Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Funny things your boss has said...

This is topic Funny things your boss has said... in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Dominic Espinosa (Member # 2122) on 05-08-2004, 04:25 AM:

I thought this might be an intersting topic since it seems management is always telling you something ... interesting [Wink]

Tonight I was demonstrating to my GM the amazing retention of small facts by our new projectionist trainee. He's been upstairs less than two weeks and is actually capable of threading, building up, breaking down, and generial trouble shooting. He knows where the soundtracks are, he knows how to change formats, he knows which soundtracks are which, etc. etc.

So to show some of what he's learned I asked him questions and he answered...We started with basic questions such as how many sprocket holes in a frame, etc.

I ask how many frames per second?
He replies "24."

My GM then says "No...that's not right. It's 14". She was absolutely sure of it. She argued her point for the better part of 15 minutes. I found a manual that had the fps in it.

On another day I was talking to the assistant and she told me that one of the other projectionists had a brain wrap...He had actually just forgotten to take up the slack on the platter before he started it...Appearantly the projector is really called the brain...

Okay, not the best, but the 14fps story was good, you have to admit.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 05-08-2004, 10:09 AM:

Three different people who went to booth training given by our GM came up to me and asked me about toothbrushes reacting in alcohol. Upon some investigation, I learned that he was telling everyone not to dip the toothbrushes in alcohol because they will react and make the alcohol turn pink. Note, he was NOT saying that the pink dust on the head of the toothbrush would get into the alcohol, but that the toothbrush itself would react with the alcohol, and turn it pink.

I took a brand new toothbrush out of it's wrapper and dropped it a brand new bottle of alcohol, put the lid back on the bottle, wrote the date on it, and put it on a shelf. About three weeks later we asked him how long this reaction was supposed to take, and when he said almost immediately we showed him the bottle. He changed his story soon after that.

For about the last year and a half the white board in our booth has a big note across the top that says "HOME OF THE AMAZING PINK ALCOHOL REACTING TOOTHBRUSHES!"

Posted by Dennis Benjamin (Member # 1137) on 05-08-2004, 12:38 PM:

Don't you hate it when they promote someone to a supervisory position - and they obviously don't have the experience to back it up.........................

"TEAMWORK -when everyone does what the boss tells them to do"...

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 05-08-2004, 02:03 PM:

Well, I've always said that Teamwork is a sad excuse for everyone not knowing their job well enough in the first place.

Mark

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 05-08-2004, 03:56 PM:

The "Peter Principle": "Everyone rises to their level of incompetence". [Big Grin]

http://www.brunel.ac.uk/~bustcfj/bola/culture/peterprinciple.html

Posted by Sam Johnson II (Member # 2157) on 05-08-2004, 04:51 PM:

At the theater I used to work at, the general manager had the superb idea of having us haul concession's extra popcorn kernels up to one of the projection room's. Needless to say, us projectionists weren't very happy (we didn't think too highly of the GM anyway). The kernels weren't even taking up all that much room downstairs anyway.

Well, maybe that wasn't "funny", but for us it ended up making for some good jokes, among the other dumb stuff the GM did.

Posted by Adam Wilbert (Member # 1184) on 05-09-2004, 03:39 PM:

My old GM mentioned one day that we used 18/8ths of a cup of salt for each batch of corn. When I pointed out that 18/8ths was over 2 cups of salt, she said that that was correct. It turns out that our measuring spoons were 18/8 stainless steel. [Roll Eyes]

Posted by Thomas Procyk (Member # 1170) on 05-10-2004, 08:25 AM:

One of our GM's is a riot. You'd tell him/her a story about something, (print mishaps from years ago, funny customer situations, etc.) and then a few days later, they'd come back to YOU with:
"I don't remember who told me this, but..." and tell you the story you told them, facts distorted of course. I just smile and nod. [Smile]

I should try repeating the story back a third time and see what happens, hehe.

=TMP=

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-10-2004, 01:15 PM:

My old boss (in 1976) would seriously inflate the prices of things in order to get us to be careful with them.

"Now you handle that lens with care, it costs $10,000."

"If you scratch that film it'll cost me $5,000 to replace it."

"Be careful with that splicer, it costs over $700."

At the time I was 20 years old, and the REAL prices of everything would have scared me to death anyway!

Posted by Aaron Mehocic (Member # 15) on 05-10-2004, 01:58 PM:

Like you, all of my bosses had their good points and all had their bad points, but generally speaking almost everything anyone of them ever told me was bullshit in some way. My all time favorite line was how proper projection keeps the customers coming back while following up with "...a monkey could be taught to lace a projector...".

Takes one to know one I guess.