9/28/00: On Working at a Movie Theatre
"Never was a popcorn girl, thought that was a good solution, hanging with the seltzer girls." Well Tori really was, briefly, a cornflake girl, and I was a popcorn girl. I worked at a movie theatre for roughly six months back in my senior year of high school. Here are some points of interest. This is a little longer than some of my other musings but if you read the whole thing you might find it both funny and informative.
Item The First: Movie Theatre Concession Sizing
Maybe you did not know this, but at movie theatres, a medium is twice the size of a small. And a large is twice the size of a medium. Using our rudimentary math skills, we see that a large is four times the size of a small. This goes for popcorn and soda both. Thus it only makes sense to pay $4 for one large, rather than a total of $6 (say) for two mediums. Yes? I used to tell people this, and they would look at me blankly and still order two smaller ones.
Item The Second: Twizzlers
Perhaps this is not entirely an observation born out of my concession stand duty, but I still have to put it out there: why do people buy Twizzlers? I mean, they really aren't that good. I'd describe their taste and texture in humorous ways except that I'm sure you can come up with the same observations yourself and it's all so trite. I can understand eating one if someone gave it to you. But I can't see buying a bag with the express purpose of eating it. Maybe it's just me.
Item The Third: The Trivia Master
The theatre I worked at -- the Bedford theatre -- was a lovely old theatre that had only two large theatres. As opposed to the sister theatre in Mount Kisco, where the screens were so small, it was like watching TV in your bathroom. Joe, the very old usher, remembered a long-ago time when the Bedford theatre was ONE BIG theatre, rather than two medium big theatres. But that was long ago. As I said, there were only two screens, so as you enter you can either go to the left or to the right to go to the movie of your choice. This process was faciliated with the use of two very very large signs which contained the names of the movies and some helpful arrows.
Anyway, my theatre had a balcony that was accessible from the main floor -- you had to go downstairs to get to the main seating level. The entrance to the balcony was right by the popcorn stand, where I worked. So on slow nights, when Joe was on, I would go watch the Pro-Motion slides with Dave, my dear friend and fellow popcorn slave. We'd shout out the answers to all the Name-Scrambles and Trivia Questions. Well, not really shout so much as announce loud enough for anyone sitting near me to hear. This made Dave laugh endlessly. We were always making eeach other laugh.
Later on when the audience people realized I knew the answers because I worked there, they wouldn't feel so stupid.
Item The Fourth: Dave's observation on Marilyn Monroe
We used to sometimes stand in the door and watch the trailers because we didn't close the doors to the theatres until the movie began. For a while we were showing the trailer for that HBO movie Norma Jean and Marilyn and Dave was a little confused by this. "Who's Norma Jean?" he asked. After I paused to tell someone that Fargo was to the RIGHT, I explained to Dave that Norma Jean was Marilyn's original name. Dave asked why she changed it, and I said that I guessed Marilyn Monroe sounded prettier than Norma Jean Baker. This still did not answer Dave's question. "Yeah," he said, "I get that, but, I mean, she'd still be pretty and stuff." That's the thing about Dave. You think you've got him pegged, and then you realize he's pretty damn smart. Thus the saying amongst my popcorn friends and me: "Out of the mouth of Dave."
Item The Fifth: Seltzer
Again, this is more of a general observation that became almost a crisis of faith for me during my popcorn days. Why do people drink seltzer? I mean, really. Why? Why not real soda? Or diet soda if the sugar is bad for you/your figure? Or water if you're simply thirsty? Why selzer? It's just deathly.
Item The Sixth: Popsit, Topsit, and Flavacol
This is how we made popcorn. First, you would pour the oil into the popper machine. The oil you use to make popcorn is canola oil called "Popsit." I'm serious. Once the oil is heated and ready, you would take a big scoop of popcorn kernals, pour on maybe a teaspoon of a bright orange powder called "Flavacol," and pour that into the popper. Don't ask me what Flavacol is. It's sort of a mystery. Mainly salt, MSG, and artificial butter flavor, I'd wager. Then from time to time you dump the popper so that the popcorn doesn't burn, and repeat steps as needed.
If you ever wondered, the "butter" stuff you can get poured on your popcorn is called "Topsit." It's pretty much the same thing as Popsit except it has artificial butter flavor in it. The sad thing is, I knew what all went into making the popcorn, and I still ate tons of it every time I was on. With extra Topsit. Yum.
Item The Seventh: Napkins
Now, I can understand why a person would want a lot of napkins if they're eating popcorn with extra Topsit. Or if, perhaps they are drinking Sprite. I don't know if you know this, but Sprite is roughly as sticky as commercial epoxy if you spill it and let it dry. In fact, if a tornado were to blow through town, you could just spill some Sprite and stick yourself and all your beloved family members/belongings onto the floor. I'm serious.
So these things I understand. I do not understand why you would want to take a huge stack of napkins if all you're having is, say, a pack of Twizzlers. I don't think those things are capable of melting and, being a non-food item, they don't leave much of a residue. I must say, the mind reels.
Item The Eighth: Good Judgement, and Lack Thereof
One evening, a group of eleven year old girls, dressed in the kind of pajamas you don't actually sleep in and carrying large teddy bears, came parading into my nice elegant theatre. They were accompanied by a woman I assumed was the mother of one of them. The girls all liked my very ugly polyester shirt, which I thought sweet of them since I liked it too, and once they were loaded up with tons of small popcorns, Twizzlers, small seltzers, and piles and piles of napkins, they asked which way they should go to get to The Truth About Cats and Dogs. I motioned to the LEFT and when the little ones were out of earshot, I told the mother that the movie contained a reasonably explicit phone sex scene. She said it would be fine, and after confirming that movie was indeed to the left, she went off after her little kidlings. About an hour later, I looked up from teaching Dave about radioactivity -- he just didn't understand the whole thing about the pennies in the box, but when you just told him about half lives, he got it easily -- and there was the mom, pacing nervously around the lobby. She caught my eye and said, "You were right. The other parents are going to kill me." Well, of course I was right. But whoever listens to me?
Also on the subject of bad judgement, someone walked out of Fargo one night. That's the whole anecdote but I think it's enough, don't you?
Item The Ninth: Be Nice to Your Fellow Human Beings
Please pick up your empty popcorn boxes and soda cups and stuff. Especially if you've puked into them. Don't worry, I won't tell the story behind that. For a while, we were showing Up Close and Personal, featuring that lovely theme by Celine Dion, "Because You Loved Me." Ha ha, now it's stuck in your head, isn't it? Imagine it stuck in your head for two months. This because I had to go in and pick up the popcorn boxes and sweep up the stacks of napkins during the movie credits. Have some mercy, people.
Item The Tenth: Their Favorite Popcorn Girl
There was a young married couple who used to come to the movies every Wednesday night. They said they liked to come on Wednesdays because I was their favorite popcorn girl. They also said they didn't think I was a real popcorn girl. They thought I was a method actress, studying up for my role. They didn't know I was secretly a sword-carrying Warrior for the Good and this was just my day job. But almost no one knows that.
A Tale from the Trenches
One day, Dave and I were laughing. I believe this time it was about the Peanut Chews. You know about Peanut Chews, right? They come in those brown and white wrappers and are as hard as rocks and yet they're very good? Maybe they're not always hard as rocks. Maybe they're only hard as rocks when they're old as rocks. But still. Dave and I were laughing because we had been forced to buy some (we weren't allowed to eat the candy for free) and we were eating them, or trying to, rather, because they were hard as rocks, and this made us laugh. We also thought it was funny that we had to restock the Twizzlers again. Anyway, eventually we were just laughing because it was funny that were laughing again. We lay down on the floor. A man came out of the theatre and looked at us, lying there laughing. We tried to stop but he was sort of funny looking so we kept on laughing. He cleared his throat and asked for two small seltzers. That's when we lost it. The boss almost fired us for that.