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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Author
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Topic: Regal Entertainment Group acquires Hollywood Cinemas
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Robert E. Allen
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1078
From: Checotah, Oklahoma
Registered: Jul 2002
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posted 02-22-2013 12:15 PM
quote: Michael McGovern
Buck - Good luck, I was part of a Regal merger in 2004, and the differences were night and day. Any local autonomy you might have over your own theater is gone, Regal is very much a company that like to micro manage down to the very last detail. They are very Disney-esque in that they want to present themselves as more than just a movie theater, they want to present themselves as an experience.
Regal doesn't have employees, they have "cast members" and they don't have customers, they have "guests". Basically any story you've ever heard about companies bending over backwards to placate insane and unprofitable customers is magnified 10x with them in my experience. They would rather lose 5 good employees than 1 bad customer. Oh, and pay for staff and management is outrageously low compared to the amount of work and responsibilities they expect you to handle.
I honestly have very few good things to say in my experience from working there, and I know others on this board that have worked for them who have even fewer good things to say than I do. So my best advice would be, good luck.
Well Michael, back in '04 I worked for Regal as assistant manager for a salary of $500. per week. I worked for the nicest manager I had ever know in my 25 years in the business. I never felt like a number and was never referred to as a "cast member". Perhaps what you experienced was brought on by your manager. The man I worked for left Regal after 20 years because the district manager (who was a really nice guy) was replaced with a female jerk who tried to teach my manager (who had been with Regal longer than she)how to manage a theatre and nit-picked just about everything.
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Monte L Fullmer
Film God
Posts: 8367
From: Nampa, Idaho, USA
Registered: Nov 2004
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posted 02-24-2013 12:04 AM
quote: Robert E. Allen
back in '04 I worked for Regal as assistant manager for a salary of $500. per week. I worked for the nicest manager I had ever know in my 25 years in the business. I never felt like a number and was never referred to as a "cast member". Perhaps what you experienced was brought on by your manager. The man I worked for left Regal after 20 years because the district manager (who was a really nice guy) was replaced with a female jerk who tried to teach my manager (who had been with Regal longer than she)how to manage a theatre and nit-picked just about everything.
Fully agree with the manager experiences. I've heard a lot of stories of the sour taste a lot of former employees that worked with REG had, yet some employees had great experiences with REG, and it's all due to the manager on how he looks upon his staff-both management and cast members.
Either he looks at them as a part of a great team, or he looks, esp at the cast members, as "minions"-blank faces wearing their maroon polo shirts and black pants.
And, this can really go with any 'big box' cinema company or any large company in general.
Unfortunately, and this will easily drift back into the projection end of the industry spectrum, that there are some of us out there that care about our job in which it may not be approved by the new ones (esp with the story of the mgr and the DM, where the old DM goes out and the new one comes in and cranks all over the existing manager), where the new ones really feels threatened due to the qualifications of the present manager or cast members-they turn the qualified into the over qualified that needs to be replaced.
In all, and to be fair: REG is NOT that all bad of a company. It's the manager and how they reflect to his employees on how bad the manager hate their job to their employees. And by doing so, this attribute gives REG (and any other company in general) a unfair "black eye" that they didn't earn and deserve.
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Michael McGovern
Film Handler
Posts: 57
From: New Britain, CT, USA
Registered: May 2008
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posted 02-25-2013 06:55 PM
What I found when working for them was that they wouldn't replace any management, but what I would see is Regal would take over a theater from a company that had neglectful or non-existant security and HR departments, so you would get locations run by management who would steal, work 15 hours a week on salary, and / or fudge their payroll numbers, and would get away with it because no one ever caught them or told them not to. These people would quickly get run out of the building when Regal came along because their HR and Security departments are the polar opposite of neglectful.
The other thing I would see is the hard working veteran manager who has their soul sucked out from underneath by Regal's spirit crushing corporate attitude, and the impossibly lofty goals set forth by corporate management. (ie: We want you to have zero lines, get a perfect secret shopper score, a four dollar concession percap, and a lobby so clean you can eat off of it, and you have a payroll budget of $17 to make it happen, and you can't go over budget.)
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Monte L Fullmer
Film God
Posts: 8367
From: Nampa, Idaho, USA
Registered: Nov 2004
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posted 02-27-2013 11:50 AM
Thing we have to realize with a lot of these large companies is their form of operation.
Take Apple for example: They have a huge profit margin simply due to being a manufacturing company and selling a product and products. Thus, their workforce could be the size of REGAL, but in many small steps up to the corporate mgmt - including a small percentage of assembly line workers, then to assembly management, engineers and technicians, plant management, sales and marketing and finally up to corporate.
Basically, a lot of room for inner company growth and wage earning that one can achieve.
REGAL and other cinema companies - big and small - can't have this form of operation due to being not a manufacturing company where a product is made, but just an service venue to offer entertainment.
Thus, REGAL may have the same workforce as APPLE, but in only two catagories, locationwise, being staff member and management, and the percentage of staff members massively overshadow the amount of management, let alone the amount of corporate employees. Plus, the profit margin with any of these cinema companies can't even match the profit margin with APPLE.
Not much room for growth here for moving up and giving the good wages as does the employees working for APPLE.
Thus, the cinema industry really have to look at payroll where the floorstaff and maybe location management are just statistics and numbers that the companies really have to keep an eye on since the only way a cinema can make the monies is with concession sales being this is only where a product is actually being sold.
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