I worked at Jewel-Osco for a year and a half before upgrading to a decent job (intern at an engineering firm making 10 dollars an hour to sit on my ass and play solitaire and never deal with customers) and Jewel owned my ass. The customer was always right. Even if the customer clearly was not right, the customer was right. And on the rare occasion, 1 in maybe 1000 customers, the manager would have to come out and tell the customer that they were wrong. I remember one day when I was bagging: this lady who has consistently given our store problems decided that she was going to throw a gallon of milk at one of our cashiers. The cashier freaked out, naturally, and snapped on the customer and walked away. Our manager came over and APOLOGIZED to the customer in an effort to get her the f*ck out of the store. The bottom line is the customer needs to be happy, no matter how horrible, how irritating, or how stupid they are.
We all know that people are stupid, duh.
But I also knew that there were people spending an upwards of 300 dollars on groceries, and that’s business. When you drop 300 dollars on something, you deserve respect of the utmost variety. I won’t lie, I was a terrible employee. I disrespected customers, disobeyed rules, and got written up a lot. But Jewel was run by Nazis. They preached customer respect like no other. I can’t imagine the theater being any different.
Theaters are ridiculous. It’s like 8 dollars to see a movie out here. 10 dollars at AMC! And that’s not including popcorn and a drink. So, one could be spending an upward of 20 dollars for 2 hours of entertainment. If I’m spending 5 dollars or more for a bag of popcorn that costs, what, maybe 20 cents in real life, I want damn butter on it. And if I want damn butter in excess on it, I want damn butter in excess on it. If you want to complain, complain to the people who are making millions of dollars off of popcorn profit, not the customer who is asking you to make his 5 dollar popcorn taste like 5 dollar popcorn. Movie popcorn tastes good, I enjoy it, especially when you lather butter all over it. It doesn’t stop at the price though…then we have previews, previews for Coke, previews for jeans, previews for PS2 games…then we have Kerosates whoring themselves out…then we have to watch commercials about fandango…and then commercials about how we should be polite in theaters…and then we see real previews for movies, oh joy.
I have friends that have worked at the movies, they hated it. I hated working at jewel, hence the job upgrade. I understand that it’s hard work to work in a theater. But until the quality of Theaters improves in general, I don’t think it’s too much to ask for a little customer appreciation. If it’s bothering you that much start spitting in peoples drinks.
Edit: In principle, I have to side with Null and Prof S here. Although, I don't think either would urinate in a theater.....
