Ahh.... Nothing like the first day at your very first job to make you feel like you've been hit by a truck! That's right. Yesterday evening I started my first day at working at my local movie theater. It was my very first taste of working life and let me tell you, by the end of it I was exhausted!! When I got home at 11:00 that night, I felt like I had been drugged and that my legs and feet had been beaten by several muscular men wielding aluminum baseball bats. It's not that the actual job was horrible, it's just that once I got home, all of my remaining energy just vanished and I just about collapsed unconscious on the floor.

Let's start at the beginning. At 5:45 yesterday evening my mom dropped me off at the theater. I was in my full uniform when we got there. (White dress shirt, black dress pants, black dress shoes with slip-resistant soles.) When we got in, Iproceeded to sign in while my manager told my mom that she could pick me up at 11:00 that night. "Crap!" I thought. "I'm gonna be here awhile." After my mom left, my manager gave me an apron, bow-tie, and nametag to complete my uniform. Once I put these on (it took me forever to get the bow-tie right), one of the employees proceeded to show me around the theater. I was shown all of the places one normally doesn't see in a theater, like the storage room and other places. Once I got the lay of the land, I was brought behind the concession stand to see how everything there works.

There were only three of us employees that night. Me and the two other girls were behind the concession stand pretty much the whole night. I think that this is a good time to point out that my local theater isn't very big. In fact, it's really small. It's one of those old downtown theaters with only 4 screens. So, because of that, I wasn't really expecting a mind blowing amount of people. However, when we opened, there were even less people than I expected, especially for a Saturday night! I think it probably had to do with the movies that were playing. We were showing Stardust, The Nanny Diaries, No Reservations, and Superbad. Not exactly popular cinema. So the crowd was very manageable. The two girls worked the register, and I was the popcorn drone. They'd call out the size popcorn the people wanted and if they wanted buttery topping, then I'd get the requested sized container, fill it with popcorn, and add the butter if requested. Simple, right? I thought it was a fairly manageable job for a trainee. I can also point out here that, when we're not dealing with customers or when there are no customers in the lobby, us concession stand workers can have free popcorn and free drinks whenever we like, as long as we put them in these cone-shaped paper cups we have back there. So, during the time I was working, I ate me a good bit of popcorn. I also got to experiment with the drink combination known as a "Suicide". That's when you put several different types of soda into one glass. I took a paper cup, filled it up with a shot each of Coke, Sprite, Mr. Pibb, and Mellow Yellow, and chugged it down. Holy crow, it was good! It's something I highly recommend doing next time you're somewhere where you can fill and refill your drinks yourself whenever you want. After the first one I had, I got the biggest sugar buzz I've ever had! (That's not saying much, seeing I've never really had a sugar buzz before.) I drank probably about 5 of those during the course of the night, which might explain why I was so tired afterward!

After the movies started, I went on my hour-long break. At the theater, when we're on break, we can pretty much do what we want. (Well, except for going back behind the concession stand) We can go into any of the theaters and watch some of the movies, we can play some of the arcade games, we can even just wander around aimlessly around the lobby. When my break came around, I really didn't know what I was gonna do. One of the girls left to eat during her break, and the other one ran the concession stand to refill stuff, and deal with late customers. For about 10-15 minutes I wandered around the lobby, trying to think of something to do. I could've gone watched any of the movies, but there was nothing showing I was interested in watching. (I can wait til Superbad's on DVD) So, I just decided to sit against a wall in the lobby and start reading my book.

An hour later the other girl came back and we back on duty. It was here when the movies just started ending and it was time to clean up. So, I got a dustpan and broom, and went to each theater with one of the girls to clean the place up. It was here when I discovered something about moviegoers. What they come to watch has a direct effect on how much garbage they leave behind. When we cleaned the theaters that showed Stardust, No Reservations, and The Nanny Diaries, there wasn't all that much trash. There was the occasional empty candy box, paper cup, and of course some popcorn on the ground that needed sweeping. Not too bad. But when we went up to clean Superbad, I have only three words to say: Oh My God! That room was filthy! Half empty popcorn bags, abandoned drinks still with soda in them, and various amounts of trash on the floor. There was more crap in here than in the other three combined! It was horrible! I honestly believe that there should be a rule in theaters all over the world that, if people in a theater leave that much garbage behind, everyone who was in that room needs to be assaulted with Neon Pink B**chslap water balloons until the concept of being clean sinks into their thick skulls!

After the theaters were cleaned, the people who wanted to see the nighttime movies came in. If I thought that there weren't many people coming in before, man, I hadn't seen nothin yet! Almost no one came for the late shows. I think maybe a max of 10-15 people came in. It was here when one of the other girls decided this would be the perfect opportunity for me to get some experience with the cash register. And after a brief screw-up when I forgot to give someone change for a ten after closing the register, I think I got the hang of it. After those movies started, We started cleaning up back behind the concession stand. Just so you know, I see why the uniform requires black shoes that have slip resistant soles. The floor back there gets covered with popcorn and it gets really slippery back there. Twice that night I nearly slipped and fell, but managed to regain my balance before I hurt myself. After we cleaned and organized everything, we hung up our aprons and left. I met my mom outside and we went home, where I looked forward to a good night's sleep.

So there you have it. My very first day at work! It wasn't as bad as it could've been. I didn't accidentally set anything on fire or blow something up, so all in all, I think I did fairly well. As for when I'll be working again, I'm not sure. My manager told me I need to call him during the week to get a work schedule, but he said I probably won't work again until next weekend. So I've got plenty of time to recover and mentally prepare myself for my second day at work.

Later, Gamespot!