Is working in a movie theather stressful? (teenager, jobs, pay)

[Almeida93]

Is it as stressful as working in fast food?

[rgarjr]

Depends what you'll be doing there.

[Girl]

I worked in a theater for two years back in the 1990s. I was an adult (mid 20s) surrounded by teenagers which made it rough - they always wanted me to buy them liquor or let them party at my apartment. Uh....

I worked concession for 3 months as a cashier and then was promoted to manager. The concession work was not hard - hectic, but not hard. But you DID have to have a drawer that wasn't short at the end of the night, and we had to clean the entire concession stand from top to bottom after the theater closed. As a manager of concessions, I had to step in and man the register when it was busy, keep the inventory stocked in the concession stand, and then do a "zero out" at the end of the night - cashing out each register AND doing full inventory against the computer counts to make sure that we ended the night with a zero balance on all inventory. As a manager I was also asked to help open and close the entire building, including counting the total money earned that day and taking it to the deposit box. Sometimes on the weekends I'd be there until 3 a.m. doing inventory counts and building closeout since some movies didn't end until after 1 a.m. and we couldn't start our closing process until all customers were out of the building. Oh, and the concession staff was also tasked with making the popcorn in the back room - although nowadays most theaters make it right there at the concession stand.

The ticket sellers did just that -sit in the booth and sell tickets. EASY EASY job other than the fact that your drawer couldn't be short at the end of your shift.

The ushers had to manage folks going into the individual theaters, clean up the theaters after each movie, clean the bathrooms, and handle complaints of unruly customers in the theaters (and then finding the manager if it escalated). It was the second easiest, but grossest job there.

Back then we also had projector folks in the attic, but now that movies are digital for the most part, those jobs are almost nonexistent. They were solely responsible for setting up each movie on the platforms and ensuring the reels were in the right order and in good condition. They then monitored all the reels throughout the entire building in case there were issues. As I said, now that theaters are digital, I would think this job is the easiest one now, albeit lonely since it only takes one person.

The best perk of working in a movie theater is that your family can see movies for free. At least, when I worked at a theater that was the case. With movies being so expensive now, that's a huge perk if your family likes going to the movies.

Again, I list all this information based on my experiences in 1993-1995. As such, YMMV.

[s1alker]

For me, the stress mostly came from not being able to pay my bills