I don’t care if it’s on the record; no, I do not sympathize with the 100-year-old man we found in Theater 5. A lot of my coworkers have labeled me ‘rude’, or ‘heartless’, or ‘ugly’ - not true and doesn’t have anything to do with the story - and I want to explain my point of view. Before you judge me, do keep in mind that I only got 3 hours of sleep the night before this mess occurred. All I’ll say now is that if you had my job you’d probably end up like a few of the unlucky employees before me; in a not-breathing-so-much-anymore type of way.
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I pull up to my shift; late afternoon ‘til close and kill my Pontiac in the parking lot outside of the large Century 13 movie theater. After a quick duet with Elton John (I’m still standing, yea, yea, yea), I lock my car and pass my coworker, Lindsey, on her way out.
She looks like she just dove into a swimming pool.
“Yay or nay?” I ask her.
“Like god-damn animals in there.”
She’s out of breath too. Lindsey had just finished her ushering shift, the one I’m about to substitute in for.
“Someone almost walked into Theater 13. Pretty much tackled them.”
Usually, Lindsey doesn’t care enough about the job to do any actual work but she knows how long clean up would take if someone accidently stumbled into Theater 13. Her number one priority is to minimize, minimize, minimize any effort required for the job.
“So, nay?”
She waves one of her hands through the air in a manner that either means goodbye or good luck. Maybe both.
“Have fun.”
I walk into the lobby. Immediately, there’s a little girl with pigtails crying that she can’t find her mom. I’m not even clocked in yet, so I point in a random direction.
“I think… over there…”
Trailing off, I head for the staff room.
On the way there I pass by concessions, currently manned by Harvey who’s trying desperately to work a two-man job (and failing), and then the ticket booths where our workplace couple, Jack and Jill, are arguing. No, I shit you not. No made up names in this story, I doubt you’ll be able to find us anyways. Pretty sure, Jill was mad at Jack cause she found Tinder on his phone, which Jack insisted was a virus.
Remember, I got like 2 hours of sleep that night so I skip small talk, keep my head down and push through the door behind the squabbling duo.
Inside is essentially a small kitchen. We got a fridge, sink, countertop, table, chairs, and a computer shoved into the back corner.
Here we have our team meetings. Topics range from ‘who would stare the longest at a disabled person in public?’ to ‘who keeps clogging the toilets with human teeth?’
If you’re wondering, the answer is ‘Carl’ and ‘we don’t know’ respectively.
I clock in and drop my stuff off. At the start of every shift I like to fantasize how the rest of my day will play out.
Well, there was that first week at work when I pissed off the boys upstairs. Our attic I mean. I forget exactly what I said but something along the lines of ‘musty’ and ‘hermits’. Which is true. If Carl ever needs more straws for concessions requiring a trip to the attic, I make sure I have my trusty nose plugs with me because it reeks up there.
Sometimes you’ll see a shadow, or hear them arguing in hushed humanoid voices; just ignore them. Well, now I do, but back when I started I wasn’t the type to keep something peeving me to myself. They must’ve heard me through the vents. I woke the next morning to Sully, my golden retriever of eight years, dead on my front lawn. He’d been stretched across the yard with his innards strewn about haphazardly, like the carnage a toddler leaves behind a room they’ve finished playing in. A bus route for the local elementary school passes down my street and I had slept in that morning. There was a lot of explaining to be done for my neighbors. Coyotes I said.
They don’t talk to me much anymore.
I bought a new dog. Bullmastiff; decided to go for a little more muscle this time around. His name is Doc. He’s not allowed outside.
Caught myself rambling. On the flipside, envisioning the worst route the day could take involves Carl forcing the entire place on lockdown and tasking us with covering any windows, doors, and other mediums allowing The Owners a look inside. They don’t come often but when they do, don’t expect to clock out on time. Even after they’ve left, Carl will make you stay a little later, just in case.
I walk out of the staff room and head towards Carl’s office to see if there’s any issues in need of immediate handling.
I knock on his door. The voice from inside almost sounds scared.
“Excuse me?”
“Yea, it’s me.”
“Who?”
“I’m coming in.”
There’s an uncertain “Ok?” as I open the door.
Carl has a very worried look on his face until he sees it’s me walking in.
“Oh, cool.”
I’ve asked him before who else he thinks it could possibly be but he’s always vague: ‘You never know’ or he’ll just list one of a dozen movie characters. It’s easier to just assume he’s joking.
He’s an odd guy but we all respect him. At one point or another, he’s earned every employee’s trust. All the employees still working here I mean.
Anyway, that morning he didn’t need much.
“Check the toilets, one of them’s clogged again.”
“Teeth again?”
“No, it was me this time.”
I leave his office.
As an usher you can print out tickets to see which showings end when and how many people bought tickets per theater. I think a new Christopher Nolan movie had dropped the weekend before so it was busier than usual. On a regular day, we average maybe 5 people per showing, sometimes more, sometimes no attendance. When it’s the latter, I don’t need to bother cleaning the theater and can take some leisure time.
I check my little ticket slip. I have 15 minutes until the next theater needs cleaning.
Branching off from our main lobby is an arcade; closed since I started working here but Carl says it’s mine to chill in while waiting for theaters to clean.
Crossing the lobby, I open Netflix on my phone ready to burn some time.
That little girl with the pigtails is still there and still lost. If you couldn’t glean it from what I’ve told you so far, we have bigger fish to fry here, and to be frank she was bumming everybody out.
I wave at Harvey and point at the child when I’m able to capture a small window of his attention. He’s swamped in concessions - like I said, it was a busy day - and sucking on his asthma inhaler like a scuba regulator at the bottom of the ocean . He shrugs and lowers his inhaler to say something but a teenager interrupts.
“Hey, sorry man, but I ordered popcorn 10 minutes ago, we’re ‘bout to miss our movie.”
Harvey whimpers as if smacked across the face and the inhaler pops right back into his mouth like a pacifier.
Sensing, the imminent panic attack, I guide the pigtailed girl to the arcade. Sitting with her, I now consider the side of fries on my plate next to Carl’s proverbial shit burger that still needs unclogging.
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To anyone complaining that I may be dragging the story: you are clearly missing the point, and are most likely a shallow person. It takes time to construct a beautiful tale of empathy and sacrifice and I need to make sure that at the end of this you’re on my side and I can show my coworkers. They’ve been assholes to me this last week.
Hold on.
Carl just called and asked if I could work tonight; last minute but for overtime pay. Allow me to wrap this up.
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I tell the little girl I barely got an hour of sleep last night and to sit there and not do any kid stuff while I start my first round of theaters. Carl’s bowel movement will have to wait.
There are about twenty tickets bought for theater 3, so that takes a bit of time to clean, but relatively easy. Next is theater 5. Only three tickets bought but the entire theater is a mess; buttery smell of popcorn spills here, candy wrappers there, soda stains on the seat, decrepit old man on the floor…
“You good?” I don’t have much patience for whoever this poor geezer was and by the looks of the theater, don’t have the time either, so I start to clean around him. This is the part my coworkers give me the most grief about.
‘Well, why didn’t you ask him if he was alright.’
To be honest I wasn’t sure if he was real or not. Safer to ignore most things when working here.
‘He looks like a bag of bones of course he needed help.’
In this climate you can’t assume anything.
‘Dude, he pissed himself.’
At the time the pool of liquid surrounding him and darkening his pants looked like soda and my nose was clogged because of allergies.
Regardless, I finish the cleaning with ample time left.
I inform the old man on the ground, “Movie’s over, my guy.”
With that last reminder, I decide to head back to the arcade for some more Netflix’in.
I step out of theater 5 and look both ways down the long hallway. To the right is the lobby and further down another hallway housing the even numbered theaters. To the left, the odd numbered theaters, stretching all the way down to the double glass emergency exit doors. Someone is all the way at the end of the hall, spinning and jumping. It’s hard to make out any features. The ceiling lights dotting the halls are strongest the closer they are to the lobby, something to do with the location of the building’s energy source.
I thought it was one of the smelly attic gremlins at first, but after a few seconds I see pigtails swishing through the air. The lost little girl points at me, laughs, and skips directly into the theater at the end of the hall. Theater 13. Instinct made me run after her. The thought of a helpless child stuck inside with that thing … its too much. I flew down the hall.
The door to Theater 13 has a glass porthole that lets you peer inside. In the process of flinging it open I catch a glimpse of the interior. The theater room angles downward from the door which leads into a central aisle A movie played on the screen in front of a packed audience. Not exactly a movie. The massive video playing looked hand-held. It shows the interior of a small kitchen through a window. A man sits on a sad chair with a beer in his hand. Empty bottles scatters the table he sits at. His head rests on his open hand as he seems to doze in a drunken stupor.
The door handle is ice in my sweaty hand. I recognize the man on screen. Marco, a friend, and former employee. The people watching in the theater seem uncomfortable. Their heads twitching, twisting, almost as if struggling against something. I don’t know why they’re still watching.
The shot begins to focus behind Marco. Zooming in, it centers on an open doorway in the background. Someone is looking at Marco from inside the unlit room. The picture is dark and grainy but I can make out half of a pale face, an eye, and a stretched smile from the black. The people in the audience were shaking their heads violently and faint wicked screams seeped through the door.
An audience member jumped to their feet in a frenzied way and scrambled over their row toward the center aisle. The light from the screen cast a shadow on his face, a young man in his twenties, twisted in absolute horror, his mouth propped open to scream. There was no skin on his back, now a gory mess and in that moment I realize why everyone seems to be stuck to their seats.
The man makes a dash towards the door, where I’m looking in from, but is stopped halfway. A small girl with pigtails blocks his path. Unable to hear, I can only see the expressions on the man’s face as he seems to beg. It doesn’t last long and he expressed his defeat allowing the little girl to gingerly grab his hand and lead him back down the aisle towards his seat. The movie was still playing but I didn’t want to watch any more.
I turn and walk back towards the lobby. What an idiot I am.
Five years working at this place should be enough time and experience for me to know: that’s some damn good bait.
I can say rule number one of this workplace is to have a healthy fear of it. Caution is always advised, even for the experienced.
I try to shake it from my mind and find success when I realize I still have a job to do.
Armed with fierce determination and a mop from a nearby closet I head towards the bathroom to complete Carl’s bathroom quest and on the way crash directly into Carl and Harvey hauling the piss-stained geriatric man across the lobby. I walk right into them, the handle of the broom smacking Harvey on the forehead. He yelps and drops the senior like he’s on fire and Carl allows him to slide limply off his arm face-first into the ground.
We had to close the Century 13 while we called an ambulance. Carl told us to start showing people out and made me wait for the paramedics with the old man. We were in the middle of the lobby so everyone had to pass us on the way out. He would scare the shit out of anyone who walked too close, shouting confused about what year it was.
We’d find out that the senior’s name is Elvis. Elvis was born while Herbert Hoover was in office and had decided to watch Alfred Hitchcock’s recent moving picture at his local theater one day in the fine spring of 1958. Apparently unimpressed with the movie, he decided to take a nice long nap during which 60 years passed, and he woke up a bitter old man. Yea, another rule I forgot to mention: literally no sleeping on the job. Time moves differently here when you’re asleep.
Of course, no one really believed him. Except for us employees. Honestly, his story was comparatively bland to some of the other stuff we’ve dealt with. Rather, we were pretty happy that we got to shut down work early.
“And this hooligan swiped my wallet.”
Carl, my coworkers, and I were standing around the paramedics who had been questioning him. Everyone now looked at me. Jill gasped.
Carl jabbed me in my ribs. “Dude, give it back.”
“What the hell are you talking about? You believe him?”
Thankfully, Elvis was very racist - a product of his time - and distracted everyone by promptly accusing Carl, a Latino, before demanding the female medic’s every move be doublechecked by her male counterpart. We were forced to remove him from the property after he decided to show off his outdated and offensive vocabulary to every minority walking through the lobby.
In the scramble to shut Elvis up, I made sure to fix my shirt to cover the wallet-sized bulge in my back pocket.
Our team debrief wasn’t great. I got a lot of the blame, because I guess I was just a little too focused on doing my job. They even said it was my fault for him getting knocked over in the lobby.
“Harvey and Carl were the ones holding him,” I pointed out.
Carl said Harvey shouldn’t be in charge of holding anyone. “He almost passed out at concessions. No offense, Harvey.”
“It’s ok.”
“And I dropped Elvis because Harvey did. You guys probably won’t understand yet, but a manager is nothing without his team. I did it for you guys.”
Whatever the fuck that means. I guess it made sense to everyone else because by the time we all clocked out, Carl had successfully shifted the blame back onto me.
Cool.
Please, honest opinions one how I handled that. I know justice will prevail and my alleged crimes absolved.
I’m scheduled for the rest of the day in an hour so I’ll let you know the vibe at work.