jobbite
I started out as a box office employee making only $7.25 an hour and a few months in, my GM promotes me to Associate Manager and an extra $2.60 an hour. Great! right? So, I am currently making more than $13 an hour with 3 years into the company. This is still good news right? However, as you are currently aware, Regal and other theatre chains are becoming equipped with digital auditoriums and automatic start systems. This will take out ALL Projectionist or managers who tend to do some projection work. This will cut 1/2 of your management team. Management will consist of a GM, assistant manager, hiring manager (only 3 salary mgrs), and maybe about 2 to 3 part time managers with very little pay (max pay $11.00 an hour). I know this to be true because if you look at the digital conversion trend and (payroll/hours) forecasting model, this is not fiction. This will be a fact by Fall 2012 (at the end of the summer blockbuster movies). This will not just effect theatre employees and managers, but some booth technicians and some cuts in the corporate offices.
Here's some good news, the pricing for movie tickets will drop in a couple of years due to new film distribution by studios. encoded streaming films straight to you PC, Laptop, Phone, CableTV or Satellite TV. It would be like watching a pay per view presentation. I am sure some of you heard of this talk before.
From my point of view,
Pro: Easy job (honestly it does not take a genius to do this job)
Con: job becomes harder to do because of incompetent managers and employees.
Pro: Job salary is fair for a few years
Con: Salary declines and hours are cut more and more.
Pro: Free movies (screening)
Con: Limited passes (somewhat understandable reason)
The rest is all Con's because both the company and employees will suffer in this trend. Regal will make more effort in customer service to improve sales and focus less on other issues.
I started with Regal Entertainment Group when they purchased Eastern Federal Corporation back in 2005. I started as an Usher for EFC a year prior. In 2007 I worked my way up to an Associate manager. At the time, it wasn't a bad job for a kid right of of highschool. I wasn't making much, but then again I didn't need much. It wasn't a bad place to work at all.
Fast forward to the present, the landscape has changed drastically. The company has been cutting corners, reducing and/or foregoing pay raises, and systematically getting rid of people that make too much money. Almost once a week, we get an e-mail for another theatre needing a new GM. The company has no loyalties to it's employees whatsoever. They prefer it to be a revolving door, so they can keep people at base wages. The DM's micromanage and contradict themselves so much, it's impossible to understand what they truly want. They give you imposssible tasks, which literally can't be made with the guidelines they've given you. Our DM has given us guidelines on how much staffing we can have each day (generally 3-4 employees short) then gets furious when customer service suffers.
Basically he wants all his groceries in one bag, but also doesn't want the bag to be heavy. This is the mentality the entire company has embraced as a whole. HR then gives specific guidelines on how everything should be done, despite most of those people never even stepping foot in a single theatre. Then they give all these impossible to accomplish tasks to a few underpaid people. Then they either wait for you to quit, or find a reason to get rid of you so they can fill your spot with the next sap who's willing to do it for cheaper.
As management, they job is way to stressful and way to cut-throat for the absurdly low salaries. Do yourself a favor if you're thinking about applying for this company. Run.
I started out as a concessionist and worked my way to assistant manager in 3 years. It's easy to get promoted due to the fact that no one stays with the company long. I didnt know why until i became a manager and then my eyes opened up to the company. They only care about the $ not the employees nor the customers, very strict in the upper ranks so strict its literally cut throat. I loved the concession/box/projection positions but management is too stressful mainly from corporate not the guests or job, the constant changing of policies that no one can really keep up with and then its micro managed by strict DM's who change what your GM has told you to do. It gets confusing and you get counseling if you don't keep up with what every boss wants/expects from you but how can you when one tells you to do it this way and another that way? It's a very unorganized company, theatre level staff is mainly kids because the adults who is looking at this job as a career has seen the light and left the company for better paying jobs that is less cut throat and more caring to its employees.
$7.25 starting out
$11.00 ending
free movies -but only two passes per day
1 week vacation after 1 year of employment
3 weeks after 5 years
4 weeks after 10 years
For those of you who don't know, Regal is the largest movie theater company in the world. I started working there thinking it would be a cool high school job and I would get to see movies for free. That's exactly what it is- a cool high school job. Because I love movies so much, I stuck with it through 3 levels of promotion- First I was a minion cashier at the concession stand, then I skipped the supervisor level and went to associate manager (meaning starting the projectors, which is a very, VERY fun job. Its a little bit technically difficult, but after the initial training, anybody could do it) But then I got promoted for a third time to Assistant manager, meaning managing the cashiers and downstairs employees. That was fine for a while until I realized that there was absolutely no need for me whatsoever. Its rare that a job is so overstaffed, but this one was, simply because there's nothing for a manager to do there except wait for something to go wrong. My boss had a talking to with me once because I was at the customer service desk, sitting there, trying to figure out what to do, and he asked me why I wasn't back with the floor crew cleaning the theaters. I told him they had enough people. And then, dead serious, he looked me in the eyes and said, "Well, then you should be back there just in case something goes wrong." That sums up the job- you're there just in case something goes wrong, and that is really frustrating and really boring. However, if you work as a cashier when you're in high school, really fun job. Just don't expect to make a lot of money. As far as projectionist, same thing. You get paid a little more, but not enough.
Starting salary: 6.50 / hr.
Ending salary: 10.00 / hr. for a manager that has been there for three years. And I wasn't even the lowest paid manager. The pay is very, very bad. They think that they don't need to pay you because young people will work just for the free movies, and unfortunately, they're right.
