Blog Eight

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Location: Auckland, New Zealand

Monday, May 26, 2008

The Life of a Movie Worker

My last shift at Hoyts was yesterday. Now, after three and a half years, I no longer work at the movies. It's a really, really weird feeling. Life has just become somewhat emptier. Freer, but emptier. I've been thinking a bit recently about the experience I've picked up and some of the things I've learnt while I've been working at the movies, and decided I'd write about life in customer service. This is a long post.

Customer service is one of the hardest, least rewarding, worst paid jobs there are (almost as badly paid as cleaning and manual labour). It changes you as a person, giving you some very valuable skills in working with people, while taking away pretty much all of your faith in society. There is so much to learn about the world that you can only learn in customer service, that if you haven't worked in customer service for at least a couple of years (preferably in a big company) then there is an entire dimension of life that you know nothing about. It's better than university. Going to university teaches you a LOT about the world you live in, but working in customer service teaches you more.

There are four stages to the life of a customer service worker. When someone first starts out in their new job in customer service they start in the first stage. This is the innocent, excited stage. This is the stage where you are eager to help anyone and everyone you can, even if they don't need it. You go well out of your way to help the customer, and things like stocking up and cleaning your area are stimulating - because you want the customer to be impressed. Every customer is a different need - a new opportunity to make someone's day, and you love being able to help them meet that need. Make the most of this stage - it won't last, and you will give some of your best customer service for a long time to come while you're in this stage. Some managers are slightly deluded, and think that their workers stay in this stage forever. It isn't true, and the good managers are the ones who have been there, done that, and know that this is just the beginning.

The second stage is the intermediate one. It's the disillusioned stage. By this stage you've been at your job for the best part of a year, and naturally all the excitement of a new job has well and truly worn off. That's normal though, and it doesn't make the job any less enjoyable. But by now you've started noticing that some customers act quite weirdly, especially when they don't get their way. You generally find this quite funny, especially the couple of times you've seen a grown man behave like a two year old. But something's different - serving people isn't as exciting as it used to be. You start finding ways to get off the till and go do something else. Having crowds of people coming at you one at a time all asking for the same thing just isn't as great as it used to be, and its getting to the point where you think you're going to scream if you get yet another customer coming up with the exact same question that the twenty people before them had.

The third stage is the veteran stage. It's the cycnical stage. By now you've been in customer service for a couple of years. For most people, this is the last stage of their life in customer service, because this is the stage that pushes most people out of the job. This is the stage I'm in, and have been for a long, long time. By this stage you pretty much hate customers. With a few exceptions they're all the same - stupid. You know you're getting into this stage when you come to realise that it seems that there's some sort of rule that anyone (not counting workers) who enters your building has their IQ cut by half. At Berkeley we came up with that saying, and when I met people at Hoyts who'd come from other cinemas they had that exact same saying. Someone who has never worked in customer service, or is still in the first two stages can't understand this, and will look at you funny when you mention it. Give them time - they will soon be agreeing wholeheartedly with you. Customers are stupid. This is the stage that destroys your faith in humanity, because eventually you come to realise that people are like this everywhere. Once you come to recognise the signs of stupidity on people who walk in your doors, you begin to see it everywhere - driving, shopping, at uni (although not so much at uni). In fact it's at shopping centres where you really see it. There's something about shopping that drains most people's IQ. At work you're still able to give good customer service though - when you choose to, you can give better customer service than someone in the first stage. You know all the right things to say, all the ways to make a customer's problem better. You know how to upsell your product effectively, and you can be the model worker if you choose. You're very good at customer service and can easily deal with three or four separate issues simultaneously. The big difference is that you no longer do it for the customer - you do it because it's your job. You may still love your job, but you hate the customer you're smiling at, and all you want is for them to get out of your face so you can go do something else.

The fourth and final stage is the stage of full maturity as a customer service worker. I only know about this stage from working with people who are in it. By now you have been in customer service for years and years. It seems to me that you have to have been working in customer service for a good four or five years, or maybe even longer before you can reach this stage. This is the stage where you have literally seen everything there is to see. You know that people in general are truly stupid and quite a few behave like preschoolers when they don't get their way, but you've been working in customer service for so long that you've grown to accept it. It no longer bothers you that customers just don't get it, and seeing the tantrums people can throw when they're a few minutes late and there's a queue leaves you completely unmoved. You knew they were going to start screaming before they even began, and dealing with it just comes naturally. You have enough stories to tell an entire cinema of grandchildren - even the more outlandish ones - bomb threats, armed robberies, the ghost (pretty much every cinema is haunted in one way or another - although one doesn't seem to have appeared at Hoyts yet), fires, and deaths. There is no stage after this, and you are going to find it very, very hard to leave your job. In fact some people in this stage will never be able to leave their jobs.


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I want to write something about the various types of people anyone starting out in customer service, particularly anyone starting out at the movies, will come across. Despite what the PC police will let you believe, groups of people of different races, sexes and ages will behave very differently to each other when faced with identical situations, but everyone in that group will behave exactly the same way. Here are some of the groups you will come across:

Indians
Anyone reading this who has worked in the movies will know exactly what I'm about to say. Even Indians who work at the movies are afraid of Indian customers. There are two kinds of Indian people in the cinema business - the Family Group and the University Couple. The Family Group only ever comes to Bollywood movies. No-one else ever comes to a Bollywood movie. As a worker you know when a Bollywood movie is coming because the Family Group starts ringing up several weeks in advance to ask about it. They won't stop ringing until a few weeks after it's finished. Family Groups are named that because they come to the movies in large groups of extended family. Groups can be anywhere between 7 and 20 people in size. Indian movies always sell out, and yes, in case you were wondering, there is a distinct smell of musty curry in the cinema after the movie has finished. I'm not joking. The women in the Family Group are to be feared. You do not want anything to go wrong when they're around. They have the unique ability to reduce you to a cowering wreck when they're unhappy.

The University Couple is the other kind of Indian you will see. It consists of a young male Indian with his Indian girlfriend. They both go to either Auckland University or Unitec, they both have student ID, and they will both get student tickets. Unlike the Family Group they will go to any movie, not just the Bollywood ones. If they're unhappy, it's the male, not the female, who will generally complain, although he is pretty easy to deal with. University students are some of the most reasonable customers you will come across.

Islanders
Similar to Indians in that they come in large groups. However the makeup of the large groups are different. There are two main types of Islander you'll get - the Mother With Kids and the Boiz. The Mother With Kids is the company's best friend. As you would expect, this group is made up of a mum with anything between 3 and 7 kids. She will buy pretty much everything you have to sell, upsized. The mum is always friendly and can quite happily accommodate something going wrong without making a fuss. However there are a few mums that you will have to repeat things twice to before they understand it.

The Boiz group is simply a large group of friends. Despite the name, they can be guys or girls (usually a mix). The older the average age of the group, the less trouble they're likely to be. If they look under 20, keep an eye on them (and on your toilet walls). They will also buy everything you have to sell, upsized, and will sometimes come back for seconds. They are also friendly and can deal with things going wrong without making a scene.

Americans
A rare sight in an Auckland cinema, Americans are all the same - loud, fat, patronising, and middle-aged. Sometimes they come accompanied by Kiwi friends/hosts/guides, and sometimes on their own - the loud, fat, patronising middle-aged man and his loud, not-so-fat, patronising middle-aged wife. When they're with Kiwi friends they like to compare everything to their holiday in Canada. They may leave a tip.

Old People
Are all the same, no matter what nationality they are. They will only ever buy choc top icecreams, so don't even bother trying to sell them popcorn or soft drink. They only go to Old People movies. No one else goes to these movies, and they don't come that often, so if your cinema is showing an Old Person movie, don't put it in a big cinema. They're nice people and can generally cope with things going wrong, although sometimes you'll get an Old Bastard among them - the Old Bastard is a white man who's at least in his 60s and will raise hell when something goes wrong. He will treat anyone who has to deal with him like they're something he stood in, and if that person is a teenager he will do everything he can to make them feel like they shouldn't have been born. The best way to deal with him is to get him to say or do something abusive (which isn't hard) then kick him out.

You can sometimes get Bastards - younger versions of the Old Bastard. These people generally leave at least one staff member in tears and several others shaking with anger. They are abusive, domineering, threatening bastards. Give them no mercy - kick them straight out. Trespass them if need be. We had a Bastard in on Saturday night, and he and his wife ended up being trespassed from the mall for two years.

Others
There are several other kinds of people that you will get in the cinemas - the White Mother With Kids, the White University Couple, the Unaccompanied Kids and the Alpha Male Wannabe.

The White Mother With Kids is very different to the Islander Mother With Kids. The white version is always stressed, short-tempered, and trying to keep her kids under control. She will also buy everything you have, but will wait until her kids start demanding it before she starts buying it. If something goes wrong it can be difficult to shut her up - the best way is to refund her tickets, but even then she will sometimes write to the Complex Manager.

The White University Couple is identical to the Indian University Couple and slightly more common. It's quite funny when the guy is plainly whipped. If something goes wrong he will try to make a fuss, but it's very easy (and fun) to shut him down. Get some other staff involved and you have whipping fun for everyone. Sometimes even his girlfriend will join in.

The Unaccompanied Kids are just that. Be prepared to clean up a massive mess.

The Alpha-Male Wannabe is just annoying. You can see in his manner that he's trying to make you feel like he's in charge. He's usually in his thirties or forties and may be balding. He's also white and pasty. It can be funny to deal with him when something goes wrong. He will make a massive fuss and may sometimes even try and turn other customers against you. He's only doing this to make himself feel dominant. If you're on top of your game, you know what's going on on your shift, and you know how to deal with problems you will have fun wrapping him around your little finger. He may argue and tell you that your service is terrible, but you will soon see in his eyes that you are taking him out of his depth. Once he sees that you're quite capable of dealing with him, he will usually submit. Sometimes he'll keep fighting though, in which case he just gets annoying, because he substitutes circular reasoning for just making a stand.


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I'm going to miss the movies. I'm glad to be out, but I'm going to miss them.

Wow that was long.

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