I had a great time at work tonight. I usually prefer not to be manager of the usher department because I’m not a big fan of picking up other peoples’ trash, but two of the three people I was managing are fantastic employees, not to mention they’re also pretty decent people (the third one just barely does the minimum to get by, which pisses me off). We cleaned the entire night and I actually enjoyed our conversations.
At one point in time we took out the trash and had to break down this gigantic standee (the big cardboard movie advertisements you see in theatres). We went outside and it was SUPER windy and as we were breaking it down we were all making noises like we were all really muscular men and the wind kept trying (and oftentimes succeeding) to blow us around. When we would try to put the cardboard sections into the trash compactor we had to fight with the wind to get them in there. Who knew breaking down a giant box could be so much fun?
Something astounded me tonight as well, which doesn’t happen often. There were these five kids (ranging from about 4 to 15) that were in a theater who were causing a ridiculous amount of commotion before their movie started. So I went in and said, “Okay, guys. Your movie hasn’t even started yet and you’re already being obnoxious. If you don’t quiet down and I have to come in here because you’re disrupting other customers, I will kick you out. Take this as your warning.” To this they replied with sarcastic, “Oh, YES, SIR!“‘s and one of them started spouting out ridiculous shit like “Hohoho, I like apppplesss!” (WTF???) But I left them in hopes they’d take me seriously. They didn’t. They started parading around the inside of their theater and ran to the front of the theater and started touching the screen, so a customer came and found me to let me know they were being rowdy again. So I went back to the theater to address the situation, but for some reason they were in the hallway. I walked up to the kids (AND THEIR PARENTS WERE THERE!) and was like, “I’m sure you don’t know this, but that screen you guys were messing with costs tens of thousands of dollars…so if you ended up damaging it, you would be responsible for it. Please don’t touch our equipment.” More sarcastic retorts were given to me here, and I walked away hoping the kids’ parents would reprimand their children, because I knew they’d heard me. They didn’t say anything, which really pissed me off, but I just kept walking, knowing that it was very likely I’d have to come back in another 15 minutes to kick them out of the theatre. So this family goes back into the theater because their movie is about to start and I went about my duties. A few minutes later I ran into another manager who was walking down the hallway towards me and he said that three people had just exchanged their tickets because of some rowdy kids in a theater. I walked with him to the theater and the two of us went up to the kids and both gave them a very stern talking-to. (I mean, who else is going to do it? Mom and dad weren’t! They were seriously just sitting there, not a care in the world. IF YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE KIDS, YOU NEED TO BE PARENTAL TOWARDS THEM.) The kids quieted down after that and we didn’t have any problems with them the rest of the night. About 30 minutes later my employees and I were about to go on another trash run. As I was walking by the theater, two of the kids we’d been having problems with started walking up to me. It was the two youngest ones out of the bunch, one about 4 years old, the other maybe 8 or 9 years old. They both came up and the older one said, “Sir, we’re really sorry for being so loud earlier. We won’t do it again.” I was literally genuinely shocked, especially since this was coming from the two youngest kids (and I know their parents didn’t make them come apologize, because they didn’t really seem to give a rat’s ass about anything other than their popcorn and cell phones). I told the kid that it was okay and as they were walking away I said, ” Hey…thank you both for apologizing to me,” to which they nodded and then reentered their theater. Honestly, it was amazing. I never would have expected that of anyone, much less two small kids.
Perhaps there is hope for us after all.
Tonight I took the DART Red Line Rail to the Mockingbird Station to meet one of my friends at the Angelika Film Center (Dallas) to watch “Another Earth” (more to come on the movie later).
Upon arriving at the Parker Road Station (which my new apartment is LITERALLY only five minutes away from!) about four minutes before the train was set to depart at 8:25, I heard the little announcement that said the train would be leaving in THREE minutes. I dashed to the kiosk to buy a ticket, but this gangsta kid approached me screaming “Hey!” and tried to get me to buy a Day Pass ($4) from him for $3. I was shuffling quarters in my pocket and was like “What? Do you work here?” He responded with a “Nigga, I work errwrr.” Yeah, definitely. I told him no and that I wasn’t comfortable with the situation. He followed me to the kiosk trying to get me to buy this fake ticket (I’m just assuming it was fake considering he was trying to hock it to me on my way to the kiosk.) and I was like “NO!” He then ran off to meet his buddy in the distance. They both started giving me dirty looks and I was thinking “I’m going to get shot. I’m going to get shot. And die. I’m going to get shot and die. I’M GOING TO GET SHOT AND FUCKING DIE!!!”
I ran onto my train and sat down. I didn’t get shot and I didn’t die (just in case that part wasn’t clear). The Mockingbird Station is like seven stops away from the Parker Road Station, and on the way there, I realized I was sitting amongst a hell of a lot of black folks. I have nothing against black people, but I thought it was kind of odd. By the time my train arrived at the Mockingbird Station, I counted 26 black people in the front car with me. Yes, I was the only white person. I found this experience interesting. It’s like we were racially segregated (not including me, who of course didn’t get the memo) like back in the slave-days, except this time it wasn’t forced, it was voluntary. I looked back on the train as far as I could see as I was getting off and everyone in all of the other cars was white. I thought it was totally crazy.
My friend Brittani and I got some Starbucks (I got a Grande Caramel Light Frappuccino with extra caramel. This way I don’t ingest the extra calories that are in the regular Caramel Frappuccino, but when I put the extra caramel in, which is the part I want the most, it jacks the calories right back up to around the same amount contained in the regular Caramel Frappuccino, but it tastes more caramel-y. I’m a genius, I know.) and then went to see our movie. We got popcorn and a drink. I haven’t actually paid for popcorn at a movie theatre in ages since I WORK at a movie theatre. It was kind of weird paying for it.
The movie was decent. I was expecting it to be more about the “other Earth” than it was about the inner psyche of the main character, but I wasn’t entirely disappointed in the movie as a whole. I think it’s definitely worth renting, but it’s probably one of those movies you watch and multitask at the same time it’s on. (Anyone here knit?)
Then after the movie got out I had like six minutes to get back onto the DART Rail to go back to the Parker Road Station. However, my clock was off again. I ran to the kiosk so I could at least be a bit early for my train this time, but right when I got to the kiosk and started shoving my money into the machine, my train screeched to a stop below me (the theatre and other shopping outlets are all on a level above where the DART is). I looked around frantically for a staircase to get down to my train before it sped off (they only sit there for like 10 seconds if you’re LUCKY). The down escalator was closed for maintenance and the “manual” staircases were too far away for me to be able to run to them, run down them, and run to my train and make it in time. My only other option was to go down the UP escalator. I made a split-second decision and started sprinting down the up escalator. Oh, my GOD. If you want a workout, go run down an up escalator sometime. I felt like I was getting NOWHERE. A man at the bottom of the staircase was screaming “Hurry, hurry, hurry! Come on! It’s about to leave!!!” as I was running down the stairs that were simultaneously running away from me. When I finally got to the bottom of the stairs I felt like I was going to die, but I managed to make it onto the train right before the doors closed. It was so intense. I basically ran down like six flights of stairs in less than 10 seconds. (Hold your applause, please.)
Then when I was on the train this teenage kid asked me to borrow my phone (Ha! Hilarious.) and I was like “Sorry, my battery is seriously about to die on me.” (It really was, and the phone obeyed my command and shut down about two minutes later.).
Right after ^ the kid got off at his stop, the automated train speaker said the name of the current stop followed by (at the same time the train was taking off) “Final Destination: Parker Road Station”…and then about 3/4ths of the lights shut off. I was like “You’re kidding me, right?”
I was convinced I was about to die. (I didn’t die this time, either. In case that wasn’t clear. But I did spend the rest of my train-ride thinking of all the badass ninja moves I could execute in order to survive a train-crash, none of which I think would actually ever be capable of.)
Needless to say, as I’m sure you’ve already gathered it was an interesting night…IT WAS AN INTERESTING NIGHT.
7 months ago
13 notes
