AMC Stories: The Regulars

I didn’t get the writing job, but that’s not so bad. It would have required a move to Minnesota, and Minnesota sucks. Instead circumstances have pointed me in a different direction entirely. Tenure’s only useful if it’s useful, after all. Two bright sides though- I helped save a bunch of my fellow project workers a ton of money from a planned employer scam, and got a new line on the resume out of it.

So anyway as the next lines on that page remain a mystery, there’s some meat hiding behind the beginning. Most of my work years have been in customer service so most of my work stories really suck, but there were a few exceptions along the way. The theatre wasn’t a bar but we had regulars. Once they started moving me every year I stopped keeping track of the customers, keeping up with the staffs was hard enough. So these people could be dead by now for all I know. They were all out of Burbank several radiocarbon half-lives ago.

There was a lady I always assumed was a schoolteacher. She was very pleasant and grandmotherly, so she always struck me as perfect for teaching kids or, you know, eating them. (The one you’d never suspect is exactly the one you should.) She was always there for the late shows on weekdays, always just her. We didn’t talk much beyond passing hellos, but she was always the nicest lady. Except one night, but some of that was an overly-clever filmmaker’s fault.

The Scarlett Johansson horse movie, remember that one? The film starts in a flat aspect but expands to scope when they move out to the country. The masking is supposed to stay out through the opening, leaving intentionally blank screen on both sides. There were specific instructions by the studio. Audiences were supposed to see the city picture was missing something that was only present in the country. So, so clever. Anyway, one night she came in to see that one, and she was not happy with the picture. She’d seen the movie before, she didn’t remember any smart filmmaking, and she was certain we’d done something wrong.

This woman had been a regular at my building for a few years at that point. We didn’t know each other but we could recognize one another in that context. Every time I’d seen her, her shows had gone well enough that I made the foolish assumption she would associate me with “correct things”.

“LOL” would be the correct term here.

She was mad, and it was honestly kind of fun to watch because I knew she was wrong. It was frustrating too because she was so certain that I was trying to get away with some mistake, that she simply wouldn’t listen. I lost a little respect for her just then as a schoolteacher, so hopefully she was just another serial killer. I wound up buying her off with a pass because I didn’t care and wanted her to stop bothering me, but I still remember when that nice woman turned.

She caught up with me a couple weeks later and apologized. She’d seen the same film somewhere else, and they’d projected the film the exact same way, and she had the sense and courtesy to acknowledge that I wasn’t trying to scam her. So that was pretty cool. Almost made up for her being such a stubborn pain.

Before that there was the Black guy with the sweatpants. We never knew his name, and he was never there with anyone else. But every time he was there he wanted popcorn popped without seasoning, so we learned to see him coming from the box office. Also every time, he was clearly packing a giant dick in those sweatpants. If the stand’s lead was paying attention, his popcorn was ready to go by the time he got to the counter. I was staff at the time, one of those leads. Sometimes we called him the popcorn guy and sometimes we called him tripod, but we all knew who we were talking about. He was surprised sometimes when his order was all ready to go, but really he was just as noticeable as he probably hoped he was.

Then there was Dave. The guy with the cool name. He had some job in the industry, I think a writer of some kind. When he came around we’d spend 5-10 minutes at the counter, just talking movies. We were both sure a crash was coming. He thought home theaters would be legit competition; I didn’t think the technology was close enough. OLEDs were still years away at that point. But the internet, that was still new, and gaming was taking leaps. My guess was that folks would simply have more options and be less inclined to tie up several hours for a movie. We were both right, but I was right first.

Not ALL customers were assholes. There were some gems beyond those three, I’m sure. But it’s like panning for gold in a cow pasture. There’s only so much shit you can step into before the shiny just isn’t worth it.

I don’t miss the theater years. I miss the projection booth, and playing around with Excel macros. A few people. And I like the idea of being the guy whose work kept them coming back. That was then though. The socialization was good training for “life”, now onto the next thing, right? Besides, there have to be good stories. The bad stories are too fun to leave alone, but you’ve gotta mix things up.