Recently, I took my largest challenge by far in my career and accepted the position of taking over one of the largest theatres in our state. This theatre has a "dead" reputation. Its been open for four years and has been run by thieves and incompetent managers. It has a poor relationship with the community because of its continued abuse of past GMs. I feel that I have made great dtrides in my first four weeks and this week the company recieved an email complaint that was totally shocking. I am sure that many of you have heard all the complaints and this one pretty much made the theatre look as if it runs on autopilot. Whatever could have been wrong in the eyes of this person's single visit, apparently was. That's not the problem...

Although I disagree with most of the complaint, I voiced my opinions about it to the VP because he demanded an explanation of the complaint's issues. I covered the entire complaint with a rebuttal and the action plan that was being taken and also noted to him that I am trying to beat a dark past in that theatre that is well known to the company. I fear that I may have turned him somewhat against me as his response showed no care of the fact that I had just started to solve these problems. Well, I dont want to ramble on the subject. I am just looking for a bit of advice from other Managers who may have been in this situation and how to you move faster to obtain goals when you feel that you are under the knife????

Joel Michalec
 

Plain, Simple, Direct.

What company do you work for?
 

I have no idea how to deal wiht an unreasonable VP. Fixing a damaged operation takes time and money, both things that most companies are not willing to give.

What I can suggest is deal with the most critical items first (i.e. customer service issues). GO one section at a time if you can. Once you have a problem fixed, put someone you can trust to maintain it in charge, then move on to the next problem. While everyone above you wants a quick solution, your best bet for long term solutions is to proceed methodically. Identify your problems, their causes, and then eliminate the causes.

For example, you can drive yourself nuts figuring out a system that keeps an employee from stealing from you. Or you can just identify the thief (they usually make themselves obvious, criminals are dumb) and make an example of him (arrested in fromt of a ton of employees works well). Last year over the holidays, in additon to my regular duties, I was in charge of "fixing" our concession department and training a new department head. This stand was running shortages of 10%+ per week when I got it. To combat this, the pervious dept head had a system of nightly inventory sheets for each station (all told about 30 minutes per station of mgmt and staff labor), as well as keeping all excess stock in total lockdown (someone ran out of skittles and manager had to come and sign them more out). With all of this, the shortages were still absurd. When I got it, I eliminated the problem employees (about 90% of them), and then eliminated all the useless paperwork. For the last year there has been no count sheets and the stockroom is left open. Shortages are less than one half of one percent, and freguently below even a quarter of one percent. The moral of all this is basically treat the disease, not the symptoms, it will fix your problems faster and easier.
 

I'd have to hear what the problem was/is, how the VP addresed you when asking for an explanation, and how you described what you would do. VP's (like patrons) need to be handled in certain ways.

Many theaters chains are cheap, period. They do not want to pay anything extra than what they MUST. That means no raises, bonuses, etc. (Did you get a raise to work there, or do you have to "prove" yourself first?) Part of this stratagy is to *never* give any word of praise, because you will (later on) say; "I deserve a raise because I fixed up that theater, etc., etc."

Honestly, if the complaint was isolated or minor; and
You feel you were reasonable in your actions; and
The VP was particularly nasty (especially if he never acted like this before);

I would start looking for another job, while seeing if things get better. I'm not kidding. Look now; it may take awhile. You don't want a year to go by with no improvment (on the VP's part) and then realise it was time wasted.
 

In general and in no particular order:
DMs and VPs don't like what they perceive as defensiveness. If there is a basis in fact, it can be better for a manager to acknowledge that possibility with a simple "Some of that could have happened. Could you (or we) contact the person to get more information so the problem can be resolved?" Being ready to examine an uncomfortable situation, especially in the presence of one's boss, is one of the signs of good management. Such a face to face communication can have other effects as well. The VP may recognise the complainer is an ass, or the complainer, expecting free passes and not a confrontation, may change tune. This tactic also puts the boss on the spot, by stating that you aren't willing to roll over and play dead when threatened by unsubstantiated claims.

If you are saying that something didn't happen when a customer says it did, you have to have detailed information to back you up, which is one reason why so many managers and companies have log books.

Most managers don't realize that they are ALWAYS under the knife. Some managers get comfortable in a theatre and relax, thinking they are safe. This tactic may have worked in the distant past, but not now. In today's market, every manager is constantly evaluated.

Turning a theatre around can be a very difficult, and sometimes impossible task. A theatre's reputation is not easily changed, especially if some patrons have sworn off the theatre entirely. The speed of the recovery is based on a number of factors, including staffing, cleaning, maintenence, projection, sound, and cosmetics. The key times are the summer and winter rushes, when word of mouth is most likely to spread quickly.

A company that is willing to spend some money to rehab a theatre can often recoup that money fairly quickly. Without push, promotion, and extra funds, turnaround can easily take six months.

Staffing is usually the biggest problem, given the low wages and odd hours of many theatres. It takes at least a couple of weeks to evaluate an existing staff and begin to learn the relationships, and then it can take a couple of months (and a lot of determination) to begin to change the mix. Anyone who comes in and fires employees wholesale before evaluating them and the situation runs the risk of hiring what were the previous undesirables, or friends of the thieves.

A company investing money to spruce up the physical plant can help the hiring situation by causing some potential employees to apply for work, when they would not have prviously considered applying at the dirty or run down theatre.

Anyway, I broke down the complaint line by line to the VP, for example, Of all the bathroom stalls, there was one broken lock. I can assume the same for the toilet paper because when a customer comes out and says that there is NO toilet paper, then it means one stall ran out. Stale popcorn and cookies could have been a reality prior to taking over but I changed the way concession was done and that meant product WOULD NOT BE HELD. I explained all of this to him. As far as the garbage in the theatres and sticky floors, I have yet to find any of this and we do a walk-thru after the ushers clean theatres before another show is seated and that is because I found an usher just pushing the brooms up the aisles to the walls and leaving it.

The lobby floors are actually vaccummed nightly and maintained all day. The issue in my theatre is NOT cleanliness. It is a clean theatre. Cleaner, in fact, that any of the other 4 theatres that I have operated for them but that is due to the fact that the building is new. I explained all of this to him and finished my letter by telling him that there was alot of work to do here and my AD would not have selected me if he felt that I could not do it. I also told him that if I was not aware of the challenges I may have not accepted, but I knew and I did. Believe me, speaking of experience in the customer business, many a manager would have walked away from this headache by now.

His ultimate response was that in this business, there is NO TIME to get it right, it has to be RIGHT...NOW! This makes me feel as if I do not get any time to address the theatre's situation. Am I reading this wrong??? This is why I feel a little under the knife.

For those who asked, I work for Hoyts and my theatre is the Manahawkin 10 in New Jersey.

Joel
 

If you knew my VP, then you would know that making a statement like that to him would be very much like opening a lion's mouth and sticking my head in....

Joel

PS--Sounds great though....
 

Fresh popcorn often tastes more stale than stale popcorn, anyone who has served the public for a while learns that. The once-a-week lobby cleaning comments, etc. are obvious speculation and hyperbole. I'd blow off the complaint as a pissed-off ex-employee or pass seeking troublemaker.

The more telling part for me was the VP response: "His ultimate response was that in this business, there is NO TIME to get it right, it has to be RIGHT...NOW!"

This will probably get back to that office somehow, but I'll say it anyway. In a word, bullshit. That is the type of response I'd expect from a boot camp sargent who couldn't make it any further up the ranks.

I haven't met your VP, and have never walked into a Hoyt's theatre. I have spoken extensively with a friend who was a longtime manager/projectionist for Hoyt's a while back and I am aware of some of the inner workings and the reputation Hoyt's in the U.S. has gathered. It appears that if any circuit or circuit executive has had ample time to "get it right...NOW!" Hoyt's in the U.S. has, and failed. A couple of quick searches turned up these:

Sample
another Sample

In response to the VPs response: I will say that there are people who say something like "it has to be RIGHT...NOW!" in order to provoke a fear and adrenaline rush of work out of fearful employees or subordinates, others that do it because they themselves are pushed beyond their boundries and are venting their own frustration, and some who do it to test others, or simply because they haven't a clue how to lead except by intimidation.

Frankly, if you know you are doing a better job than the other managers and something similar doesn't happen in the future, it might be best to chalk it up to a bad day in the corporate office.

My personal response would be to make initial inquires elsewhere, and at the next similar outburst force the issue. But, as you can tell here, I am no stranger to standing in a person's face and telling them they are wrong... which for some strange reason turns some folks off, especially if they want blind obedience.

It is very difficult for any business to reverse a bad reputation, especially if the name is still under the same "Shingle". Seen it! More than once.

Just for shits and grins, I typed in "Regal Cinemas" In Google's search. I hit the jackpot! WOW!

Paul

quote:

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Just for shits and grins, I typed in "Regal Cinemas" In Google's search. I hit the jackpot! WOW!

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I noticed that the third hit was a "Regal Cinemas Sucks" page.

As a customer, I can certainly say that Regal has some problems, but I think the approach used by the "Regal Cinemas Sucks" page is not the right way to go about improving things. Collecting a bunch of complaints, some of which are very immaturely written, just gives the site less credibility. I think analyzing Regal by collecting all the positive and negative things is a more fair way to go about it, and communicating the problems (as well as any deserved compliments) is the way to go.

As for Regal:

I've found that projection quality varies widely among different Regal theatres. One Regal theatre may be very mediocre while another may be excellent.

Positive: Regal seems to keep their managers in the same place more consistently than Carmike in my area. Since my web site went online in February 1998, the three Regal theatres have kept the same managers. In contrast, Carmike 10 has had 5 managers and Carmike 8 has had 10 managers.

Positive: The Regal theates in my area seem well-kept and clean, and in good cosmetic condition.

Negative: One of the Regals in my area has noticeably worse presentation quality than the other two, and noticeable projection problems often go uncorrected for months. Out-of-frame splices, misframings, alignment problems, and general sloppiness seem to be present at that particular location (so maybe changing that manager wouldn't be a bad idea).

Negative: Regal still has not fixed the "scope at 1.85:1" problem in auditoriums 3-8 and 11-16 at Regal Hollywood 18 and auditoriums 3-6 and 9-12 at Regal Madison Square 12, which were Cobb theatres originally, and taken over by Regal on August 1, 1997.

Positive: Regal has three different mechanisms for easily submitting comments on attendances. There is the paper comment card, available in lobbies, the comment card mechanism on the Regal web site (which I use), and the toll-free number. The comments get emailed to the theatres, and occasionally, I get a response (canned) from these, and have on two occasions been sent some free passes due to some reported problems.

Positive: On February 9, 1998, I wrote a letter to Regal headquarters about a number of severe problems at a specific Regal theatre (5 or so showings with problems so severe as to make part of the movie unwatchable or headache-inducing) and I got a personal reply from the vice president of operations for southern and western regions at Regal. I appreciated the personal reply, since it was not a "canned reply". This made a very positive impression on me.

Negative: In 1999, staff at two Regal theatres thought that specific improvements were to be made and all of the improvements never happened. Staff at Madison Square 12 were telling me that they were getting all new sound systems (al digital) and it never happened. They still have only two auditoriums with DTS sound and the other sound systems are quite poor (badly calibrated or otherwise in bad shape). Staff at Hollywood 18 thought that adjustable masking would be installed (it was even in the Huntsville Times in October 1999). It hasn't happened. I understand that Regal got in bad financial shape like everyone else, but it's hard to believe they didn't see it coming in 1999 and made promises they couldn't keep.

Positive: One Regal theatre has projection quality that is measurably better than all other theatres in my area. For this, I credit the manager, since the other theatres have the same tech guy and the same district manager.

Negative: Regal does not have good enough internal quality checking and control procedures in place to detect presentation quality problems and get them fixed as quickly as possible. One Regal theatre does (see previous item).

There. I feel that this mixture of positive and negative comments would come across much better than a list of complaints and nothing but complaints.

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Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Information Site
 

Paul

the VP has their notion of whats right and the theatre manager has a totally different notion. whos right? the VP of course. they are the ones with final say. it doesnt seem to matter what the best idea is for the theatre is in reality, does it?

all the political games the executives play with the theatres just pisses me off sometimes.

I'm sure I open my self to bashing here, and I completely see, and know that there are reasons why the theater isn't giving its best service (a new manager's first weekend, etc), the fact of it though, does a customer really care?

Perhaps that's what the VP meant?

Like I tell my staff, customer perception is #1. What does the customer see first? Popcorn on the floor in the lobby, or popcorn in the back room? I know you're busy cleaning the popper, but if a customer comes up for a refill, the customer doesn't care about the popper getting closed for the night, they care about their refill first and foremost. So to an extent, if you're a customer, it does need to be right... now. If the floor's dirty, when I come to my show, and the carpet cleaner is coming next week, it doesn't change the fact that I paid my $7-$10 today, for a dirty floor, while a person next week pays the same amount and gets the cleaner theater.

That's the mindset I try to go in each day with. I think if you "settle" for less than perfect, despite having very valid reasons, you almost rely on the reasons.

Like, I'll get to reorganizing those marquee letters this week, I just took over this theater, and I'm tired today. Delegate it out? Employees are required to work.

I guess the best way to sum it up is, if you allow yourself the mindset of "it takes awhile to change things" you may not make improvements to your new theater as fast as you would, if you thought "these customers deserve perfection NOW, not in 3 weeks".

Again, I sympathize, but maybe that's what the VP meant.

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If ya smell, what the Zach is cooking.

Zach Zagar, the most electrifying man in theater entertainment today.
 

I agree with you, but realize that I am not in the mind set of "It Takes Awhile". I am in the HERE and NOW mindset, but the VP should not have the attitude the way he came off. Of course the company is only concerned with bottom line. To a degree so am I, but if I treated my employees in the same manner in which he treats the management, I can certainly expect that they will not want to work for me anymore.

My point to him was that it will take time to revive the reputation of the theatre...and thats a FACT. No one, has the ability to turn over the reputation that this theatre has in any short period of time. And that would serve as the same for any business of retail that has suffered as my theatre has.

Joel
 

Joel