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Author Topic: Labor Percentage Blake Zaugg Film Handler Posts: 57 From: Lafayette, LA Registered: Sep 2002 posted 12-09-2003 01:57 PM                     Sorry, I was being unclear again. Just like Scott D Neffwe get volunteers to go home. There is always someone. We try as I'm sure everyone does to guess proper staffing levels, but some of the time it is just too slow on a Friday night to have all the staff on. I realize that there are minimum staffing levels on slow nights to the theatre that will throw everything out of whack, but over a pay period, or month the busy times should level off with the slow times to get an average. I'm sure at corporate office of some big theatre chains if the percentage hit a certain level, they would show alot of concern. Our months have ranged from 17% all the way up to 30%. The latter being way too high. Some theatres have a schedule budget to use x number of hours in a week. How do they know how many hours they should use. We have a Little Caesars at the entrance to the theatre and they have a grid they use to do the schedule. The grid has expected sales, man hours to use. So if they expect $4000 in sales on a day they have x number of man hours. The gap or ratio between man hours and sales widens the higher the expected sales is. The manager should always have they ability or "override" the chart, but for the less experience manager it would be nice to give them a guideline to go by.  |  IP: Logged John Scott Master Film Handler Posts: 252 From: Oakdale, MN, USA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 12-09-2003 10:48 PM                     Dustin, You are correct, I am the Associate Manager at the Marcus Oakdale 16.  |  IP: Logged R. Andrew Diercks Expert Film Handler Posts: 232 From: Marion, Iowa (In the middle of everywhere) Registered: May 2003 posted 01-08-2004 09:41 AM                     My company takes a percentage of total theatre deposits vs. payroll. We like it to be 12-18%. Under is great but usually only happens during holiday weeks. I have seen some theatres so worried about the percentage that they greatly under staff. I feel when you get your small rush on slow night, having one staff sell tickets and concessions from two counters looks incredibly unorganized and poorly managed, so I take the higher percentage. Most of our locations are in smaller communities under 30,000 people. The individual theatre does not deposit income from 3rd party ads so those are not taken into account. I ask for volunteers when we need to cut and if there are several, we draw straws or roll dice to see who wins. I have had everyone choose to stay before, but always had a project lined up for them. Very occasionally if I see someone that appears a little ill, or if I know they had something going on but had to work, I will send them home.  |  IP: Logged Nick Engstrom Film Handler Posts: 23 From: USA Registered: Dec 2003 posted 01-08-2004 04:49 PM                    Got a fax on tuesday from my district manager, had all of yesterdays numbers for staff and in giant letter, CUT STAFF NOW. So I proceeded to walk out to the lobby and said 'Who wants to go home', and had 4 out of 5 people that said yes. Easy Greasy  |  IP: Logged Daryl C. W. O'Shea Film God Posts: 3977 From: Midland Ontario Canada (where Panavision & IMAX lenses come from) Registered: Jun 2002 posted 01-08-2004 09:38 PM                        You should have smeared blood all over the fax, wrote "two didn't make it" and faxed it back.  |  IP: Logged Nick Engstrom Film Handler Posts: 23 From: USA Registered: Dec 2003 posted 01-08-2004 11:22 PM                    nothing like a nice black smear all over a fax, trying to figure out what the hell that is, lol.  |  IP: Logged Steve Kraus Film God Posts: 4094 From: Chicago, IL, USA Registered: May 2000 posted 01-08-2004 11:36 PM                    Oh yeah...Kansas is in B&W...just like the M&M's.  |  IP: Logged Brent Mahaney Film Handler Posts: 43 From: Bowling Green, Kentucky, USA Registered: Dec 2001 posted 01-10-2004 08:12 PM                    If only it were as simple as saying, "During your busy times, staff more people. When it is slow, staff less people." And I think what frustrates a number of managers I talk to is the fact that the corporate people see it exactly this way. There are so many factors that go into determining a proper level of staffing. Those factors vary from town to town and market to market, and you cannot set a blanket policy for every theater in a chain. That is ignorant. The smart thing for a company to do is to set a payroll percentage goal for each particular location. So if your location's goal is 9%, you try to come as close to that number as you can on a weekly basis...WITH THE UNDERSTANDING (pay attention corporate lurkers) that some weeks you're going to have 12 or 13 percent, and other weeks you're going to have 5 or 6 percent. That's just the way it is. Period. Corporate doesn't need to blow a fuse every time they see high numbers as long as it balances out during busy times. But the flip side is that there are a number of brain-deficient managers that ruin it for the good managers. Home offices feel the need to continuously harp on payroll because there are managers in this industry that need to be yelled at. We all know a few. But what do I know? I'm just a lowly pawn...I mean, theater manager...  |  IP: Logged Chris Medley Expert Film Handler Posts: 180 From: McKinney, TX, USA Registered: Jan 2004 posted 01-14-2004 08:20 AM                        I have the same problems at my theater. We are in central texas were football is king and on friday nights or big NFL sundays it is a rollorcoaster ride of never knowing if we'll be dead or slammed. But I agree that the corp. offices never take into account things like kids shows needed more ushers or training hours. I have worked for places before(outside the theater industry) where you could be alotted so many "extra" hours per period as training. With Cinemark the corp. offices have done something that I love, they offer an extra day off with pay to workers at the corp. office (ie marketing, accounting..people like that), if they work two shifts over the holidays at a theater. I think this helps give them an idea of what it is truely like on the front lines.  |  IP: Logged JC Cowles Film Handler Posts: 77 From: St. Paul, MN Registered: Jun 2001 posted 01-15-2004 02:25 AM                     Labor is an extremely difficult balance in any business, not only theatres. The question, in my opinion, really boils down to what level of customer service that business wishes to provide. The idea of providing superior customer service without over-extending labor goals seems like a rock-and-a-hard-place predicament. Especially when those labor goals are unrealistic. A corporate office will always and forever push for lower labor. If you have a banner year and maybe happen to have the lowest labor percentage in the company, you will likely get a grand pat on the back and a “job well done.” Yet, sure as the sun will rise, next year you will be asked to exceed those goals. The questions will arise, what else can you do? Where else can you cut to lower that labor percentage even more? Of course for this to work, eventually, in order to cut your labor even more, you’d need to call up the local humane society and see if they have a monkey willing to sell tickets and popcorn, while threading up a few projectors on the side (for free, naturally). What gets me about corporate office is their unwillingness to see the human side of labor issues. When I worked for AMC, I was actually given the following instructions to meet their labor goals. It was recommended that employees be placed on an on-call status. Being a small theatre (a brother-sister theatre with 3 screens and 8 screens—providing a lot of down-time) employees should punch out between movie sets and be ready and available to punch back in before the next rush. It was also said we should schedule lighter than needed and if business was such that we needed more employees, we should call in additional employees from home at that time. Basically, schedule employees to sit at home between say 5pm and 10pm and wait by the phone…without pay for sitting and waiting, naturally. Now if you’re like me, take some time to wipe the blood off your forehead from beating your head against the keyboard multiple times. Financially, yes, no one can argue that wouldn’t save labor. Realistically…I’m not even going to follow up on that. When the realistic augment was presented, the response was simply, “come up with something better, but still meet labor goals.” Obviously no employee is going to work for $5.75/hr to work under those conditions. Their labor goals? I couldn’t reach labor goals if I had one box office, one concessionists and one usher every day of the week, for a theatre which could easily have 1400 people walk through in an hour. And yes, there wasn’t another movie at the 3-plex for 2 additional hours, but you cannot ask an employee to remain at the theatre for six hours and only pay them for two. $10.50 a day, minus taxes, is not going to keep an employee around for very long. WARNING: Long winded run-on sentance What gets me is a corporate office located in another state provides me labor expectations using statistical data and commentary from a 15 minute bi-monthly visit from a district manager dictates labor expectations and expects me to balance the customer service to match. In my opinion, when it came to AMC, the only way to provide the necessary levels of customer service was to use labor expectations as an example of what not to do. And I said many times working under them, “if they want to fire me for providing stellar customer service, then that’s something worth putting on my resume.” As it turned out I quit AMC for this and many other reasons. Because in the end, at the theatre I worked at, Customer service was severely hindered, and I couldn’t work for a company that operated like that.  |  IP: Logged Chris Medley Expert Film Handler Posts: 180 From: McKinney, TX, USA Registered: Jan 2004 posted 01-15-2004 10:08 AM                        I totally agree...the corp. offices want us to provide 100% customer service will only using 25-50% of the needed labor.  |  IP: Logged Jim Ziegler Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 753 From: West Hollywood, CA Registered: Jul 99 posted 01-28-2004 11:47 AM                     JC, Thats odd.. The AMC's in Kansas City are always very well staffed, to the point of being totally overstaffed. The payroll guidelines I have to work under right now are I am allowed, for each round, one in stand for every 100 people, one in the box for every 200 people and one on floor for every 200 people. The managers on duty figure into these totals as well.  |  IP: Logged

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