TALES FROM BEHIND THE POPCORN COUNTER

 What Would You Do for $4.25/hour?

Background/Job Description

In the early 1990s I was a freshman in college, and I got a job working at a small movie theater in Minneapolis. Bonus: it was only a few miles from campus, so walking distance…and not even uphill. It was in a very cool historic area of the city that was considered the birthplace of Minneapolis, established along the banks of the Mississippi River in the 1860s. The original cobblestone still existed in places and the street the theater resided on was actually called Main Street. Old photos exist of a time when people rode horses and carriages down the cobblestone road. In fact, next door a saloon was the first establishment there. Inside the theater, in a back hallway you can still see the original exterior brick from the saloon with a painted advertisement of a burlesque dancer. The saloon is still there, though now it’s just a regular old bar and restaurant.

The theater, while housed in this historic building, was part of a large chain that required us to wear a white button-down shirt, black bowtie, and a black suit coat with the theater logo on it. The kicker was we were not issued our own jacket. We had to use one from a stockpile. There was a closet just near the entrance of the theater where a handful of various sized jackets in various states of cleanliness hung on hangers. We were to simply take one of them and put it on during our shift. We could not take it home with us. I still shudder at the thought of slipping on one of those greasy jackets. Some of them were so tight, you couldn’t button it, and some were so big they wouldn’t stay on while you were shoveling popcorn, while others were so stinky, you wanted to die. And don’t even think about putting your hand into the pockets. Some of the longtime employees had been given their own jackets. Those lucky, lucky bastards. Thankfully, after I’d been there for maybe six months or so, they did away with those ratty things, and we all got our own t-shirts that we could bring home and wash. What a treat!

When I got the job, I was nineteen years old. I remember plain as day that I was paid minimum wage at the time, which was exactly $4.25/hour. As far as benefits went, we were allowed to admit two people into the theater for free during each shift we worked. That was likely not a policy of the big chain, but rather, the manager was tired of people sneaking in all the time. We had a log sheet and we had to fill it out if we had guests coming, like a VIP +1 type of a deal. Needless to say, I suddenly seemed to have a lot of friends calling me up all that time. I wasn’t sure how this perk benefitted me so much, but whatever. In addition to the two free admissions per shift, each employee was allowed to eat unlimited popcorn and drink unlimited fountain soda while on break. We had to use these tiny paper cups for said purposes. Think Dixie cups, only marginally larger, but the same strength. After a few servings, they would start to dissolve in your hands. Regardless, you could refill those tiny paper cups as many times as you wanted. And I did. I was a starving college kid. Popcorn and soda were often my breakfast, lunch, and dinner depending on the shift I worked. I can tell you exactly how it feels to have a stomach only full of buttered, salted popcorn and twenty tiny Coca-Cola shots. It’s a specific feeling that I’ve never had before or after my time there. It’s not great. Not at all.

The theater had five screens. Two lower and three upstairs. Because it was the nineties, they were still reel-to-reel projectors. The assistant managers’ job was to change the reels on the longer movies. There was also a house manager whose job it was to sit in the back office and count the money. They never ate popcorn. They got food from the saloon next door. Expensive food. Real food that came on an actual plate and was served with a side of fancy garlic mayo. They would sit in their glass castle and eat right in front of us while our stomachs protested, roiling with a disgusting combo of fake butter and sugary soda.

The rest of us schmucks were assigned rotating jobs of ticket sales, concession, ticket taker, or usher.

I was hardly ever assigned to the usher position because I was a skinny female, and one time I did have to pull a few rowdy teenagers out and ask them to stop talking after three complaints. It turned out they were not just your average loudmouths. They were entitled teenage loudmouths. They were the children of a well-known politician. They let me know that if I made them leave, there would be hell to pay. I told them I didn’t want them to leave. I wanted them to shut up so other people could hear the movie. I didn’t want to pay any hell. I wouldn’t have been able to afford it. Did I mention I only made $4.25 an hour?  

Besides the one incident, being an usher mostly involved standing around waiting until a movie let out so you could clean out all of the disgusting garbage people left behind, which was obviously a lot of popcorn buckets and empty soda cups. But I also collected buckets of half-eaten chicken, apple cores, hats, mittens, wallets, keys, shoes, retainers, empty alcohol bottles, knives (butter and killer), hair clips, earrings, and, yep, you guessed it, folks! USED CONDOMS. How much would somebody have to pay you to pick up and toss out a used condom with your bare hands? Is it four dollars and twenty-five cents, by chance?

Taking tickets was the easiest job. You simply ripped the ticket in half, put the stub into the box, and told customers if their movie was on the lower level or upstairs. In between showings, you were supposed to clean the floors with the weird push broom thingy. It was always jammed with popcorn and rarely worked. The only other thing the ticket taker was responsible for was the bathrooms. That wasn’t super fun, but mostly it only required replacing toilet paper rolls. If it was anything worse, we would just stick out the “Out of Order” sign and tell people to use the restrooms in the old saloon.

The ticket seller was often assigned to a more seasoned worker because it required handling a lot of cash, giving change quickly, and being professional. Of course, there were some people who had worked there for years and were never assigned to that position. The other piece of that job was to answer the phone and change the outgoing movie recordings. It was harder than it sounds, and it sounded dumber than you thought it would. Every time.

The worst job to be assigned was obviously working the concession stand, yet I kind of liked it because it kept you the busiest, and that made the shift go by more quickly. It also required a lot of math. That part I didn’t care for as much. At the start of the shift, you had to count each bucket, cup, and item of candy in your station and then make sure the money in your till matched the number of remaining buckets, cups, and candy boxes at the end. One time, on a crazy Saturday night my till was $500 short at the end of my shift. I was freaking out until the manager remembered that he’d pulled money from my till when I wasn’t looking to do a drop into the safe, which was something they did occasionally on busy nights so there wasn’t too much cash in your till. They were supposed to leave a piece of paper in the till to let you know, but that did not happen. I had to wait until he recounted the entire safe at close to make sure. He came up $500 ahead. But I was sweating bullets in the meantime, which I’m sure just contributed to the funk inside those communal jackets.

That was the worst part about concessions, well, that and dealing with the general public. I cannot tell you the number of times I was told to smile by a middle-aged man. It always seemed to happen on a busy weekend shift when the line for popcorn was out the door and two other people called in sick. Those dudes were lucky I didn’t spit in their soda. I had a general comeback I used, which was basically something like, “I don’t smile for $4.25 an hour.” That usually shut them up. Not always. Sometimes they wanted to keep trying to win me over. I don’t know why. I heard things like, “well, maybe a date with me would change that?” (Definitely not, but here’s your Goobers, Loser.) Or “Oh, come on! It’s Saturday night!” Yep. Saturday night, my feet hurt, I’m coated in a layer of popcorn butter and somebody else’s BO from this heinous jacket I’m wearing, my friends are at a party right now, and I’m MAKING FOUR AND A QUARTER HOUR. And that’s before taxes, so move along, Douche Bag.

These were the things that formed me. At the end of a shift, I walked the city streets for two miles back home, sometimes after midnight, uphill this time, usually alone. I saw things. Such things as sewer rats the size of a small child. I carried mace. I was probably pretty dumb, but also very aware of my surroundings. And I was lucky. I never had to spray that mace at anyone or anything. Was it worth minimum wage? No. Probably not. Was it also a blast? Sometimes. I made good friends at that job. Some of them I’m still in touch with. A few of them are no longer here. They were not so lucky. I learned crucial life lessons there. I also accrued some pretty funny, weird stories along the way, and since I’m a writer, I thought it would be fun to share them here. I hope you’ll come back for more.  

Some such stories include:

Celeb Sightings (who came to see their own film?)

Firings—how to lose a crappy job in the weirdest ways.

The Stripper Among Us.

The Coconut Oil Controversy.

Are you Dana Delany?

Is Butt-Wiping Part of my Job Description?