Re: NOTHING but VENTS - Vent all you want without replies
REALLY?!!
Okay...bit of backstory to this. I work at a movie theater (discount theater, the type that used to be called a 'dollar theater', although admission prices just went up to $3 during the week and $4 on weekends, this past week). I'm the guy who gets the hard-drives with the movies and downloads them into the servers, and sets everything else up so they can play on schedule. Part of that process is downloading digital 'keys' for those movies that require them, which enable our equipment to play the movies within the designated time frame (typically anywhere from one week to three months, depending on the movie...one week is the norm).
Someone else books the movies, and does all the communication work with the distributors, which includes getting the hard drives shipped to us, getting the posters for display...and getting the keys, which she then forwards to me so I can unzip the files to install on our servers.
On any given week, I find out what we're going to be showing for the coming weekend and the week following on Monday (this week, it was Tuesday...holiday and all that...) I will usually start getting keys emailed to me about the same time, although it's rare that I get ALL of them that early. But, generally speaking, by Thursday, everything is ready to go and programmed and all they need to do each day is just turn on the equipment and it will take care of itself.
This week, our new incoming film came from a different distributor than we normally use...not a big problem for me, as long as the hard drive is here on time. Well, got here tonight, got the hard drive started downloading, got the rest of the keys that had been emailed to me...and I was still missing keys for the new movie. Text our booking agent to ask what's up...and she tells me that because it's a new distributor, they don't have the information to program keys to send us...and she needs the model and serial number of all of our projectors and servers to send to them (this is at, like, 10:30 at night, the night before we're supposed to start showing the new movie...all of our equipment is running, there are people watching shows, I can't turn on lights in the projection area, I have NO FREAKIN' IDEA where look for the information...
AND SHE'S HAD THREE DAYS TO TRACK DOWN THIS INFORMATION, or even just to find out that she needs it! She didn't find out until today, apparently, although I have no idea what time...and if I hadn't pestered her about it, I have no idea when she would have come to get it. As it is, I found a flashlight, fumbled around as best I could, found the labels on the outside of the projector units to get her THAT part of the information...then I had to rummage around inside the server racks WHILE THEY ARE RUNNING to find the model and serial numbers for the servers (first, I had to figure out which of the six components in the rack was actually the server!)
But I got her the info (she made it sound like it was all she needed, and then the keys would be immediately forthcoming)...and now, two hours later...STILL NO KEYS.
Which means I'll have to make a heavy shift to tomorrow's plans and come here when I should be at my other job, to take five minutes to download and install keys (seriously, it takes longer to boot up the servers...WAY longer...than it does to install the keys...by the time you factor that in, it will be closer to twenty minutes). That's assuming, of course, that she gets the keys to me in any sort of timely fashion (two weeks ago, I was downloading the movie mere hours before it was supposed to show...)
And we don't have the poster for the movie yet, either (this is the second week the movie beat the poster here in the last month...)
I love the job. Really, I do. But it is supposed to be something I can do IN ONE NIGHT, and when I don't have everything by that night, it really screws up the rest of my schedule...like, my hours at my day job (which, luckily, are really flexible this time of year). And, it's a family-run business, so while everyone is going to be annoyed hearing about it, odds are really good that nobody will do anything about it, because she's family (and because I bust my butt to make sure everything works out as smoothly as possible when garbage like this happens.)
Okay...I feel moderately better now. Thanks for reading along.