Anybody ever seen this one before?

At my theatre, we have the Cretors 'automatic' popcorn poppers. You toss in a scoop of seed and press a button and out squirts a measured amount of popper oil.

I hear this call on the radio at about 1pm last Sunday, just as we were getting good and busy...

Johnny the Popcorn Boy: "Mr. {manager}!!! I need you at the main stand right away!!!

Manager: What's wrong 'Johnny'?

J: "Something's wrong with the popcorn machine! It's SMOKING really bad!"

M: "Okay! Shut it off!! I'm on the way!"

J: "Umm... Okay... I think somebody hooked up a box of Coke instead of Pop-oil!"

Yes, you heard right! 'Somebody' DID! If you don't know this, the popcorn oil comes in the same kind of 'bag-in-a-box' (AKA: "BIBS") that the Coca-Cola comes in!! And, YES the connectors are the same!

It's amazing to me that 'somebody' can't tell the difference between an thick, brown, gooey liquid in a box that says, "C-O-K-E" and a thin, yellow, oily liquid that says, "O-I-L"! Furthermore, it's amazing to me that it went completely unnoticed until the popper started belching out thick, black, FOUL-smelling smoke!

After I stopped laughing my ass off, I went down to check it out. The popper's TRASHED! They're probably going to need a new kettle and oil pump!

Lucky thing it didn't catch fire!

 |  IP: Logged

 |  IP: Logged

The management think he is so good,they have promoted him as Senior AV Engineer for the cinema complex!!.

 |  IP: Logged

At first, the thought was, "Hey! Coca-Cola flavored popcorn! We could be on to something, here! Maybe we could charge EXTRA for that?"

The resultant popcorn actually looked almost normal and it smelled like Coca-Cola but it tasted like burned sugar.

I guess he was a bit embarrassed, because when I asked if he wanted some help, he said no go on home.

I heard that it took him about 4 to 5 hours to put that one back together that night.

------------------

quote:

---

"More human than human" is our motto.

---

Scott

Many years back I was opening a new complex as a booth manager. I won't even get into the details of why the general manager insisted I train someone in the booth who did not speak one word of English!

Just imagine the training. Point...nod head yes. Point...nod head NO! Point...nod head yes. Demonstrate threading while saying things like "soundtrack" (pointing)..."roller" (pointing)..."intermittent" (pointing), etc, etc, etc. So after over a month of the most aggravating training I've ever been through I finally say "this guy's NEVER gonna get it until either he learns English or I learn whatever it is he speaks". So of course, this general manager decides, hmmm, sounds like he's good to go!

I was finishing college at the time and although I'd been working from 8am to midnight every day for over a month with a 1 1/2 hour drive to and from the theater, HAD to take a few mornings off for finals. So what happens? "Mr. Smartestmanagerintheworld" decides to put this guy in the booth one morning when I'm not there to supervise and go head nodding. By the time I get there around 2PM, the box office people pull me aside and ask "what happened?" Then it was the concessionists, "what happened?" Then the ushers too. Of course I have NO idea what evil is lurking upstairs awaiting my arrival...but I'm not liking it.

First thing I see is this fellow wobbling down the booth. Of course my thoughts were "oh shit", but I decided to follow him and try to get him to point to whatever this disaster was that apparently the entire theater knew about. No sooner did I round the corner did I see the service tech working on #2. I don't even bother following him anymore and decide to go to the English speaking tech for answers.

As I walk up, I'm greeted with "hey, how's it going?" I of course responded with something along the lines of "I'm not sure. How IS everything going?" His response was "well, your boy there stripped out this intermittent", as he hands me a "was-brand-new" Simplex XL intermittent with a red shop rag mangled around the sprocket.

Now, how do you teach a non-English speaking projectionist NOT to run the motor when wiping the sprockets with a toothbrush or a rag? Believe me, I did more than enough "NO" head shaking while pointing to the motor switch...but what can I do.

So now here's the amazing thing, this tech (who was known for checking sound problems by sticking his head out of the port hole window during the then mono trailers for 5 seconds and saying "sounds great nothing wrong") actually had a loop of RP40 running through the machine and the image on screen looked good! In fact, the projector was running smooth too! What could I say to the man but "thanks!" It had been a very rough month with virtually no sleep.

He tells me to leave the machine running for 10 minutes or so to "let the oil circulate" and asks me if I would help him carry some of his gear out to his car. I obliged.

Some 10 minutes later, after having to answer questions to the staff who had nothing better to do than get gossip, I returned to the projector, stopped it and took the loop out. The show was to start in 10 minutes and my non-English speaking operator was nowhere to be found, so I decide to go ahead and thread it up. Just one problem, when I walked around the projector to get to the platter I found a bit of a mess that the bonehead tech had left...all over my brand new print! What was this crap? I touched it, smelled it, looked at the walls, floor and ceiling around the platter and was imagining that someone had taken a 5 pound sack of shit and slung it all over the place. Well, it wasn't shit...it was the oil from the XL...because the BONEHEAD tech never put the back cover on the projector!

 |  IP: Logged

The manager at one theatre decided to hook up a box of iced tea at the downstairs concession stand. Unlike the upstairs soda fountain, this one could only make carbonated drinks. Result: no one wanted to drink the sparkling iced tea and those who did got a refund. Not real bad, just funny.

A tech decided we needed a snood on the outside of the port glass to correct a problem we were having with the picture. So he made one. He did this by sawing the bottom off a trash can and taping the can up to the port. It worked until it came crashing down to the floor during the first show, luckily without whacking a customer on the head. Someone then picked it up and placed it in the rear of the theatre and patrons proceeded to fill it full of trash, not knowing it was bottomless. It was kind of funny though, seeing the projection beam emanating from a garbage can. A real quality show

One day while talking to my coworker while he was working at the rewind bench, I noticed a straight 'line' of some black substance going straight across the bench. I touched it and found that it was some kind of oil. I went to get the '409' to clean it up and noticed that there was a similar black 'line' going up the front of my white Cinemark Uniform. Then I noticed another line going up the wall and across the ceiling. Retracing my steps, I discovered that all of these lines were on a plane that intersected the top of the table at an almost 90 deg. angle. "Hmmm", I thought. I went to get the '409' and came back. By that time by buddy had started up the rewinder again. This time, I saw a 'rooster tail' of oil flying off the friction disk on the left spindle! Somebody had decided to OIL the "friction pad"! (If you ask me, "OIL" and "FRICTION" are two MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE concepts! Now, I can understand that a few drops of oil could be beneficial. (Personally, I wouldn't do it unless it needed it.) But this bone head totally saturated the pad! I had to spend about an hour cleaning up the mess and getting the oil out of the rewinder. To this day, there's still oil in places you never thought even existed! Well, at least we'll never have to oil it!