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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Topic: Employees requesting off for Christmas
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Randy Stankey
Film God
Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 12-06-2004 07:47 PM
When people are hired at Cinemark they are told that the theater is open 365 days a year. They are expected to work holidays, just like Brad said, or they wouldn't be working at all.
Just to make it official, some time around the end of October our managers would pass around a holiday sign-up sheet. The number of holiday shifts to cover in each department was divided by the number of people working in that department to come up with a number of holiday shifts each person was expected to work. The way it worked out in the booth I ran, each person had to take two shifts.
There was a cut-off date. Usually a couple days before Thanksgiving. If ALL of the shifts weren't covered, the manager assigned shifts. Once your name was on that sheet, your ass had better be there. As you may know, Cinemark has the "No Show - No Job" policy. If you don't show up for one scheduled shift, management gets to assume that you quit.
Nine times out of ten, there were no problems getting all the shifts covered because everybody knew that all the other people were putting in THEIR share of the work. Furthermore, there were people who perfered to work certain holidays.
We had one guy who would work any holiday except Thangksgiving. He liked to work all the Christmas shifts. There was another guy who liked to work all the Thanksgiving shifts. We even had one guy who would work any holiday, any time except Halloween because he claimed he was Wiccan. (Halloween was a religious holiday and Christmas was just another day to him.)
I think the key to the question is: "Get the saddle on the horse before you let him out of the barn." Lay down the law right from the start. That way, there's no call for whining later on.
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Jeff Akin
Film Handler
Posts: 48
From: Salem, OR, USA
Registered: Mar 2002
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posted 12-06-2004 11:46 PM
I write my holiday schedules at least 2 weeks ahead of time. Takes some stress off of me, and lets the staff know what's going to be going on for them as well.
As far as requests go, they are requests, and that is all. When I interview candidates, I ask, "Are you available for weekends and holidays? Those are our busiest times of the year."
If I need them, I schedule them. If they don't show, we suck it up, and write them up, and move to terminate them. It's no secret that Thanksgiving and Christmas fuel this business. Expecting to have the day off would be like McNabb asking for Superbowl Sunday off when his team is playing in it.
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Paul Rosenberry
Film Handler
Posts: 4
From: Wallingford, CT, USA
Registered: Dec 2004
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posted 12-08-2004 12:20 AM
What's worked well for me is to let them know *before* Thanksgiving that A) we're open on holidays and B) holiday requests-off will be thrown out. Then I explain that they can let me know which holidays they *want* to work... the nastier the holiday (i.e. Xmas matinee as opposed to the evening of Jan 1), the more likely they'll get the remaining ones off... and they're encouraged to include the ones they'd really like off. Some people feel very strongly about one or two holidays... no problem if they offer to work the rest. They all end up working their fair share, regardless of the requests... and people that don't make any requests don't end up working more (or worse) holiday shifts. The important part is making sure they understand it because it's probably something they've never heard of before... also that you start the process before Thanksgiving because that counts as a holiday shift worked. You might end up with a couple of people that take the entire xmas/new-years week off because their family goes away, but they for-sure get scheduled for Thanksgiving.
It seems to make the staff happier too because they know nobody gets screwed. They don't feel like they have to make a big struggle out of it.
For the management/projectionists/supervisors, we do the same thing and I lay out the holiday schedules before Thanksgiving. No surprises.
I imagine this wouldn't work well if you run a small theater and only have 10 people on staff, just because some years you'll get everybody wanting the same holidays. Most theaters have enough staff that there's going to be *someone* who would rather have off New Year's Eve than Christmas, for example, and that's what makes it work.
If I get someone who just didn't listen and asks for all the holidays off, I just hand it back to him and explain he didn't give me anything to work with. He *is* working some holidays and he can help me pick which ones if he likes... or not.
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