Our very own Mr Singh has written a blog entry to tell us what it was like to work in the cinema on a typical day! If you have any questions about this I am sure Mr Singh would be happy to talk about it with you.
Where to begin? During my 9 year tenure at the cinema I encountered many experiences and made life long relationships with colleagues and even some customers.
A typical day at the cinema would really depend on what department you were rota’d to on the day. The main role title was multifunctional staff member, which was exactly that!
The many roles included Floor staff where I was responsible for working amongst a team of 4 or 5 staff at any one time, depending on the business needs of that day. Here I would be responsible for tearing customer tickets and ushering them to their seats in the screens. Toilet checks were a key part of the job, ensuring that they were up to standards and hygienic for customers to use, these were frequently done throughout the day, every 30-45 mins! Cleaning screens after every film was also especially important and a must, to guarantee every customer would enjoy their film in a clean space. Floor staff would also perform screen checks with special equipment (night vision goggles) to monitor screens that were a potential threat to piracy! Overall, this shift was fast paced and fun! Never were you still or bored, always on the move and ready for the next task at hand.
Box office. This was a demanding role, sitting behind a desk serving endless queues of customers on release day of a box office hit movie is no easy task! Having to deal with a variety of customers in pressured situations is difficult, and this role took some getting used too. Sales of tickets if the main part of this role, but occasionally I would sign people up the unlimited card system, which required taking customer confidential info and registering them to our system.
Concessions. Yet another fast past shift, with wave after wave of customers coming for the cinema treats of nachos, hot dogs, popcorn, drinks, sweets, and combo deals! This role required the most training for obvious reasons (dealing with food/ chemicals). We would have to learn about food hygiene and complete many CPD courses to keep our knowledge relevant and keeping staff and customers safe.
On a shift here, you would have to make fresh salted popcorn using full PPE, change the syrups for the drinks round back, set the heated cabinets for the popcorn, prep nachos, hotdogs and the buns, stock rotation of all sweets and drinks, and importantly selling to customers.
Ice cream & pick n mix. Like the concessions stand, however a little more isolated than other departments. Here I would make ice cream as per customer requests, including hot treats like waffles, cookies and brownies.
Overall, this job was perfect for me during my time as a student. With shifts always up for grabs and a huge team of colleagues, it meant someone was always available to help you out if you needed cover or visa versa. Shifts were early and late, and often lengthy. You could always pick up extra hours which would be great for me to save or having extra money to spend and enjoy.
Open shifts where you would be first in setting up the allocated department would be 08:30/16:30
Mid shift would be 12:00-21:00 this being the longest shift
Close shift would be 18:00- 00:30
This was my favourite job to date, and I had so many fun experiences over the years, I had a chance to meet a wide range of people becoming close to the regular customers and bonding over many similar things with staff made this job extremely enjoyable. I would recommend this to any of my students.
Comments
Post a Comment