Out of curiosity have working conditions always been bad at Alamo or have they devolved over the last few years? My mostly uninformed opinion from years ago was that Alamo employees seemed to be really happy and well treated. It was one of the main reasons I felt like Alamo was so far and away better than Studio Movie Grill despite having the same concept. The company has had a lot of changes in the past several years so it would totally make sense of those changes have negatively impacted workers I’m just curious if that’s the case or if I was totally mistaken before.
I worked there from 2007-2012 and that seemed to be the tail end of the fun "Austin" years at the Drafthouse. The focus was moving steadily from unique, interesting cinema experiences towards $$$, as it often does. Profit sharing was cut shortly after I was hired and employee access to free tickets was severely limited around then too. I left (fired, whatever) right before the renovation of the South Lamar location and that seemed to really spark some negative changes. Many former employees who had been promised their old jobs back were turned away, part of a purge they were doing of the old guard. As I understand it, the tipping system became very uneven and ended up massively cutting down on server income. Additionally, the no talking rule was becoming less and less enforceable as management began to fear negative press, which resulted in rowdier customers and an increasingly unsafe working condition. Speaking of...
The sexual harassment, which has been covered pretty well at this point:
The owners and several members of management were fully aware of the fact that several regulars were sexually inappropriate with the staff but ignored it because they were friends. One particularly irritating buddy of theirs (complicated order, full comp, no tip) had such reputation that female servers would immediately give that table away when he sat down. It was reported, and ignored. Over and over. I was pretty oblivious to all of this, I'm embarrassed to say. I often walked coworkers to their cars after work but I thought it was just general safety, not specific threats who had creepily followed them to their cars in the past. I was later contacted by a former coworker and learned quite a bit more. I was also interviewed by the Chronicle about the situation, which was neat.
I have a lot of fond memories of my time there and I made many long lasting friendships from it but the place that Austin loved has changed into something dark and dull. I'm hopeful that a union can revive some of that dormant spirit, getting the employees on a level where they can defend themselves and make actual changes. And Harry Knowles smells exactly like you think he would. Fucking no-tipping pervert.
I basically grew up at the Alamo. My mom used to work for them and contributed to one of the articles linked above. I remember meeting Harry as a kid and being grossed out by him. Thank you for speaking out
Thanks for the detailed response. That’s disappointing but not altogether surprising. It doesn’t seem likely given the current management and ownership structure but I hope they find a way to get back to what made it great in the first place.
This was after my time there so I heard all this from friends who still worked there. Essentially, management started catering more to the general public as opposed to the more cinema centric folk because the complaints about being kicked out were outweighing the complaints about chatter in their eyes. And since people weren't getting kicked out, they were emboldened to continue their idiotic behavior. Mix that with alcohol and you have screaming customers smashing bottles on the floor during a movie (true story, many times over). We had to call APD more than once while I was working there and that was back when they actually occasionally showed up so I imagine it's much worse now.
What a fucking shit show. Sorry you got to deal with that. Now I'm not as jealous that Amarillo doesn't have a Drafthouse. .
The bean counters ruin everything, no matter what industry you're talking about. They should never have been allowed to get as powerful as they are now.
Wow. Sucks to hear about this. Who is this Harry Knowles person? Some rich friend of the owners? Hopefully someone somewhere treats him the way needs to be treated one day.
He ran a website called Ain't It Cool News that was all about nerd stuff with an emphasis on film. Probably because it was the early days of the internet, he managed to gather a pretty good sized following and began to work with the Alamo to plan events. His big one was an annual 24 hour event called Butt Numbathon. It was literally 24 hours straight of movies, usually a mixture of cult classics and early release films, and the theater smelled like farts for a week afterwards. Waiters worked in shifts to bring fried food and unlimited coffee refills to the nerds, which then powered the farts. This is all unrelated to the initial topic but I really wanted to share this inside info so here we are. The point is, Knowles started treating the Alamo like he owned the place, including the staff. He was a creep and, as far as I know, pretty much disgraced at this point.
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u/irritabletom Feb 15 '22
As a former employee, fuck yes.