Why my part-time job will eventually drive me insane, Part 1.
So this is something which occurred not last Thursday but the Thursday before last Thursday. Or it could have been Tuesday, but not last Tuesday. I know it was one of the two because they always have us change the marquee at the movie theater on a Thursday, except when the Thursday is a Tuesday, which happens every four years or something and is called the Vernal Equinox. Anyway, it was a dark and stormy night. I know, because I was there. Except maybe it wasn't that dark, because it's summer and it doesn't get dark until like 3:00 in the morning or something, because of the tides. But it was darker than usual because it was stormy.
Now, see, the thing with our movie theater is it was constructed in the cheapest way possible. For example, we have air conditioning in the theater and in the lobby, but not in the hallway. We have a men's room on one side of the hallway, and a women's room sixty feet away in Bangladesh, because the people who designed the building were doing the crack cocaine when they got to the bathroom part. Anyhoo, this also means that instead of a digital LED marquee to show all the currently playing movies, we have an old-fashioned analog marquee made of plastic letters set into slots on a lit background, and because it is analog it also has to be manually set for daylight savings time. And of course the movie titles need to be changed manually as well, because if the analog marquee could change the titles automatically then that would be creepy like that movie about the poltergeist that had the little girl in it, I forget what it was called. So every week on Thursday (except when it's Tuesday) they have two (except when it's three) of us ushers come in at 8:00 in the evening to bang on the marquee with metal poles until it shows the right movies, or until it's been set an hour ahead, unless it's fall and it has to be set back.
When we do this we get paid for two hours even when it only takes us an hour or less, which is management's idea of compensating for the fact that changing the marquee is the SUCKIEST MOST HORRIBLE NASTY EVIL DISGUSTING WRETCHED JOB in the whole theater. Basically what happens is this: the two ushers (read: victims) clock in and venture forth into yonder Room Full of Letters and a Stuffed Reindeer. There, using a sheet showing how the marquee needs to look as dictated by management, we select only the plumpest vine-ripened plastic letters to spell out the movie titles. With our harvest in tow, and also with our ceremonial metal sticks, we go outside to the marquee and use the suction cups on the ends of the poles to strategically molest the letters until they form some cognitive words. Now, and this is where I start losing my mind, they make us do this regardless of current weather conditions, including lightning storms, rains of fire, rains of locusts, and rains of fire-breathing locusts that shoot lightning from their wings while they scream the French national anthem and half-naked women prance by waving banners (this event is also known as the autumnal equinox.) And the weather on that particular Thursday or Tuesday was, as previously established, stormy. Now, usually the weather is fine when we have to go out there, because there is some benevolent force out there that is... that likes to... well, it's benevolent.
So I was absolutely miserable about this, because since nearly the entire job is spent looking straight up, a hooded jacket would be perfectly useless, and umbrellas are right out because the long metal pole which is drenched in water and could never ever attract a stray bolt of lightning must be wielded with two hands. We had someone attempt a one-armed marquee change once, and I won't perturb you with the grisly details, but suffice to say the term "jazzercize" would have been used in liberation. So I miserably slog out into the stormy night which wasn't really too dark despite the storm, and within ten minutes I may as well have been swimming it is so wet and stormy and miserable. It is at this point I start to go crazy, which I believe was a defense mechanism to prevent me from going crazy. I start wildly smacking at the letters with the pole, laughing hysterically as I slide them around with such efficiency that it has yet to be described by the English language, however, the Native Americans called it "maize." I did my job darn well that night, and frequently broke into fits of unexplainable laughter. It was like I went so far past miserable that I hit rapturous from the other side. I finished well before the other hapless usher, and went on to help him finish his side, because I am so generous and awesome. By the time we got back inside, I was waterlogged and probably in dire need of medication, but the crazy marquee-high wore off rather quickly after that and I went back to being damp. It was the best Wednesday of my life.
Addendum: I have discovered a new psychological condition, which I have named "The Napkin Mentality." That isn't a metaphor, I really do mean napkins. It's the thing that possesses people to take a stack of napkins thick enough to be used as body armor into the theater, where they leave them as an offering to their heathen gods. I can only imagine the conversation goes something like this:
Person 1: Okay, I have the drinks, you have the popcorn, is there anything else you want?
Person 2: NAPKINS.
Person 1: YES. NAPKINS FOR YEMANJA.
Person 2: WE SHALL SCATTER THEM O'ER THE LAND IN HER PRAISE.
Person 1: JUBILATION!
Person 2: Okay, we're looking for theater three. Hmm. Okay, I see seven, let's head that way.
Now, see, the thing with our movie theater is it was constructed in the cheapest way possible. For example, we have air conditioning in the theater and in the lobby, but not in the hallway. We have a men's room on one side of the hallway, and a women's room sixty feet away in Bangladesh, because the people who designed the building were doing the crack cocaine when they got to the bathroom part. Anyhoo, this also means that instead of a digital LED marquee to show all the currently playing movies, we have an old-fashioned analog marquee made of plastic letters set into slots on a lit background, and because it is analog it also has to be manually set for daylight savings time. And of course the movie titles need to be changed manually as well, because if the analog marquee could change the titles automatically then that would be creepy like that movie about the poltergeist that had the little girl in it, I forget what it was called. So every week on Thursday (except when it's Tuesday) they have two (except when it's three) of us ushers come in at 8:00 in the evening to bang on the marquee with metal poles until it shows the right movies, or until it's been set an hour ahead, unless it's fall and it has to be set back.
When we do this we get paid for two hours even when it only takes us an hour or less, which is management's idea of compensating for the fact that changing the marquee is the SUCKIEST MOST HORRIBLE NASTY EVIL DISGUSTING WRETCHED JOB in the whole theater. Basically what happens is this: the two ushers (read: victims) clock in and venture forth into yonder Room Full of Letters and a Stuffed Reindeer. There, using a sheet showing how the marquee needs to look as dictated by management, we select only the plumpest vine-ripened plastic letters to spell out the movie titles. With our harvest in tow, and also with our ceremonial metal sticks, we go outside to the marquee and use the suction cups on the ends of the poles to strategically molest the letters until they form some cognitive words. Now, and this is where I start losing my mind, they make us do this regardless of current weather conditions, including lightning storms, rains of fire, rains of locusts, and rains of fire-breathing locusts that shoot lightning from their wings while they scream the French national anthem and half-naked women prance by waving banners (this event is also known as the autumnal equinox.) And the weather on that particular Thursday or Tuesday was, as previously established, stormy. Now, usually the weather is fine when we have to go out there, because there is some benevolent force out there that is... that likes to... well, it's benevolent.
So I was absolutely miserable about this, because since nearly the entire job is spent looking straight up, a hooded jacket would be perfectly useless, and umbrellas are right out because the long metal pole which is drenched in water and could never ever attract a stray bolt of lightning must be wielded with two hands. We had someone attempt a one-armed marquee change once, and I won't perturb you with the grisly details, but suffice to say the term "jazzercize" would have been used in liberation. So I miserably slog out into the stormy night which wasn't really too dark despite the storm, and within ten minutes I may as well have been swimming it is so wet and stormy and miserable. It is at this point I start to go crazy, which I believe was a defense mechanism to prevent me from going crazy. I start wildly smacking at the letters with the pole, laughing hysterically as I slide them around with such efficiency that it has yet to be described by the English language, however, the Native Americans called it "maize." I did my job darn well that night, and frequently broke into fits of unexplainable laughter. It was like I went so far past miserable that I hit rapturous from the other side. I finished well before the other hapless usher, and went on to help him finish his side, because I am so generous and awesome. By the time we got back inside, I was waterlogged and probably in dire need of medication, but the crazy marquee-high wore off rather quickly after that and I went back to being damp. It was the best Wednesday of my life.
Addendum: I have discovered a new psychological condition, which I have named "The Napkin Mentality." That isn't a metaphor, I really do mean napkins. It's the thing that possesses people to take a stack of napkins thick enough to be used as body armor into the theater, where they leave them as an offering to their heathen gods. I can only imagine the conversation goes something like this:
Person 1: Okay, I have the drinks, you have the popcorn, is there anything else you want?
Person 2: NAPKINS.
Person 1: YES. NAPKINS FOR YEMANJA.
Person 2: WE SHALL SCATTER THEM O'ER THE LAND IN HER PRAISE.
Person 1: JUBILATION!
Person 2: Okay, we're looking for theater three. Hmm. Okay, I see seven, let's head that way.