Jonathan (ジョナサン)

I *LOVE* MIDNIGHT SHOWINGS

    Well today has been an interesting day for me. I suppose I'll start with a little disclaimer of sorts. I do my job understanding what can happen and what I'll have to deal with, so while today was annoying, it is all part of the job and I'm willing to do it and put up with it because it is my job. That doesn't quite sound how I wanted it to come out, but basically, the following is what my day was, and hopefully it won't sound too ..... complaining, because in the end it wasn't too bad, or something.

    I suppose I should technically start with yesterday (being Monday, since fiscally for me it's still Tuesday). Monday my mother came back from her mother's with my sister and her two sons after visiting for the weekend. My brother-in-law came up later in the day, as he did not have the weekend off to visit as well, so he could visit some with us and then take his wife and sons home the following day (fiscially today). So anyways, they were here, and then that night after people were pretty much going to bed I went over to my friends' apartment to hang out with everyone. We played a few games, talked, and then went to IHOP and had some food. I went to bed finally, deciding to fall asleep at the apartment instead of driving home and going to sleep. I set my alarm to wake me up in 4 hours time so that I could wake-up and be back home late morning/early afternoon just before my sister and her family left. I managed to make it over there when I had planned, about 10:40'ish. Unfortantely my sister and her family had already left due to other circumstances, so I was unable to hug them and say goodbye. After finding this out, I tiredly went up to my room and decided to finish my sleep.

    I managed to sleep for another 3 maybe 4 hours. I cooked myself some eggs, then headed back over to my friends' to relax before taking on my shift at the movie theatre for the midnight showing of Spiderman 2. I ended up playing Final Fantasy XI with Adam, who had just started up his account again. It was a good time, and I enjoyed it quite a bit because I actually got to kill "monsters" with a friend, which was the reason I started playing the game in the first place. Finally 8 o'clock rolled around, so I drove home, took a shower and got ready for work.

    Now work began. It had been slow for most of the day. When I got there, a somewhat large line was up in box office, so I jumped on a register and helped several customers, finding out that 2 of our movies were already sold out for the evening. I thought this was weird, but they were popular movies, and I didn't think too much about it. It ends up that one of my "esteemed" colleagues had "sold out" these two movies on the chance that we would need the auditoriums for Spiderman 2 that night. Another manager and myself had planned to only worry about other auditoriums as the need arised, instead of doing what had been done. We ended up turning away probably about 100 people, or close to 900 dollars (rough estimate on both box office and concession stand [both were adult movies so concession sales would have been higher]) in sales because of this, it frustrated me a little bit, but I suppose it happens. At the point in my shift that I found this out, we had only 173 sales for the midnight showing, which is basically half of the auditorium it was going to be playing in.

    The rest of the night, up to 30 minutes into the midnight show actually playing, ran smoothly. We got free Chick-fil-a in exchange for letting several of their employees into this midnight showing for free, which our employees enjoyed. We ended up selling 241 tickets for the midnight showing, but actually ended up playing it in 2 auditoriums. I did this because I ended up pulling the Chick-fil-a and several of our employees, and some of their friends, out of the main auditorium and putting them in a second so I wouldn't have to worry about it getting too stuffed. I also setup the other auditorium to start about 20 minutes later so that several of the employees could finish their shifts and catch the movie too, as well as possibly me. This ended up working out nicely as well.

    So, we got all the money counted, and the buisness day closed, and I set aside doing the last closing paperwork until after the movie so I could actually watch it with several of my friends. I probably shouldn't have done this, as I've never before when doing a midnight show, but at the time wanted to. I had an usher to make sure the rest of the customers left the building, and even told him he could sit in and catch Spiderman after doing this. Well, about an hour into the feature with all the paying customers, the film just stopped. No employee really knew that it had stopped for a little bit, and finally someone got me, and I went running down and out to see several customers out in the hallway and such. I ran down to the door to let me into the booth and heard this constant ringing/beeping sound, and thought, "Oh Dear." The film had what is called "brain wrap", which is where it gets all caught up against itself and eventually locks in place. It was a really bad one too, and looked crazy. Non of the projectionists had seen it that bad ever. I had to take care of the customers then while they were figuring out how to fix it and while the other 2 projectionists were on their way over. They ended up cutting the film, unwrapping and un-knotting the film, then re-splicing it together. We got it started back up fairly quickly, fortunately. Of course, several customers were upset, and I knew I'd have to deal with them after the movie.

    Then, in the auditorium the non-paying customers were in, the film ended up having to be stopped twice, once on the tail end of the last trailer before the actual movie started, and another time about an hour and half/2 hours in. What happened there was, a roller that the film rests on right above where it feeds into the projector had a problem, and part of it had slipped down allowing the film to slip off the roller, which made the film very very jumpy feeding into the projector and also making it blurry because it wasn't being feed properly. Fortunatly we were able to catch it both times before it damaged the film.

    I managed to watch the vast majority of the film, up until the last 20 minutes, so the big ending. I had to come out so I could be ready for all the customers that would be coming out from the other one. It ended up not being too bad, only handed out less than 15 remits, maybe less than 10. I asked the ones that I gave them to if "their movie going experience had really been ruined by the brief intermission" (the intermission which had actually happened at a switching point in scenes, not the middle of action). Finally they all left and then I waited for my friends, co-workers, and chick-fil-a people to get out of the other one. I ended up getting up about 5 times and missing the end of the movie, which I enjoyed what I saw of it, and now I had the closing paperwork to do.

    I talked with them a bit before shooing everyone out the doors, then headed back to do paperwork. Barely into my paperwork, I noticed I didn't have the slip of paper that told my how many people came to watch the kid shows that morning, so I got up and walked outside so I could go through the concession stand then get it. On my way outside I got a call from my friend Erik saying that his girlfriends jeep had broken down just up the street on their way out, so I ended up leaving to go to them and see what we could do. This I didn't mind doing, because I'll always be there to help my friends whenever I can. I ended up taking them back to the theatre so that they could try and call home and find her AAA card so they could get the car towed while I finished up the paperwork. They finally got ahold of AAA and I drove them back out to the Jeep so they could wait on the tow truck to arrive.

    Finally I finished the last of the riddiculous paperwork that home office has us fill out, sent everything, locked all the doors and headed out. I made it back to my house a little after 4am, grabbed a Dr. Pepper, took my stomach meds, walked upstairs, took out my contacts, took off my shoes, then sat down at this computer and typed up this entry.

    What am I thinking now, you ask? I'm thinking, yeppie, I work at 9am, and it is 5:08am right now, should I just stay up, maybe head over to the apartment, or actually sleep for about 3 hours.

    Only time will tell at this point.

    TUMEO.