What is it like working at a movie theater and how is it? I work at Galaxy Theaters in Riverbank, where I’ve been working there since July 8th 2021 and I have to say – it has been amazing. There are many things that happen when working at a movie theater and you experience a lot.

The first thing to learn is that there are 2 main workstations when working at a movie theater – usher and concessions. The Usher’s main role is taking care of anything outside of concessions such as theater maintenance, any messes around the theater, and taking out the trash. Then you have concessions, which is a much more fast-paced job compared to usher, the main role is to focus on making food and selling it to guests, in concessions we sell popcorn, soda, pretzels, pizza, chicken strips, and more.

Each role has sort of “sub roles” to them – concessions has the kitchen which is in charge of making pretzels and pizzas while making sure the soda is up to date and intact. They also have a refill runner which is probably the smallest role but it still plays a part, just as it is said your job is to refill drinks or help run for other people working on the register, If your just assigned normal concessions you’ll work on a register while refill runners never get a register.

Usher has their own fair play of sub-roles, you have lobby usher, checker, Maintenance, Projectionist, and of course the normal ushers. Lobby ushers pretty much do the same thing as normal ushers but are the first to pick whenever they need the lobby swept but other ushers can sweep the lobby as well, then you have a checker which is one of the biggest roles in usher. The checker’s job is to check all the screens to make sure the sound and the screen are optimal and to make sure no guest in the theater is on their phone, being loud, or just causing a disruption during the movie. Maintenance usually doesn’t do any screen cleaning but they focus on fixing the seats and anything that’s a deeper fix than just cleaning. Projectionists are in charge of making sure the movie is playing and that the screens are working properly.

Concessions have a big part in the theater but I would say Usher plays a bigger role. Each side has shift leads, shift leads are in charge of that main role group of current workers. So for example there are always 2 shift leads throughout the day, you have a morning and you have a night shift, so typically Morning would start at like 9:00 and leave at 5:00 while the night shift would start at 5:00 and get out between 12:00-1:00. So how do I feel about working at Galaxy since the basics are down, I love it. There are many more pros than cons and it’s a lot of fun, there are plenty of cool benefits such as free tickets every week, free posters, dry runs which allow you to see movies a day before it comes out to the public, and 50% off of everything in concessions. I’ve collected over 50+ posters while working at the theater and my whole room is completely covered. The only small con is that it can be a little bit stressful when a big movie comes out but the pros completely outweigh it, It has a wide variety of things to do and it’s a wide-open job so you can talk to your coworkers and easily get to know them, and last but not least At least it’s very open so you aren’t confined to a small space.

So in conclusion, I really love this job and I’m planning on continuing to work there for the rest of my senior year and throughout college. since i started working it’s been a blast.