Monday, August 9, 2010

My not-so-glamorous life part 2

Okay, we didn't get far yesterday, so today I'll try to speed things up a little. Can you tell I have nothing writing-wise to blog about at the moment? Just waiting for betas to get back to me with their thoughts on P & P....

So. The schedule for the week is done. What next? Well, you need to let people know about it. Firstly, I have to let the media know. I have a document that lists the films, ratings, run times, session times and a brief synopsis and I send this out each week to the media. The newspaper takes this info to make up our press ads and other media use it for their own purposes. I also have to update our website and another one that lists session times for films all over the country. I also load the session times into our ticketing system so if anyone is keen to buy tickets in advance, they can.

That's the schedule out of the way.

Once that's done, I then turn my attention to the staff. The roster is also super-important, because if you don't have enough people on, things spiral out of control really fast. I write my rosters with the schedule in front of me, checking what time films that are likely to busy are one, when we have private bookings that will need extra attention and other small details. Because we are a small business, I have to try and keep the roster as tight as possible. I have an awesome team, but this is a casual job for them, and most have other interests outside the cinema. They're dancers, musicians, actors, students and circus performers so often have commitments outside work. Not mention social lives! But most weeks I manage to fill all the available shifts without too much trouble.

Once I've drafted a roster, I set up out a report that breaks down each day. During the week I fill this in daily to see what percentage of revenue the wages are, how many admissions each film has, what the average ticket price is and how much is being spent at the bar/candy bar. I slot in the hours I've rostered so I can see during the week where we've used more or less hours than I planned for. This happens often if people need to stay on later because it's busy, or if we send someone home early because they are not needed.

And that's my typical Monday. Of course, there is also banking and trips to the post office and phone calls from people wanting to book functions and all the other day to day stuff, but that's the core stuff I do every week on a Monday.

Sounds exciting, right?

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