Emagine Entertainment Reviews

The environment and management of the Rochester Hills location was horrible. All managers were under 26 years of age and were friends with each other, so any complaints of inadequate management fell on deaf ears. Two of the assistant managers were even dating. If an employee was sick, they were forced to contact another employee to fill their shift. If you were not able to find a replacement, you were written up. However, not all contact information was made available to employees; all information was readily available to managers, which makes forcing employees to find replacements seem more like an intended petty form of punishment rather than a strategic practice. During the weekdays, the staffing was an embarrassment. If it was not a weekend or holiday, the theater only staffed one manager, one concessionist, and one usher. When I received a complaint from customers whose seats were taken during the Interstellar premiere, my manager actually instructed me to tell the wronged clients to sit in other seats, since only three employees were running the entire theater. On more than one occasion, supplies such as aprons, scrubbing pads, and rags ran out before any new stock arrived.

We were a "franchise", so some cons may reflect more on Woodhaven Cinemas LLC than on Emagine itself. Most are for Emagine, though. Anyway. Equipment wasn't repaired very frequently. Kettles constantly overheated/didn't function, broken/leaky trash compactor. A lot of things were broken and corporate didn't care enough to fix them. Our maintenance guy was fired, so we didn't have one for a year. When minimum wage went up, past performance raises were removed. When we asked why, we were told that the raise was a flat rate, not a "base pay+X" amount, which meant some four-year non-crew leads made the same as a new hire when minimum went up. CEO Glantz pretty much ignored our location from day one. We didn't get the upgrades most locations got, or we got their old stuff He never wanted our location, which is why we were a franchise. You could definitely tell. Going above and beyond normally went unnoticed. Staffing was generally bad. Mostly understaffed. Employee policy changed all the time. Extremely hard to advance, even just within the location. Corporate loved to bring in outsiders for management, instead of promoting from within. Management, other than our last GM, was generally horrific. We received an inept manager from another location, because her old location didn't want her. Many of the daily responsibilities were shifted onto the shoulders of crew leads. Management (maybe the whole company?) had a policy of NEVER demoting anyone, even if it was deserved. This means bad promotions stayed around until they wanted to leave, regardless of performance. Management kept problem employees in fear of lawsuits. Most management rarely helped on the floor. Little to no training for new hires. Crew Leads had to install programs to train new hires, because no one else cared. Three managers were hired within months of each other, and all three were let go in short period of time. One of these worked shifts while drunk, no-call/no-showed multiple times, and was kept on. The last straw was when he was found sleeping on bags of kernels in a locked stock room, in the fetal position. The company will baby any customer who complains. Don't even try to hold them to the rules, because they'll go around you to corporate and get more than they asked for in the first place. Don't even fight it. Last but not least, neither Emagine nor the LLC told us that our location was being bought out and that we would all be laid off. We instead learned of this through employee family members (pipefitters, real estate agents, etc.) telling us they were getting requests for quotes or seeing transactions for an "AMC Woodhaven 10". Jon Goldstein, head of Woodhaven Cinemas LLC, finally confirmed the buyout rumors a month or two before we shut our doors. Emagine was very supportive with trying to transfer us to Canton or Saline, but the commute wasn't worth it for most. If I had to pick one over-arcing theme of Emagine, it would be cripplingly poor communication at every level of the company.