The Gate Shift

The Gate Shift.

“Hi, thanks, screen six. Hi, can I take your tickets? Sorry, that’s screen seven, on the other side. And, yes, I know it says Monsters Inc up there, but we have it on five screens, your showing’s on the other side.”

“Customers! Whoever told customers they were always right should be shot! They think they know everything, after all, I only work here! What could I know?

“I hate gate! Stand here for hours, staring into space; tear a few hundred tickets in two minutes, then more staring into space! And that’s just for starters! It’s the customer’s fault, if only we had no customers everything would be dandy! The job would be a million times easier!

“Take this one guy for example, despite me telling him a dozen times his showing was on the other side he was convinced that, because it said on the neon sign ‘Ocean’s eleven’, his showing was in screen seven! Never mind the fact that it’s also in screen One. He’s the customer so he’s right! So, I let him go into screen seven, waited for ten seconds then smiled sweetly as he came out, agreed I was right and slunk over to corridor One. I was right, go figure! Then later that day I thought this guy was going to hit me! Just because he had to queue while the screen was cleaned!

“Nasty customers aren’t my only problem. The stupid ones are just as bad. Seven feet high neon signs are a huge clue to which screens are which and where the toilets are; yet still they have to ask! You’d think they were joking for how obvious it is but they’re not! They’re all completely serious!

“And as if customers are not enough to deal with we have supervisors and managers constantly breathing down our necks! ‘Don’t lean on the end of concessions! Don’t talk to the concessions staff all day! Make sure you smile at the customers! Be happy! Don’t whinge!’ It’s endless! We can’t get away from them! They’ve even got a window in the managers’ office so they can keep an eye on us from there!

“Mind you, it works in our favour sometimes too. Yesterday my manager was hanging around, (probably waiting for me to slip up and make a mistake, just so he could bawl me out), when he overheard me telling a customer about a movie, so I automatically got fifty maxit points. Another fifty points closer to that holiday in the sun! (Even if I need 500,000 points just to go to Skegness!)

“Man! Today has been the boringest! I’ve had about five customers, although I admit the daytime customers are mostly nicer. Probably a result of the lack of mile long queues! I had a customer stand and talk to me for half-hour today; he only wanted to know the release date for Queen of the Damned! But we got chatting about the movie, or more specifically, how the makers of the movie have sacrificed half of the characters, (and the actual story line), in favour of Matrix style action! He was really nice actually, hope he comes back! We could do with more customers like him, would make my day a hell of lot more interesting!

“Still best get going, we have another big walk-in starting any minute, I’m about to be descended on by hundreds of kids all dying to get their favourite seat for Monsters Inc!”