Ky and I attend at least two NATO meeting per year and we go to ShoWest and Show East. I attend a couple of film festivals a year as well. At all of these shows the film companies hand out promotional items like t-shirts, hats and other nick-knacks. Every year we package them up and give them to the staff for Christmas. Somebody might get a Planet of the Apes fleece sweater or a Cinemaccanica tote bag. Somebody got a watch from some film or a Jimmy Neutron toy. This year we had enough swag to give everybody at least three items each. I got a, Scabbers the Rat, toy from Harry Potter. We also gave each and every employee a $50 gift certificate to the local mall. We also played Secret Santa where we all draw names out of a hat and give that person a small gift.

The kids had a good time. I bought drinks for those over 21 and they bowled until midnight. Now I have been to corporate Christmas parties where there is catered food, an open bar and a band. But I would have to say that our kids had a better time last night than I did at those corporate Christmas parties. Some of those guys got more presents than I will Christmas morning.

Well, my best Christmas gift this year is that my investor distribution got me out of debt for the first time since I opened this theatre 2 years ago. It's not sexy, but it will do.

As employers, we cannot pay a great deal of money to the staff. But we can treat our staff with respect, buy them the occasional pizza for dinner if we are particularly busy and we treat them well. They will discover later that most jobs aren't like this one. But I can only hope that in 10-20 years when they are in a position of responsibility that they think back and treat their employees as well as we treat ours. We had one of our staff quit last week because she thought we weren’t treating her right. Well, no gift certificate for her.

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This year were are having a midnight showing of one of our pictures and pizza for staff.

This year the get-together was scheduled at a time that one of our members had already scheduled an end-of-the-season "thank you" party for his own staff, so this year's host for our social event told the member, "Bring your crew here. The more the merrier!"

The member agreed and brought a bunch of his employees, mostly teens and early twenty somethings, to this other drive-in to enjoy a night out at a DIFFERENT drive-in and actually be on the other side of everything. A bunch of us got behind the counter and did the cooking and serving and everybody, including the member's staff, got the chance to actually sit and watch an entire feature, uninterrupted.

The funny thing was to hear some of the comments from the employees of the other theatre after an evening of socializing with people from other drive-ins and touring the host drive-in. We heard things like, "Wow, I'm not used to being on this side of the concession counter!" and "This is great, people here know what I'm talking about when I talk about my job. At school or at my full-time job their eyes glaze over when I start talking about my work at the drive-in!"

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I agree with you fully that most jobs aren't like that, in this industry or any other...which is a pity, since things work so much better that way. If everyone is happy, then you simply can't have it better than that: a positive vibe amongst employees will always beat any other kind of (negative or fearsome) motivational reinforcement in my opinion.

The girl who left? Well, there's always one - what can I say? Did she point to anything specifically? You can't please them all.

I have worked for many, many theatres and the one I'm working for now strikes a perfect balance and sounds similar to yours in that respect so I can relate to what you're saying...but it is exceedingly rare! Most of the employees actually *enjoy* being there most of the time, and does this help the theatre in being so successful? I believe so!

The night after the owners held a party for senoir staff with an open bar tab, from ten of us plus five owners we spent around 2500 on booze and food ...

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Happy Christmas.

I worked at a UA for 2 years. The first Christmas that came by was a "watch a movie at Midnight" kind of thing. Us new people thought it was neat, but also thought that maybe at least we could get some drinks, or popcorn, or hell, pizza! The old timers said they never had a Christmas party by the hand of the company, per se. Then one day some other manager at another UA lets it slip that, "UA upped the Christmas party budget" that year, and his crew was happy. We went to OUR manager, wondering about this 'Christmas Party Budget', and he nearly fell out of his chair. That year, he begrudgingly gave us a proper Christmas party.

Point of the story? We found out later after he was fired for much worse things, he was reporting the 'party' budgets to headquarters, and getting a petty cash reimbursment in return. Problem was, for the years he was there, he never actually HAD a Christmas party for the crew. It all went into his pockets.