Where's My Popcorn, Corky?

(My friend Gordon "The Professional" Stokes and I were talking tonight about this, and 15 minutes later, voila...an essay. Please note that this essay is EVEN MORE insensitive than my normal rants, so take that in mind before sending any responses, as I truly love people of all races, disabilities and backgrounds. No, I was not paid to say that.)

On Memorial Day I went to see "The Day After Tomorrow" with my friends Ross, Gordon and his girlfriend Shona. Ross, as is usually the case, had skipped breakfast, so after we bought tickets at the Loews Wheaton Plaza we went straight to the concession stand to buy some snacks.

Oh, shit, I murmured to no one. Now I gotta watch as we spend the next five minutes watching these muthafuckas try and fill a bag with popcorn.

Here's the question I ask myself every time I go to the theater after I buy my ticket:

Are all concession stand workers retarded?

I think you will agree that this is a valid question, because 115% of the time, it takes too long for concession stand workers (concessies? popcorn boys? the 'cess pool?) to do what I and many others believe is the simplest fuckin' shit ever, and I use profanity here because without fail, I am cursing as I watch these people do a job that they take no pride in and fail at so miserably as to be upsetting.

Here's the gig: your job is to serve a hungry, NORMALLY TIME-CONSTRAINED individual in as fast a time as you can while making sure to get all of the items correct. Also, it would be helpful if you could be sure to get good at handling all, what, SIX kinds of food you have on the damned menu.

Think about it--most concession stands serve only about six things: popcorn, candy, soda, pretzels, an "entree" (usually, this is hot dogs, but sometimes, it is more sexy, like chicken fingers), and nachos. Amazingly, almost all of these things cost exactly $3.50, no matter where you go in America, no matter how many "combo" coupons you bring with you into the theater. Now, if your job only consisted of six total possibilities, and they all seemed to cost roughly the same thing, don't you think you would get good pretty quick-like at serving those six items?

Yeah, I would too. But, NOOOOOO...I get to the theater and I see the concession stand employees getting shit wrong all the time, and worse, they don't seem to be in any particular hurry to give the food to you. This is odd to me, because when I go to the theater, normally I am in a hurry to get a seat and not miss the previews. And, I almost always try to get there early...most people show up five minutes before a movie starts and then realize they are hungry, only to stand in the line for concessions.

A candy-only transaction--say, for only a box of Junior Mints--should take about 20 seconds from cash to finish. You see the Mints in the little storage cabinet, with a price normally in plain view. You already have the money out when you get to the front of the line. "Junior Mints, please," you kindly begin. The employee should hear the words, reach down, open the cabinet, grab the Mints, hand them to you and give you a tax-included total. Whammo. Done deal. Imagine my surprise, then, when I went to a theater with my buddy Andy "Check Yo'Self, Fool!" Kellam recently, and he ordered some candy, and the girl had to go to another cabinet to get it, and then after coming back with it, she went with...

"Anything else?"

"No, this ought to do it." Andy already had the money out.

"Okay...that'll be..."

and then, it hits you. Even though there are only SIX FUCKING THINGS ON THE WHOLE FUCKING MENU, the worker--now, the cashier--is actually struggling to find the things on the little cash register! Have you ever looked at the register for these things? You only have about 20 buttons (sometimes accompanied by a picture of the item, kind of like McDonald's used to do), half of which are the popcorn and soda buttons (small, medium, large, jumbo), and about six dedicated to different candy types. But, there the employee is, hunting around for each button on the register. You half want to reach over the fucking counter and punch the buttons in for the person, drop four bucks on the counter, take your candy and leave, but you don't want to deprive someone else the satisfaction of announcing the ridiculous total for a bag of Skittles.

Some of you might, at this point, think that I am wildly generalizing and stereotyping the common man, but I assure you, this is not the case. You'll have to trust me--a man that certainly goes to the movies more than any non-movie critic you know, roughly three times a week--that in every theater I have been to, every time I have ordered concessions at a theater, I watch this happen behind the concessions counter and I look up at the sky, wondering what I have done to deserve this. But, even if you only go to the movies on a casual basis, you have certainly seen some of this behavior, especially when you make the devastating mistake of ordering food for three or four people at a theater...oh my goodness, this could take dog years to get right.

Ranting won't solve all of our world's problems, so I offer a couple of suggestions to the local multiplex manager.

1. Put your sharpest, most efficient workers behind the concession stands instead of in the ticket booth.

Right now, here's the pecking order of the employees by skill set in nearly all of the theaters I have been to (assuming the manager considers his/her skill set first):

The projectionist. This is without question, since this is the only person you probably had to put an ad in the paper to hire.
The ticket booth staff. Naturally, you want your frontman/woman to be sharp, ideally multilingual (Spanish/English covers it for most cities) and helpful for those folks that apparently have never been to a movie theater.
The janitorial staff. It is important to be quick about cleaning a theater, especially if it's big and new. The older the theater, the more the employees seem to be uttering "I could give a shit about that Snickers wrapper" as they waltz from aisle to aisle.
The concession workers.
The ticket counter. This person, tasked with ripping your ticket, telling you which theater to go to, then dropping a stub into a box off to the side, is what I believe is a multiplex intern, since this is the easiest job of the lot. All kidding aside, this really IS the position that mentally-challenged and/or older employees are placed in at some of the theaters I frequent.

Now, what if you shuffled the pecking order just a bit, and got your current ticket booth staff--efficient, customer-service oriented--to be your concessions staff? Sure, this is a trade down on the pecking order; if I were in the booth and was suddenly asked to regularly fill plastic containers with nachos and "cheese" (I use the term very lightly) for grubby-looking 45-year-old fat guys, I wouldn't be kicking my heels. But, the ticket booth people are just better suited to being fast about getting people's orders, getting the orders filled quickly and getting the next customer up to the front of the line. You would lose a little speed at the front of the operation at the ticket booth, but currently, concession stand workers can't handle getting candy, popcorn and soda to me in a timely fashion, so simpler is better for them and while the ticket booth is vital in terms of efficiency, it is also insanely easier, and there are even less buttons to deal with on the touch screens of America's multiplex booth registers.

Some of you smart people would try to argue here that "Every person has to buy a ticket, but not everyone buys concessions, so I would want my best people at the ticket booth." In theory, that is true, but the amount of money a theater can make on concessions is decidedly more than the theater might make on the ticket price, since so much of that flutters away to the releasing studio production arm and to wages for your staff. A theater that makes a killing at the concession stands can turn a solid profit, and more importantly, people that regularly visit your theater will be more apt to stand in line and get concessions before a film, because they know that there will not be a long wait to get their food served.

Seriously, how many times have you walked into a theater hungry...only to see the long line at a concession stand and decide "Fuck it, I'll just get some BK after the movie"?? Sure, the prices are high, but even I, Joe Cheap Bastard, would be more willing to buy candy at the theaters more if the lines were turning over more expeditiously. The deflation a hungry guy gets when he shows up just seven or eight minutes before the movie is set to start can quickly turn to excitement if he sees his line moving quickly enough to get the large combo order in before the trailers start.

I'm telling you, if your theater can make lines move quickly, you will get more of that popcorn sold and more money into the theater's owners pockets, which is always a good feeling. That's why it is increasingly becoming vital for these theaters to sell more product from the concession stand.

2. Hire a shitload of Chinese service workers to run your theater

Don't worry, I'm already going to hell. But, hear me out.

Gordon and I went to see the Black Eyed Peas and N*E*R*D a couple months ago at the 9:30 Club in DC. Great show. As with most concerts I go to, I stand amazed at the roadie changeovers between acts. I think that most groups truly believe that fans like to stand at concerts and wait 30-45 minutes between groups, when in fact, I think most fans would be perfectly happy if the groups they just dropped $30-$50 to see would just, you know, COME OUT AND FUCKING PLAY.

So, there I stood with Gordon after BEP came on...and, it was around 11 PM. N*E*R*D didn't come out for what seemed like an hour, and in between, five white guys changed over the band's equipment, moving at a snail's pace as they attempted to lift those oh-so-heavy drumsticks and walk them all...the...way...across...the...20-foot...stage. Watching one of the roadies tune the snare drums for the next set just became hilarious to me; it was like he had never done it before, and I kept yelling at him from my perch 30 feet away "Hey asshole...tune the fuckin' drums already!" After a while, he was the only one out there, and I got to thinking...

What if Chinese fast-food/buffet workers were the roadies for this changeover? Swear to God, if the N*E*R*D roadies were Chinese, this changeover takes five minutes flat.

Now, this may sound crazy to you...but then, you think about it. Whenever you get to a Chinese place, when's the last time you got to the front of the line at a Chinese place and stood there and just kind of hung out looking at the menu? "Yeah, listen, I kind of think the #33 would be a good one...what do you think about the #12 today? Are there any specials?"

My friend Brian "Schmoove" Prenoveau did this once at a Chinese joint in New York, and he reported back that the buffet line chef almost chewed Brian's head off, because the chef was in such a hurry to get the line moving. Not only is it vital to the owners of many of these places that you get in and out fast...it's doubly vital that the experience was great, because then they know that you will come back.

I have said for years that there's nothing I respect more than workers that come in and do a job as well as they can do it, no matter how much or how little they are getting paid. Over the years, I have felt like Chinese service-line workers (in restaurants and anywhere else they might be employed) take their jobs so seriously that you can't help but be swept up in the effort level; you can see the pride in every motion, which makes me sick to my stomach sometimes when I think about the times that I have gone into a job and done it half-assed...or when I go to other places and people don't take it very seriously.

Many of you know my stories about Ken "Dad" Bell going to the drive-through at a local McDonald's in Rochester. It kills him whenever he goes to the drive-through and a person working the mic is not a native English speaker. "You would think," he would always start, "that the ONE person working at a McDonald's who would speak perfect English would be the freakin' drive-through person!" The most important part of this job is taking orders and being friendly to the clientele...this is hard to do fast and well when you have someone that, well, "kinda" knows the English language, and to this day, whenever I go to a fast-food place, I shake my head whenever I go to a place and the person taking the orders struggles with English or has problems enunciating. Hey, you wouldn't want me working at the fast-food drive in at a burger joint in Italy, would you? My Italian is limited to "pronto" at this point.

I am absolutely convinced that if the local theater was staffed only by Chinese immigrants or naturalized Chinese-Americans, we would have a smooth operation at the multiplex. Workers that give a damn about the job, that work hard, that sense that getting concessions to you in a hurry is a good thing, and that remember that customer service--like any good customer-facing business--is at the top of the list when you are running a successful operation.

In the meantime, Corky, I'll take the combo. And a bag of Sour Patch Kids. Don't worry, I'll wait.

Random Bellviews, courtesy of Bell and Longer Community Trust:

Death of the cicadas: Opening Weekend
Firefighter Training Camp: $9.50 Show
Pro basketball: Matinee
Pro hockey: Rental
Work schedule--5:30 PM to 8 AM, five days a week: Hard Vice

bellview--muchos besos

Where's My Popcorn, Corky?