AND THE HELL THIS CAUSES