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If you allow "hang-outs", you are setting yourself up for illegal drug activity, vandelism to the customer's vehicles, and theater property.

Better put your foot down before it gets out of hand.

As far as passes are concerned, you should check on the company policy on how employees get passes. Regal allows the employee with one guest Monday through Thursday for any show (except restricted titles). The immediate fmaily is included as well to see movies. The GM's are usually given some leeway to change this. I allow my staff to see movies with a guest any day if the title is not busy, but they have to be not scheduled to work and attend the movie as well. They just cannot get tickets to pass on to "friends".

We allow fired employees to come to watch movies, but as customers only. They are to be treated as such. This means they cannot hang out. We have a no loitering policy in place for the property and this is also understood with current and not so current employees.

Terminated employees are terminated for a reason. They are a cancer that needs to be removed. Do not let them infect and poison your current staff. The current staff needs to be reminded of this from time to time.

If you have become the teen hang out, see if you can get security for the weekends. They sometime discourage the kids from hanging out. (BTW, I have the same problem on Friday nights. I will be hiring a new security crew because the current ones suck)

You do not have to be an asshole to get this done either, just be firm and do not back off.

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The point is... NO one is allowed to hang out in the theatre and converse with on duty employees at ANY TIME. This means ex employees who left or were fired, friends, relatives or any one for that matter. Not even off duty current employees! Employees are there to work, and serve the patrons, not chat with friends. No wonder multiplexes have such bad reputations for customer service if they don't insist on a more regimented pattern of behavior from their employees.

Terminated employees should never be allowed to mingle with current employees, and if the current employees allow this to happen, then they should be terminated as well.

There are at least 1001 things in a theater building that can be cleaned with a toothbrush.

Chris is right on with the passes. Employees must attend the show with their guests. With the occasional exception for parents. You can even go as far to say that "If you asked off, don't even think about coming in free to see a show."

Richard, it's just not what it used to be.

Joshua,as far as the ex-employees hanging out...I would have an employee meeting and tell your staff the new rules, let it be known that ex-employees are not allowed back in the theatre unless they are paying customers and when they attend a movie, the staff should treat them as any other paying customer. that means they buy their ticket/concessions and go watch their movie and leave ehn its over. The staff should not converse with them. A simple hello is fine but they are there to wrok for you and not socialize with the ex-bad seeds. If your staff does not like it, then they can leave and become ex-employees as well. I suggest you get this taken care of ASAP. With the summer business getting ready to hit, the last thing you need is alot of BS like this to deal with.

I ran a sub-run house in the center of the Cinema West '?empire?' -- so we had EVERYBODY hanging out. Other theatre managers, other employees, friends of the owner, friends of mine who made friends with other employees, friends of friends of friends of friends -- and it was impossible to make a valid reason WHY hanging out was against the rules -- the OWNER did it for crying out loud. And things were so slow anyway -- we usually got all our work done. At times it was good -- but most times it was downright annoying. I'm sure the above is a special case though - not everybody as their theatre's owner hanging out in their lobby.

Now when I went to a busier theatre -- I enjoyed the luxury of being able to assign legitimate work to people when their friends were hanging out -- it really made things a lot easier to deal with.

So I would assume business helps deter employee hangout -- cause when it's too dang busy to move around people hanging out -- then they just need to LEAVE!

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1) Corp would never go for this, as there is no overly compelling reason to do this.. If certain ex-employees are causing problems, ban them..

2) Termed employees must be treated as any other customer. No better, no worse.. We do not allow customers into theaters before they are seating, nor do we force them in there the minute is is seating..

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