Promotion
Gradually having been promoted to chief projectionist at our other
Birmingham cinema for a few months, I was moved to assistant manager and
eventually after several years, to the head office film booking
department.
This was where films were selected and the programs planned, involving
tricky negotiations to determine the percentage of the box office
takings that could be agreed to be paid to the distributor. After a while in film bookings, I was taken to
learn and assist the General Manager Mr Tonks, whose job was to keep an
eye on all our cinemas, particularly the staff, the general look, and
the condition of the cinemas overall. But more interestingly to
check if there were any kinds of stealing going on.
As we had
twenty-three city
centre cinemas from Edinburgh down to Brighton, we did a great deal of
travelling together. I found Mr Tonks to be remarkably interesting, full
of guidance, as well as having a wealth of information on all aspects
regarding the day to day
running of our cinemas.
Detective Work
0n one occasion the manager, cashier, and usherette
in one of our London cinemas had to be fired and replaced. This was
because they were all involved in a swindle to cheat our box office takings.
The system we had was that a ticket was sold and when the customer entered the
cinema, the usherette tore the ticket in half, putting one half on a
spike (like a large needle) attached to a string, the other half was then given back to the
customer.
These strung together half tickets were kept, and spot
checks were done, to make sure the ticket numbers were in sequence and
that the box office amount tallied with the number of tickets sold.
Sometimes these spot checks were also carried out by the film
distributors, as they also had an interest, as they were paid an agreed percentage of the takings.
What we discovered was that when the ticket was issued by the cashier the
usherette sometimes failed to tear the ticket in half (one half was to
be given to the customer), then having shown the
customer to a seat, she quickly gave the ticket back to the cashier to
sell again.
This extra sale was later split between the three of them. It
soon amounted to quite a lot, even though it was only done at quiet times
several times a day. Once sold again, the usherette then quickly
added her half to the string to keep the numbers on the tickets in order.
The discovery was made by paying one of our
usherettes, or assistants from another
city, to go and buy a ticket and to stay in the cinema for a couple of
hours.
Whilst inside he, or she kept their half ticket and had a counter to add
up every person that came in. Then a spot check was carried out to see
how many half tickets were on the string, after their ticket number, to
see if this number tallied with the head count. This detective
work was used at various times at every one of our cinemas.
My
Own Department
Later, I set up my own department at head
office, responsible for all newspaper advertising, the 'Front of House'
publicity and to create a new house style that would make our company name
better known. This involved creating a logo.
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