No Appreciation at the Movies

I've never asked for pity from anyone. If that is the impression I give off, I'm sorry. The best reasoning behind it is that it's a by-product of how I act.

But this time, things are different. This isn't a cry for pity but a plea for consideration towards those of us in the work force that have to suffer through rough days of work just to make sure those of you who are out and about to relax can relax.

Apparently, most of you have forgotten about those people out there that try their damnest to make sure your dinner is served to you as fresh from the kitchen as possible after slaving away during the three hour lunch rush that overflowed over into the afternoon. Or in my case, there are people out there that will never read this blog entry that blame me for not having enough bottle water in stock four hours into a six hour rush. It's bad enough people assume I know why we only have so-many things happening at the same time.

And I feel like I'm insulting them when I honestly say that I don't know the answer to that question and direct them to my manager working that shift. The managers don't get chewed out as much as us expendable employees, who are at the bottom of the ladder. They generally get suggestions. I, on the other hand, get blamed for not moving the line fast enough and for a guest missing 20 minutes of their movie. So many times I wanted to say "You don't have to get popcorn and drinks if your movie is that important to you." But, again, that would be insulting the guest.

Those few out there that realize how difficult we service employees have it during these rushes know very well it isn't our fault. We are just following orders. But, like I said, there are very few of those people out there. If I had to apply a statistic to this, I would say the odds of finding said person would be 1 out of 50 guests per hour in my experience. And when you service numbers well into the 3,000+ arena, you would think that would increase my odds. Mathematically, yes. Socially? Not really.

When people go to the movies, it is all about them. If their movie experience isn't close to tolerable, the blame falls on me, the guy behind the counter trying to get you your popcorn and drink while not trying to crash into other people or slip on that butter slick that somehow create itself 20 orders ago.

There are some days where during these rushes I wish I could fall and hurt myself. Not break a limb or anything, but definitely something that would cause me to close my line down for 20 minutes and get the attention of about 100 people. Either that, or we honestly run out of stock and have to announce the concession stand is closed for the day. The worse case scenario is that a manager has to announce that labor laws require their employees to take a break in the middle of a never-ending rush so they have to close the concession stand for 40 minutes, but I can only wonder how a lobby full of already impatient and grouchy movie-goers would take such an announcement. If they got upset, I would just fire back saying "Look, corporate doesn't pay me overtime. In fact, they hate it when I get even a minute overtime, so unless you want to pay me extra on top of your popcorn and drink price, I'm on break." But that would be insulting the customer.

I hate how this is my first post of the new year. It's an insult to those of you who read this regularly.