Money on My Mind

I got to go home early from work today. I found out when I was waiting for my break to end from my manager. The manager that told me this even got to clock out of his shift and go home. Why?

Given the current economy, there is a clear slow down in people going out to entertain themselves or eat at their favorite mall hang outs. By the time 15:00 rolled around today, we had four people working the theatres to clean them up when it was clear we didn't need that many this morning. One was let go at 15:00, and I technically was clocked out 45 minutes later when I took my break.

The thing is, you couldn't tell that we were technically slow for the opening weekend for the second Narnia movie if you just looked at the floor traffic. Guests were lining up for popcorn, walking to theatres, reserving seats in the best spots they could. Everything looked normal at a glance.

When you actually sit down and look at each area of the theatre, you then see just how slow we were. When I clocked out, there were only three lines for popcorn. Each were only four people deep. When I left the movie I went to see that afternoon, we had four lines for popcorn that were only six people deep each. The line for tickets were only two groups deep when I clocked out. Two hours later after my movie, it was just barely rounding the bend, which can hold ten people comfortably.

We even had our second concession stand open, and when I left for my break, I found out that they only made a total of seven sales since they opened the theatre at 08:45 this morning for the 09:15 Narnia!!

I never really liked money or the idea of capital. I've needed it, sure, but that doesn't mean I like the idea of it. But today, I couldn't help but thinking about the economy. There I was after my movie sitting in the burger joint at the corner of where I work enjoying probably the most expensive burger they offer on their menu (mostly because it has the leanest cut of beef and I'm trying to eat better) wondering if next week's opening of Indy 4 will be as slow. My managers actually expected Narnia to pull in major crowds on Saturday, but when I left, they barely broke 1,000 guests for the day. And this was as the 19:00 rush was happening! (To provide some perspective, we would normally have three times that much by that hour for a major block-buster opening weekend.)

My mother said recently the President was on TV urging people to not cut on doing fun things like eating out or going to the movies simply because the economy is going down the tubes. It would hurt the work force of the country who are performing the jobs that everyone takes for granted like cleaning up after you when you leave a movie or cooking you a steak in ways you could never do by yourself in your own home kitchen. I know what he's trying to do, both politically and tactfully. He's trying to make sure that people like me keep their jobs as well as generate a demand for people like my managers to hire more employees.

I don't think it's working. But I'm not worried. I'm not one of the 30 new people that were just hired in the past two weeks.