Movie theater stuff you don't want to know

[Jim3k]

but you oughtta.

There is a fluff piece in today's Yahoo news -- some sort of mashup between GMA and Reader's Digest which lists 13 things your theater worker knows but doesn't want to tell you. As a fair number of OT readers are movie lovers or self-styled critics, I thought this would be of interest.

Plus, one of my very first jobs as a teenager was as a theater usher--who also worked the concession counter. (All at 75¢ an hour in 1957.) That experience allows me to confirm that theaters do count the paper cups in order to match the number of cups with the number of soft drinks sold. --Talk about penny ante detail... And my theater would even conduct an investigation if the tally wasn't right, in the suspicion that the staff was giving stuff away for free, a fire-able offense.

[DukieInKansas]

They count the cups at both Arrowhead and Kauffman Stadiums - or they did as recently as 10 years ago.

[Jim3k]

They count the cups at both Arrowhead and Kauffman Stadiums - or they did as recently as 10 years ago.

Beer? Or soft drinks?

I certainly can understand counting what goes out into the crowd by the walking vendors. The vendor probably has to buy the tray themselves, anyway. It's really easy to track what the company sells each one for his/her tray and just as easy to match the money count.

As for the drinks sold over the counter, I guess embezzlement is a little more likely with adults who are handling a lot of cash than it was with kids at my theater. So I can certainly see counting cups for beer as well as soft drinks now that they, too, are ridiculously expensive.

In the Fifties, though, sodas were pretty cheap. And the syrup was even cheaper. One would have to be tapping about 20% of the till to build up an amount worth stealing. Candy money could be tracked by the number of cases put out. Popcorn, not so much; I remember filling the corn popper from the bin, but don't recall filling the bin. I doubt the cash register drawers ever had more than $50 at any given time and the assistant manager was swapping drawers out after every showing (we only had one screen). Heck, if money was missing, he was probably the one upon whom suspicion would really fall. I don't remember if our register spit out paper receipts, but don't think so; maybe there was an internal strip we never saw. [Theater admission prices themselves were less than a dollar.]

I'm sure the computerized receipts generated today deal with all those sales allocation issues far better than we could back then.

When I was in law school, one of my fellow students worked his way through school by tending bar. He told the story that before he got the job, a previous bartender had been fired when the owner discovered there were six Sweda registers on the back bar instead of the five he had placed there. It was such a busy place it took months for anyone to notice that one of the registers was a money drop. I'm sure some of the bartenders never knew what it was. It was mostly beer in glasses/bottles, not cups, and mixed drinks. No one was trying to keep track on drink by drink basis. And draft beer barrels are notoriously foamy, so I imagine there's a lot of allowance for waste. Tracking inventory must be pretty hard in that situation, so I'm sure owners aren't too concerned so long as they are still making money. They just may not know they should be making 16% more.

Some of the ex-bartenders here can explain it better than I can.

[budwom]

Disgustingly big brother-ish to see bars (e.g. in large city airports) with all bottles hooked up to automatic measuring/security devices. Soulless.

[-jk]

Do they still count cups in Cameron?

-jk

[Lid]

Do they still count cups in Cameron?

-jk

Yep. And popcorn cups.

[DukieInKansas]

Yes, they counted the beer and soda cups. Working the stadiums also taught you not to buy a dog or brat too early in the game.

[greybeard]

Seven-Elevens count them too--just ask if you can use one of the regular cups for water. Yes, you pay 75 cents for a cup even if for bottled water that you have purchased.

in the 50s, kids' price for a double feature matinee, plus 5 cartoons, in my neighborhood at each of the two theaters was a whopping 25 cents. We talked about boycotting when the two theaters conspired to raise the price a nickel, but dropped the idea because none of us could think of what we'd do with ourselves on Saturdays and Sundays that would be nearly as much fun.