Killer Stress. You?Follow

I work in a movie theater. I started out in the box office, then moved to being an usher (taking tickets and cleaning the theaters), and am now a projectionist. I was given two weeks of training with the Projection Manager, and was actually threading up the machines and starting them by the second day of training.

First inclination that this would be a killer job when it comes to the stress these machines would give me: the projection manager let me know how much everything costs. All 8 projectors amounts to $380,000 dollars. Each film (we run multiple reels on specific projectors) costs between 2.5k to 3.5k each.

Now, the thing with film now-a-days, is that with all our technology and our advances, the best we have done is to prevent the film from tearing/splitting. Film can be stretched, and will be damaged by simple elements that we come in contact with everyday. Enemy number One just happens to be dust. Dust WILL damage a film if enough of it gets on the film. Along with dust, you have destructive oils, and temperature.

With this in mind, proper care is a must when it comes to maintaining these films.

Second inclination: on my first threading, where my virgin hands touched the experienced flesh that was film, I did decently well. The manager had to stop the machine and fix the flow of the film that was going to the receiving platter, so it would wind up correctly. However, after we moved over to threading it into the machine and through the film gate, she walked away for a moment. Nervous as hell and hyped up on adderal, mountain dew, and Rockstar energy drink, my mind slipped into a blank state.

Well, she came back and we wrapped up. It was then that I decided to take my lunch break. During this break I was thinking about a previous projectionist who was fired for ruining a copy of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. His mistake was that he was on his cellphone while threading up the machine, and mistakingly missed a roller, resulting in having the entire film run over metal for all 2 hours 36 minutes of it.

It was then that I realized I may have made the same mistake in the midsts of my "stagefright" during the internal threading. I went back up to the projector room, and had I the gallon of bleach, I'd have drank it. What I feared was true, the Projection Manager didn't pay close enough attention and I had completely forgot about that one roller during the proccess. I fought with myself for a few minutes, trying to decide whether or not to let her know. I ultimately decided to let it go, as the movie was allready half-way through, and I just couldn't sum up the courage to say "Holy sh[b][/b]it look what we didn't notice!"

The film had not been damaged, amazingly, and I had been lucky. I can honestly say though, that I've never been as stressed out like that before, in my life.

Here I am 2 weeks later, and while things are easier to manage and the previous mistake will never happen again, there is still an incredible amount of stress involved with taking care of all the machines by myself. Is my tension on the film decent enough to prevent problems with the sound? Will customers complain about my focusing? What if I ruin the film somehow and cost the company $2500?

Does anyone else work in an area where mistakes must be incredibly minor, or else the consequences will be severe? Is your job stressful or are you able to relax?

Well that beats the shizza out of my 2.5k fsck up worries.

What do you do now?

Before I came to my senses and got a job that actually paid me, I worked in the music industry.

For a time I was the assistant engineer at Sony ATV/Tree. We mostly did full production demos (ATV/Tree is a music publishing company) but occasionally got album work.

At that time, the McBrides wrote for Sony and Terry had just written Beer Thirty for Brooks and Dunn. They recorded the album elsewhere, but Coors wanted it redone for a commercial, so Sony was where they came.

In come the A-list players $150 hr each, Steve Marcantonio an engineer from New Jersey, Terry McBride, Ronnie Dunn, and a few new racks of gear including a (duh duh dunnn) Sony 4048 48 track .5 in. digital tape machine.

I'm nervous as hell but come in the night before to set up, and the next morning goes smoothly.

Players come in the control room, hear the original cut on the tune, pow-wow for a bit, then hit the studio.

This is the point where my 7 hours of night and morning preperation have come to fruition so the engineer can sit down and tap the big red button that says record and get paid the big bucks.

He hits the button. Calls tape rolling into the com. Band nails the tune. Ronnie calls it a good one, tells them in to listen to what we have for a start. They all sit down again in the control room to listen to???

Silence.




I had forgotten to disengage the Allsafe button on the tape machine, which overrides any record functions on the remote.

The engineer realized what had happened. Did he yell at me? Did he point the blame where it belonged and kick my *** out the door for wasting the performaces of the group and a good chunk of change for the time?

Nope. He took the heat, everybody gave him hell(jokingly) and all filed back into the sound booth for a second first pass.

I apologized to him as best as I was able, and he called it a mulligan. "Don't sweat it, it's your first time making that mistake".

When I had a minute later when he was out of the room, I apologized to the writer and singer (since it was their time and money I blew) letting them know it was really my fault. They laughed and said they were just glad to have something to harass Marcantonio about.

Professionals are exactly that. Almost nothing phases their confidence that what they have started will be completed. Maybe a few humps and bumps, but no worries, no stress, just have fun and go.

I worked in a bank for a little while. I can't quite remember the exact name of the department, but we were in charge of the stocks and bonds. We had to tear off the coupons that pay the stockholders each month. One missed coupon could be anywhere from $100 to $100,000. So yeah, that used to stress me out some.

Now my job is a snooze fest. And when I ***** up it's insanely easy to blame someone from another dept.

Back before I was teaching I was a real Marine. It's pretty stressful getting shot at. On the flip-side of that though it's pretty rewarding knowing your part of a massive invasion force spreading the influence of Wal-Mart to the world.

Well i'll tell you my job and its stresses to make you guys feel worse.
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Customer: Heloo, do you have any [insert product here]?

*thinks or pretends to think for 5 seconds
Me: No im afraid we don't have that at the moment, sorry.

*Customer walks off

:)

But seriously the worse think i have to put up with are ******** smelly customers.I cannot exaggerate...

I used to work in a single screen theatre where when you were working concessions you could look up through a window into the projection booth.

One Thanksgiving night we were in the middle of some Disny movie and I looked up and it looked like the entire room was filled with loose film. Somehow the projectionist had screwed up so that instead of winding back onto the platter is was just running loose into the room. He stayed there all night trying to fix that mess.

Don't worry about the projection stuff. It'll all be second nature by the first week or so. And like someone else mentioned it you do mess it up it really won't be the end of the world.

--DK

I didn't read anyone's posts. That's how stressed I am.

I used to be a mortgage broker. I mainly worked with clients who had terrible credit, recent bankruptcies, and were likely to lose their home if someone didn't help them. There aren't a whole lot of companies that are willing to take on the risk of loaning those people money either.

Anyway, its like a month long process and if one thing goes wrong it can completely mess things up and get them disqualified for the loan.

No lives on the line or anything but trying to help some 80 year old lady not get her home forclosed on and other similar situations got to be pretty stressful. Working on 100% comission is stressful enough as is.

First half of military career; weapons loader/jet mechanic. Second half, pharmacy. Either one can kill someone.

But for real stress, try staying married for 20 years.

Uhm, yah thats about how much most of the companies want. The Majority of theatres make almost nothing on tickets, thats why its 9 dollars for a large popcorn and soda.

Yes, of course, we played "Passion of the Christ" for near on a year and a half.