For those that saw the post, my apologies. I am not normally vindictive as most of you know. I wish my former employer the best, and hope he dies of a short yet very painful disease.

Dave

It's next to impossible to guess what the owner has/had in mind, but on a wild guess, I'd say he suspects you stole money, or has been unhappy with your work for some time. But he can't prove anything specific. So he made up a bunch of stuff to (look like) he is justified in terminating you. Again I'm guessing, but I suspect this has been in the works for some time. I doubt very much that the notes from the new hire alone did it.

Many laywers will give you a short, simple consultation if you'd like to pursue it. It's bad enough being let go, but to be called a drunk and a stoner is really bad.

Don't sue unless he starts slandering you to other people.

I suspect that you will find better employment at twice the compensation very soon. I'm sure there are many temperary jobs related to the Olympics.

Take a break, gather your thoughts and deceide what you want to do with your life.

You sound like a bright person so don't let them drag you down to their level.

Ian's advice is perfect. Listen to him. Put this behind you and move on.

Your film-tech family is rooting for you.

In any case, I have wrote in other threads some of the crap this company/management pulled...and their attitude to their "valued" employees.

Anyhow, they falsly accused me of damaging their equipment and fired me, and tried to hind behind AZ being a right to work state and all the crap that entails.

So what did I do? Applied for temp. unemployment whil I looked for a new job. Anyhow, in order to qualify for unemployment the State had to do an investigation regarding the circumstances of my discharge. The State found in my favour, and I have a nice letter exonerating me of any wrong doing !

Maybe my experience can help you out? As everyone said, be optomistic and press on with your life. But I would definately take legal action if they slander you and jeoperdize future employment opportunities!
 

-a long term, trusted employee.
-in good standing (no previous warnings).
-supported well by co-workers
(Red Flag here, usually when someone is let go that
deserves it, most co-workers will say "It was about time",
NOT resign en masse.)

I'd say damages for Wrongful Dismissal may be possible,
but don't waste alot of time on it unless your Principles
are in play. Lawsuits seldom turn out well for anybody,
and only the lawyers get rich.
 

Also -- what are you working for a theatre company that uses a CASH REGISTER to sell tickets off of??!?! Did he have roll tickets there too? Or was he just making up numbers to tell the film company? I mean come on -- what's it take to install a ticketing system nowadays?
 

I would find that out ASAP.

Dennis
 

I also regret that Dave had the experience of being fired; from his posts here he seems to be a good person.

I have edited my earlier message to be much shorter but has the same feeling and intensity.

Dave

PS.... mark, good idea, I already am scripting the whole episode into a film, but it ends differenltly with me as a secret agent protecting the world against bad theater owners.

Dave

Dennis
 

Brad, Sorry about trying to cotinut this in the wrong forum, ya know we're at almost 5 thousand feet here and I rarely come down to "Ground Level".

Dave, Lets meet over at Brewvies and down a few Wasatch's. Dave and Matt that run brewvies are real nice guys, I should introduce you to them. They're still bugging me about doing a dual projecytor 3D show, and now whant to do 70mm film fest too. They might need your help to pull that off. Going there sure beats going to the Tower when it comes to the artsy stuff. The food over there is also real good!
Mark @ GTS

Brad, I am having trouble with my email for some reason, my computer is acting up. If you read this, can you delete or edit the posts from film handlers forum so that it is either gone or at least reads how I edited this one. That would be great.

You know, the one thing that always got to me, was the company policy that said and I quote "...any missing ticket stubs will be considered a cash shortage and will be dealt with accordingly."

Now can anyone tell me how a missing ticket STUB is a cash shortage?

I NEVER enforced it. I just couldn't see how a STUB not there is a cash shortage. The owner explained it as a way to stop box office people from selling ticket stubs. Well thats all fine and dandy, but it doesnt take into account the people that buy too many tickets or buy too early and cant make it, and then never come back to get a refund or try to get a refund.

Dave
 

Now can anyone tell me how a missing ticket STUB is a cash shortage?"

GCC used to have this bug up their ass when they did chopper audits. If any "corrective" action were taken based on a missing stub, a court would throw it out faster than you can say "uncontrollable." The policy was meant to terrorize the ticket takers into doing their jobs.

However... chopper audits where more than an occasional stub was missing, or both halves of tickets were found, or tickets from other days or improper showtimes were found were an indicator of theft or a ticket taker not performing his or her duties.

Too many circuits have not only eliminated the chopper audit, but eliminated the ticket taker as well, making the cashier both sell and tear the ticket.
 

quote:

---

Too many circuits have not only eliminated the chopper audit, but eliminated the ticket taker as well, making the cashier both sell and tear the ticket.

---

Which makes it that much easier for the cashier to steal. I have this on videotape. What an interesting conversation with the Director of Operations that one was!

 

LOL! It is easy to tell how much the industry has changed when a question like this is asked.

The doorman's stand where the ticket stubs are stuffed is called a chopper. (I suppose the doorman was referred to as a chopper as well, maybe Bob Marr can tell us the derivation of the name.) In days of old, when men were bold, each doorman was responsible for the tickets stubs for his shift. In some theatres the box had one compartment for each type of ticket, or later, each auditorium. These were cleaned out at shift change. The cardboard tickets from the automaticket machines were an improvement, in that they had a drive hole, which could be used to thread the stubs of a steel pin. Prior to a shift, the doorman stuck a card on the pin shaft with his name, date and time. At the end of the shift, he logged out and another doorman logged in. Cashiers did hourly reports indicating the ticket numbers sold during each hour. Because the doorman had to peg the tickets in chronological order, counting was easier and patterns could be determined.

A chopper audit matched the tickets in the chopper compared to what had been sold that day, shift, or hour, depending on what was being examined. Pre-numbered sheets allowed a check-off of serial numbers.

If two of the same serial number were found, it was an indicator of deception. If stubs were missing, it indicated a lazy doorman who either was allowing tickets to pass untorn or palming them for re-use.

There were other variations of things to look for, but those are best not discussed. A sharp owner, auditor, or DM would note them.

Some theatres audited choppers regularly (ie: daily), others only when a DM had time on his hands or felt like being a prick. For many years the final vestiges of chopper audits have been the hoary directives to bag, date, and store the ticket stubs in some back closet or cabinet, where they rot away for years.

A combination of a computerized ticketing audit trail and a chopper audit can often recreate events in surprising detail.
 

I have done many chopper box audits. If you recall in another thread awhile back that is how I caught the manager of the Hippodrome Theatre in Baltimore splicing his own tickets into the pack. I started in this business as an usher in 1956 and also worked as a doorman at the Loews Paradise in the Bronx. It was a ticket chopper then and thatis what I always called the box. In those days we took hourly reading and were signed in and out with the little square stubs.

If somone sells a white stub, or in this case the whole thing, then it comes back. There is no real accounting for that except for eyewitness account of stub selling. The audit does nothing but waste time and money, and create an adversarial relationship between office and theater. Very unhealthy company.

Dave.
 

The Trans-Lux Inflight Cine's used the National Cash Register that printed the ticket. This ticket was perforated and torn by a doorman. Both parts of the ticket contained a ticket number. The stubs for a given day were placed in a brown paper bag, dated and put away.

Inside the door where you load the ticket paper is another register that recorded all transactions made by the machine and could only be cleared by Regional Manager after an audit.

The yellow copy of the ticket was taken out at the end of each evening in a long roll and placed in the bag with the stubs. This was done for audit purposes.

All of our theatres were audited on a regular basis, both box office and concessions.

The only time the audit became confrontational was if someone was caught stealing money. Otherwise they appreciated the compliments they received and the high rating for their work.

In 1977 I put the first Pacer unit to be sold into the New York Experience in New York City. This was a Trans-Lux/Bing Crosby Production on the History of New York City.

After this I placed Pacer units into the new builds.

That first Pacer must have been ... er... interesting.

 

He actually landed in the lap of a very pretty lady in the front row.

We were fortunate she had a sense of humor and thought it was part of the show.

As far as ticket audits go - when I worked for UA in 1995 we had to run hourly reports off the pacer, and we saved the ticket stubs there too, but we only got audited maybe once a year and then they'd only choose about three days worth.

When I did audits at Cinema West I tried to check three days or more of each theatres' stubs, and while there were usually one or two missing, trends would develop at certain locations which would have MORE than a few missing.
 

The registers they are using for box are not designed well for this function. They are designed for general sales only. They are Sanyo's. Very limited in thier abilities. It prints a ticket number, but only in one place. We have to give both white and yellow to customer, and then they in turn give entire white slip to doorman.

Doorman keeps entire white slip, and if they are called away on a problem, which is common as we are by policy understaffed, then people just keep the white slip and SLIP on by to thier show.

Otherwise the box person keeps the white piece. At one point someone, allegedly the field manager, removed all of the customer view readouts so that the customers did not see what was bieng rung up, if anything at all, making it truly easy for an employee to steal.

And just to throw this in, this same field manager told me this, and this is thier policy. You see they do not allow the employees to use the change function on the registers. Not at all. They deprogram them from the registers whenever they find them in use. It is thier policy and this was on my first day of employment that "...if an employee cannot do the math for change in thier head, then they have no place behind a register, much less in our company".

My policy has always been, and I think the industry would tend to agree here, that it is super easy to give too much change if you do not enter the correct amount of money given to you into your transaction. I can do the math, but I still enter the amount they give me, just so there is no confusion on anyones part.

It's just like a bank account. You enter the checks you write into the proper column and do the math, not just do the math in your head and hope to hell you got it right. A lot of registers came up short or over by leaps and bounds when I first started. I put an end to that right away, and since then no problems in three years. Well not on shortages anyway.

Dave
 

If the policy is as you state you state, hold your head up high and be thankful you no longer work for them.

He who laughs last, laughs best. Someone famous once said that.
 

Also one of the projectors (very old simplex's that needed work really bad. They needed to be oiled every set to avoid burnout. They leaked like siv's and the owner was the one who made sure I knew this when he hired me three years ago) burned up two hours AFTER I was fired. I was told today that if I had done my checklists they would have known that the projector needed oil all the time. I am a bad manager.

If I am so bad, why did the equipment not fail under my jurisdiction? He is the one who told me about the failing machines, and I am the one responsible for HIM not keeping up on the oiling?

Actually bob, I was laughing pretty hard today after all that. If HE is calling me a bad manager, well I take it like a compliment. If the devil himself came to the surface of the earth and told you to your face that you were a bad agent of evil, well I would just take that as a good thing!

The company is self-destructing, and has been for quite some time. Outsiders have known this for a while, as have I. I could laugh at all the hell he will have to go through but I have had my say. Just knowing that they are running around like chickens with thier heads cut off makes me warm inside.

I dont hate, I just have reverse love.

I have an audition for a stage show "HARVEY" tomorrow with Hale Theatre here in Salt Lake. Need to work on my standup routine, will steal many jokes from the joke room.!!!

Need to run, but as the weeks go on, I will keep posting policies that these guys do that just makes them sound so silly, like having 9 different checklists, one of which actually lists another checklist on that checklist, and two checklists are exactly the same, with different headers.

That and the 28 different weekly reports that have to be done, besides the 11 daily reports and the opening report that has 20 items on it, 17 of which you cant do until you close.

And they get real mad when you spend all your time doing paperwork.

Just ask Mark G. These guys are a real hoot!

Dave
 

it is a nice wooden stand...about 1X1X4.5 with a glass box at the top. You put your ticket stubs over into the glass box. When the time comes, you turn a big wheel on the side and it shreads the stubs and deposits them into a drawer.

I think that is where the name comes from. Also, a lot of the folks that I were around in the cinema when I was a little kid (late 70's early 80's)called the Automatickets "ticket choppers." In fact, I heard a retired manager reference an automaticket that way just a few days ago.
 

I can understand the automatickets being referred to as choppers, but I don't think that was the origin, since the chopper was specifically the doorman's box.