Rotas are wildly inconsistent. Hours available are heavily dependent on whether there are any good movies out and often die out completely in warm summers. On an ‘average’ 10hrs contracts I have worked 45 hour weeks and I have worked 6 hour weeks, this is my sole employment. There is clear favouritism in the division of hours with one person in the same week receiving 25+ and another less than 10 for no clear reason at all. Highly unlikely to work day shifts, they seem to like to just use management for these hours. Be prepared to be waiting for your rota -starting from a Friday- still by Wednesday evening. It is impossibly hard to plan your life around their system. ‘Blue shifts’ or ‘on calls’ are common and sometimes you are called in or cut up to an hour before your start time. Confirmed ‘white shifts’ are also cut at random and often on the day of. There is no pay offered for you giving up your day on the off chance you’re needed and you’re in trouble if you don’t turn up for a confirmed blue. Closes can often go into the early hours of the morning. I have left the building at 2:30am before due to busyness and understaffing. There is no additional unsociable hours pay or special holidays pay (Boxing Day, Christmas Eve etc). Working all the jobs of a regular restaurant and then some, there is no tipping culture and menu prices are so high people don’t frequently offer tips anyhow. There is no card tip option. Cash tips can be kept or shared and this can go towards staff outings but the business has an emphasis on card payments. Higher ups have an obsession with money saving and are a lot of the reason for the shift cuts. This frequently leaves venues understaffed leaving everyone incredibly stressed as the whole places runs given that every step goes to plan. If there’s not enough staff, screens aren’t clean on time so people can’t go in, drinks can’t be run, food can’t be run, orders are piling up on the pass. 25 minutes of ads is not a lot of time to serve up to 100 people, not to mention when those people aren’t where they’re supposed to be when their order is ready. After those 25 minutes, the lights go off and the film starts leaving you to run whatever is left into dark rooms where people litter the floor with cushions and bags and proceed to get incredibly uptight and angry when you inevitably drop a tray of drinks on them or knock over the popcorn they left on the floor. The customer base is not at all understanding and I have received abuse from customers on many occasions. Managers generally defend you well but be prepared to see that same customer in again on free tickets just to avoid the bad review. Menu and ticket prices are constantly boosted so when people are already complaining about prices, staff aren’t even aware things have gone up yet again. It costs Everyman around 20 pence to make one of the tiny pizzas they sell for 8 pounds a piece. Of course profit margins are important but higher office seem to take things too far. Their absolute greed recently saw them cutting the turn around time between screens in order to show more films a day. You can now be left with 10 minutes to clean a sold out screen in which 80 people each had 2 drinks lots of little plates, a burger, popcorn and more. When you fall behind on screens the whole venue falls apart and they won’t pay enough staff to keep on top of it. Training is a little minimal and outdated. There are modules to complete online which take many hours and are unpaid. On site you may be buddied with a higher staff member for a couple days but it doesn’t go much further. In a busy period they will hire a huge amount of new people to cover the rush. None of them receive proper training and generally they aren’t well screened in interviews making it a nightmare for seasoned staff. On these occasions you feel robbed by the fact they are being paid a mere pound less than you when they are truly useless and you’re working at least double to cover it. On the surface it seems a fun job but for much of it you are a glorified cleaner. Smaller venues don’t have potwashes so team are responsible and so on any given day you may be assigned screens, floor or bar. That being said, there is a reluctance to train people on bar and there is clear favouritism when assigning roles. It is hard to break out of being given screens every shift and busting your a** to clean a screen just for another to come out 10 minutes later all whilst you have to be Involved in running orders, seating customers etc gets old fast. For whatever reason some Staff members get shafted with all the heavy shifts - eg I recently worked Friday Saturday Sunday 2pm to close at 1-2am with many staff members who are equally capable receiving weekend days off. Despite this list I have actually really enjoyed my time at Everyman but it is very largely due to the team. It is frequently said in venue that people aren’t staying because they like the job and it’s absolutely true. Staff turnover in new starters is absurd if they don’t break into the ‘family’ but once you’re in it can be hard to walk away. With so little time to get things into the screen now, shortcuts are having to be taken. Cocktails are batched, the kitchen frequently serve food that has been sat in a thermodyne or half cooked so it can be finished quickly. It doesn’t meet the standards that should be expected at Everymans price point. Also the chips are trash, it’s the most common complaint and yet still they chose to use an obscure potato type because what ? I presume it’s the cheapest. Managers can be a little unprofessional and I can only describe it as a somewhat gossipy workplace. It is very obvious from the ideas that come from higher up that they don’t work in or maybe even visit the sites and it is incredibly frustrating when these things are passed down without anyone’s say.
