The Advent of the Machines

The other day, my husband and I went to see the movie, Mama Mia.  Disheartened by the long line at the box office, we skipped over to the little no-line card-ticket-dispensers located  over on the side.  Most people must either live in fear of these machines, or simply don’t realize they exist – all the better for us!  Like an ATM machine for movie tickets, the happy-go-lucky movie-goer can make a couple of quick selections, swipe a credit card, and the tickets pop on out.

 

“Wow!” I thought to myself with a bittersweet nostalgia.  “I have been completely replaced by a machine.”

 

Back in high school, I got a job at a movie theater.  The year was 1984 (ya know… like the book), and I was 15.  It was the first job that I ever got by myself.  (Before that, I had worked in restaurants as a result of various family obligations or connections.)  I felt so grown up… so adult… and so responsible.  Every day that I walked in to the theater wearing my white polyester shirt, black polyester slacks, and black polyester usher’s vest (Ugh!  I still shudder at the thought!), I wanted to do the best job I could representing AMC Theaters.  Aside from the ever-present pressure of being an Usher (Popcorn spill in the main aisle in theater 3!!!!  Soda change on the coke dispenser on Station 2!!!!), ours was a fairly large and challenging theater to run by the standards of the day – a SIX plex!  Oh, and to complicate matters even more, ours was the official training center for managers in the southeast district of the U.S.  So everything we did had to be by the book. 

 

As the months dragged on tediously, I gained valuable insight and experience, including such useful life skills as…

 

…how to efficiently store specialty-coded boxes of paper cups in the most tetris-efficient way up on the back room shelves;

…how to switch out nearly empty soda tanks before the big rush, and then switch them back during slow times so as to have the least impact upon customers who are in a rush;

…how to carefully sling heavy bags of movie theater trash into a dumpster without ripping the incredibly thin garbage bags;

…how to get the stains of stale soda and fake processed-nacho-cheese out of polyester vests;

 

…and the ever-popular…

 

…importance of keeping kitty litter near theaters showing graphic horror scenes (if you haven’t figured it out – you really don’t wanna know).

 

Eventually, through punctuality, due diligence, and a consistent and sincere desire to help Further Customer’s Movie Viewing Experience ™ , management decided to promote me to Box Office Cashier. 

 

WOW!!!!!!!!

 

No more would I be sent behind the concussion stand to work as a concussionist (which is what we called them, given the amount of times we all went sliding around on the slick tile floor, made even more dangerous with each and every soda spill).  No more would I have to watch the same ending of a movie for the 45^th time that season in preparation for the messy exodus of the broad spectrum of American culture.  Now I was going to be in the Box Office – the SUPERSTAR position of the theater.  Well… of theater administration, at least.

 

As chaotic and confusing as working in a theater could be, working in the box office actually took some brain-power and fast-thinking.  Back in the day, we didn’t have the mechanization that they have today.  We had to quickly do the math in our head, and cash went flying in every direction.  Ticket machines were manually fed.  We had to record each set of ticket numbers to figure out (by hand), how many tickets had been sold, and how much money we should have taken in.  When a couple of parents showed up with their kids in tow, my heart just sunk as I quickly began doing the math in my head.

 

CRAP!!!!  That’s $3.75 for two adults, and $2.50 for four kids… Um… uh… um…. 16, no, 18, no… $17.50!

 

There was no moderate flow.  A Cashier either stood around bored, waiting… waiting… or the mad rush appeared as if the dam had burst.  I remember my first time working solo in the box.  I opened one Sunday morning – NOT a good idea.  At that time, Sunday morning was often opening day for various flicks.  WHY management decided to schedule a complete newbie to the high-pressured worked of ticket cashiering on an opening day, I will never understand.  That morning, the movie, “Platoon” debuted.  And like the Viet Kong portrayed in the flick, the patrons descended on me like napalm on a jungle perimeter, leaving me scorched, and shell-shocked by the time the first showing began.  Each performance sold out, and by the end of each rush, I was shaking so much from the anxiety, I kept dropping my paperwork.  Somehow, someway, by the end of the day, my books reflected a total of 50 cents off of the calculated total – a pretty stellar performance, if I do say so myself.

 

In the years since my time as a polyester abacus, technology has advanced almost as much as the price of tickets.  Nowadays, customers can use credit cards.  Nowadays, computers calculate the amount and print out the tickets according to the order.  Nowadays, all of the calculations are automated, freeing the Cashier from the burden of actually having to think.  Nowadays, the Cashier himself is being phased out by an ATM-like dispenser.

 

Wow.  Yesterday’s high-pressured and underpaid challenge is today’s convenient little kiosk.  How much longer until Future Shock replaces even more of what used to be the human element?  In years to come, there may be nothing left of the days of a human being Cashier.  The tickets will have long ago disintegrated.  The machines, long ago recycled.  The mounds and mounds of paperwork?  A fading memory.  The only thing left to be found by future archeologists?  A soda-stained polyester vest – indestructible!  Eternal!  Ghastly!

Ever have one of those days...

 ...when out of the blue you receive an email from a former friend, and the very first thing that pops into your head is, "Gee... before I open this, I wonder if this person is on their meds this week."

I can be cordial.

I can be polite.

But I have no time or interest in having people in my life who act all chummy one second (generally when they want something), and then lash out viciously the next because they don't have enough drama going on to keep them entertained.