AMC Entertainment reviews

Be aware nobody is going to realize how important your work is. The kids who work on the floor don't know what it is that projectionists do, and they will run their mouths about it. They also bring all their high school behaviors and intrigues with them, and if you have to work a shift with them it will frequently feel like babysitting. Problems caused by faulty or badly maintained machines will be blamed on you, even if there is nothing you can do about it, or it's not even your area of work. If the team of projectionists does not take the job seriously, or are too stupid to master rudimentary booth skills, your work experience will suck. There are a limited number of hours that can be worked in booth, and have to be divided by however many projectionists you have in your team. If there are a lot of them that means you don't get many hours. If there are very few of them, you will be working ALL the time. Booth shifts also run extremely late. If it is the summer season, be prepared not to get out from a closing shift until two or three in the morning, and sometimes later. During the rest of the year you will get out anywhere from 12.30 to two in the morning. If it is the night new films come in to be assembled and screened for errors you will probably not get out until three. Opening shifts on weekends start around 9am, on weekdays around 11 or 12. No matter how good a job you do, or how seriously you take it, you will never be recognized for that fact. The best you will get is at your yearly review, when your PM may give you positive feedback as a general rule. Learning new skills, including basic booth skills like (if there are multiple types of projector) learning how to build and tear down prints of each type, basic maintenance skills like changing bulbs, etc., can take months or years to learn. After nearly two years at my theatre, and repeatedly asking to learn new skills, I still don't know how to do everything I should. The best you will get is acknowledgment from the other projectionists, and since they are the only ones who actually understand what it is you do that can be the best feedback to receive anyway. If you are someone who doesn't like being alone for hours at a time this is not the job for you. Projectionists work alone in a loud, dark area. If that doesn't sound like a great time it will be hard for you. Sometimes people will come traipsing through booth like they belong there. They don't, and projectionists frequently get territorial over booth. For every prospective employee at AMC let me say this: Senior management are idiots. Some of them are nice, some of them are horrible, but almost all of them are total idiots. This is especially true when you consider the fact (at my particular theatre, and I've heard at many others) that the managers of a movie theatre DO NOT understand how the projectors work. You would think that a manager at a movie theatre would be able to run the machines in a pinch, to fix any problems that arise in booth, as a matter of course. It is never the case. Even the ones who are booth trained (few and far between) frequently do not exercise those skills and forget how to do it. And that's the best thing that can be said about their interaction with the staff. If there are issues with performance or morale the best kind of meeting you can expect is having a manager berate you for whatever issues they think are happening unless you personally step up to change the direction of the meeting. And you need to be careful doing that, because they may just write you up for insubordination. It's happened at our theatre a few times.

For me, the worst part about working at AMC was the hours i was given. I had a difficult school schedule while working there, and AMC did not really hear me out when i asked them i needed different hours. I had it easy at first, because i started working there when i was 15 years old, and there were certain laws AMC had to follow about not over-working me. But as soon as i turned 16, my hours went up drastically. I didnt like working late, until anywhere from 11pm to 1am, on a friday night and then waking up at 7 or 8 the next morning to start working at 9. However, if youre looking to work many hours then AMC is probably the place for you. The pay was not all the great at all. I got paid $6.50, which i eventually found was kind of low compared to other jobs i thought i would have enjoyed more. Leads got paid 7.50 to 8.00 and managers only got paid 9.50 to 10. Working at the movie theatres so much caused me to want to get out of the theatres as fast as possible, and be relieved. This is also the reason why i did not really enjoy the fact that i got free movies. I did not enjoy smelling like popcorn/slushi everytime i got home. The Icee machines stopped working on a regular basis, which could be frustrating to both the employee and guest. Management does not really notice/compliment the employees on the way they treat the guests. I am an outgoing person, and i know that my interaction with the guests was far better than a lot of my other coworkers, but i never was really complimented by any of the managers except for one. I believe i could have been promoted to a lead had i worked more hours during the week; however, you should know that leads are expected to work a lot more hours and late shifts than the regular team members. It can also be very stressful when alot of people come to the concession stand at a time, especially when you are handling one order with aroundn 10 people in it. There is a very high turnover rate, at least there was at my location. After i quit, i returned about 2-3 months laters, and there were a lot of new faces behind the concession stand.