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As most of you know by now, I am now a "Red Shirt" employee at AMC Theaters...Today was supposed to be just another normal 8 hour Booth shift, threading the film and cleaning the lenses, reading a good book in between the times of threads and starts of movies. Well for the most part it was normal, sure I made a few mistakes on threading, but that was expected, seeing as how I'm still a newblet when it comes to the Booth. The REAL fun started roughly ONE hour before my shift was supposed to be over...heheheheheh.
Around 9 tonight I was sitting at the worn out little desk in the C side of booth (there's an A, M(main) and a C side AMC, get it? *enter sarcastic laughter here* lol), my "Sensei" (the guy who's been training me on how to work Booth) had skipped out for a break since there wasn't anything to do for another half hour or so. I'm reading my book "The Host", minding my own business while silently wishing my stupid watch would move faster so I could go home when lo and behold: The power goes out.
Let's get something straight here; The C side Booth room is a very LARGE room shaped like a "T" (The longer part of the T is the hallway that leads to the rest of the second floor of the building, the top of the T is loaded with a bunch of huge film machines with the beaten up desk smack dab in the middle where the T meets) with several lights, most of which are red for whatever reason...something to do with the sensitivity of some of our films, but all together it's pretty bright and there are no windows to the outside (just the thick glass windows in front of each of the film machines) so when the lights go out, it is seriously pitch dark. Anyway, I'm reading a part in my book that's talking about how dark it is in the weird volcano/cave thing they're all in, when suddenly all the loud buzzing machines on either side of me make that cliche "ZOOOoooo" like noise and then the lights go out, and it's actually kind of creepy to be in a large room that's normally loud and bright and then suddenly turn black and soundless lol. When the lights first went out, I actually looked up as I heard the sound and the lights keeled over and thought "...Oh s**t...This wasn't covered in the training lessons! O_o" Then the back up generator kicked into gear after about ten seconds of nothingness, and those stupid machines kept randomly coming back on, turning off, twitching back on and then finally staying dead. Some people knocked on the thick glass on the other side in the theater confused and annoyed as to why their movie just stopped right in the middle. I just shrugged at them while picking up my radio and pressing the little talk button and asked "Um...booth guys? What the heck do I do when the machines decide to die?" Go figure I get no answer so I figured I should go down the long hall and see what's going on down stairs. Only...that damned hallway's lights are all off and I can barely see the door! What's worse is I'd have to go up that rickety and creaky ramp...the ramp that every time I go up or down on it makes me think of Fatal Frame and that creepy chick that pops out of the bottom of the ramp on the upper floor who tries to freaking kill you. I thought it was funny in a scary kind of way so I pulled out my phone, only to grumble because I forgot how pathetic of a light source the tiny little screen is. I stood at the space right before the lights are gone, glaring at the ramp. Running as fast as I can while thinking "s**t I forgot about the Tooth Fairy! Damn you horror movies that I love so much! Where's a camera when I need it! TT^TT" and practically tackled myself out of the room and then pretending that I was perfectly calm when I peered down the balcony to the first floor entrance. It was PACKED with people, the poor managers all surrounded by them and trying to explain the situation. While I was looking down the balcony, Brandon walked out of the A side booth door, looking confused and said something among the lines of "Uhh...I was standing outside by the generator when it just randomly made a loud noise and started smoking... I didn't do it" and then Andrew (the sensei) spoke over the radio "Fizzy do you copy?"
I pulled the radio out from my belt. "Go ahead Andrew."
"Uh...what's going on?"
"Everything died! What's your location?"
"...C side Booth, where are you?"
"Outside the door by the balcony"
He walked out a few moments later with a half grin of amusement on his face. "So what exactly happened?" We ended up downstairs making sure people got out of the theater (Some people were just sitting in their seats thinking that it was going to start up again lol) Apparently half of the whole mall next to us died too.
After several minutes of trying to get people informed that they can keep their ticket stubs and come back another day for free, we ended up splitting up into two groups, one group had to go and clean all the theaters while the other group got to go back upstairs and film drop all 30 projectors (Meaning they had to cut the film where it was strung to the projector and the plates that were holding them, un-thread it and then re-splice it all up together. A really...'fun' task) I was lucky and ended up with clean up duty. Only problem was that we were told that the backup generator would probably only stay up for another 30 minutes heheheheh...joy.
So we ran around trying to pick up all the trash that the guests had left in a panic (You think normal ushering is hard...my god the trash was EVERYWHERE! D< wink and right as were cleaning up the last room the lights went off. Yay us lol. Though the lights did all go back on a few seconds after that, even the music started playing again, and right as it hit 10, time for me to leave, though I got stuck with going into the women's restrooms and flushing the toilets (I'm guessing that everyone REALLY had to pee when the lights went out or something lol) because the stupid toilets are motion censored and couldn't work with the lights out, and then finally got to leave after going backup stairs to get my stuff.
So yes, today was a fun adventure at AMC Theaters lol.
My Dad thought it was funny when I retold him the story, since he was in the parking lot and didn't even notice that the AMC tower at the front wasn't lit lol. He did take pity though and bought me a late dinner and Sonic lol.
Geh this is what I get for playing so many horror video games XD
 Ahh the joys of being a Redshirt D:
 Fizzyology · Sun Mar 15, 2009 @ 07:43am · 2 Comments |
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