The Best Job Ever

I have had many jobs over the years even though I am only 30. Many people can relate to this as most of us had jobs while in high school. Well, the job that I am referring to is one that I had in high school but only lasted year. While it didn't last long, the memories that I have from there I will definitely remember the rest of my life. I was lucky enough to work in the movie business. See I worked at a movie theater. And not just any movie theater, it was a dollar theater.


Now Silver Cinemas, the name of the theater chain, wasn't the cleanest or the most profitable theater in town, but it sure was a lot of fun working there. I started out at the very bottom of the food chain as an usher and moved all the way to assistant manager in the year that I worked there. Even though I was a manager, that wasn't the best job there. Being a projectionist was the greatest. Don't get me wrong, it was a lot of work to be a projectionist, but it was also the best.

It was one of the biggest responsibilities being a projectionist because you had to make sure all the movies started on time, put the new movies together on Thursday nights, tear down the old movies on Friday, change the marquee, and put up new posters. There were also times when the projectors and the turntables would mess up the movie prints and they would be everywhere. Hundreds of feet of film all over the place from these "mess ups" could take hours to put the movies back together, but it really didn't matter because of my respect for movies.


There was also plenty of pranks played on other employees that also made the job lots of fun. Two other projectionist and myself would try to convince the other employees the theater was haunted. Playing practical jokes by telling them we would hear loud banging at night when nobody else was there, partially taking down posters in the hallways, and we even scared the district manager by doing these things. We got them so good, the store manager got the theater blessed by a priest, but that didn't stop us. The priest put a cross in the main projection booth, so the last projectionist on duty for the night would move it and when the next projectionist opened in the morning we would tell the manager that a "ghost" moved it. It was such a blast playing these jokes.


It was a really awesome experience to know about how the behind the scenes of a movie theater worked. I have always wanted to know how it worked since I was little boy going to see Batman for the very first time. I remember as the movie started and looking back to the projection booth and seeing the window where the movie was being projected from and thinking that is just awesome!

So, in conclusion, some jobs while going to high school can be one of the worst experiences for some, there are others that it can be the best. Still to this day I think about my time working at the movie theater and boy do I miss it!