Fired from My First Job

I wrote and published the first draft of this essay on 4 July 2019. Predictably, almost every day since then, I have continued to remember more and more and more. Here is a memory that came back to me on 19 January 2020. When Ernie would greet me at a shift change, with a beaming smile on his face, he would ask if there had been any problems. So I would tell him, “Yes, there were.” What were they? So I would tell him: “There were seventeen misframed splices that I had to repair; one of the leaders was over three feet too long, which is why I bungled the change-over, but don’t worry, because I cut it to the proper length for you; the cues on the end of reel 3 were only seven feet apart, and so I got black on screen, but I recued it for you so that we won’t blow the change-overs anymore; there was some damage to reels 2 and 5 of the first feature, so I repaired it else the film would break next time; some of the splices didn’t sound right, and when I checked them, I saw that they were only one-sided, and so I fixed them for you; and I renumbered most of the leaders, because they were too short.” His smile would vanish instantly, and the more I told him about the mistakes, the more disgusted his expression would become. I never learned the lesson. What was the lesson? Simple: LIE! Just lie! Always tell lies. He smiled when I said that the show was fine, no problems, which was indeed the case the first few times. The more I told him about the mistakes and the damage I needed to repair, the angrier he got. Unfortunately, it is not in my nature to lie. When people ask me if there were any problems, I say that, yes, there were. When asked what those problems were, I enumerate them, one by one. Well, as I learned in my decades of working for others, that’s a bad idea — a really BAD idea. Bosses don’t want to know about problems. Bosses want to hear lies, happy lies, cheerful lies, comforting lies, feel-good lies. So, in that sense, I brought about my own troubles. A lot of bosses also want to hear juicy gossip, and, as I later learned, there was plenty of juicy gossip — about me.

I visited Los Altos Twin again and chatted with the projectionist on duty that night, Steve Davis. He told me a story about a brand-new, fresh-from-the-lab print that had confused him terribly, and that had confused the other projectionists too. Everything was fine, and then, in the middle of a reel, right after a fade-in, the film was suddenly a sprocket out of frame. They looked through that reel repeatedly, trying to find the misframed splice, but there was no splice. Finally, they noticed that the film had slipped in the printer. During a fade-out/fade-in, each frame was just the tiniest bit taller than the preceding frame, until finally it was a full sprocket out. They cut that entire segment out of the movie and hung it on the wall, as an illustration of yet one more thing that can go wrong. When I got back to Donald Pancho’s, I related that story to Ernie, saying that such a print may come our way as well. He nastily — really nastily — replied, “At the rate you’re going, you would get such a print.” I couldn’t even think of a response. That’s when I realized that this job was nearly at its end. I thought it would be a good idea to resign, but I wanted six months, just six months. I wanted to last six months, without getting fired, because if I lasted six months without getting fired, I would be eligible to join the MPMO.

So now you know why I was fired within four months. On Wednesday evening, 28 June 1978, as I was just starting a double feature of Spellbound and Rebecca, Ernie came in and, as gently as he could, told me, “Well, I’m going to let you go.” With a gentle, wistful, smile, he told me that he, too, had been heartbroken, years earlier, when he had been rejected as a candidate for steam-locomotive engineer for a railroad-historical society. He told me that it was Movie, Inc., policy to allow all previous employees, even employees under previous managements, whether they had retired, resigned, or even been fired, to be allowed in for free whenever they wished — except for me. I would have to pay. I got the message. I visited the owner at his office to make an appeal. He was deeply surprised. “You were fired???” He could hardly believe it. He told me to call him back the next day. I did, and he was fuming: “You have made a myriad mistakes!” he shouted. He did not investigate. He just believed what he was told. I was a laughing stock after that. Yes, I literally heard the laughter — more than once. Yes, forty-plus years later, I am still furious. Well, that taught me a lot of lessons about human nature. That’s why I resigned from the human race and joined the mice.

Despite those “myriad mistakes,” I was kept on for another week and a half. I called HQ concerning a discrepancy in my pay. The Second Business Partner picked up the phone, and his harsh, stone-cold, angry tone of voice demonstrated that he regarded me as The Enemy, and he acidly insisted that there was nothing wrong. End of conversation. That was my third, and last, dealing with the Second Business Partner. I would estimate that maybe 90 seconds of my life were devoted to the Second Business Partner, and that was 90 seconds too much.

I asked if I could run Rocky Horror one last time, and my wish was granted. That had to have been on Saturday, 8 July. Just afterwards was my last day, Sunday, 9 July 1978. I remember the very last show that I ran there, which, somewhat atypically, the previous projectionist had built up onto 6,000' reels. It was another double feature. First was Black Orpheus, again with a miscue, and this one caused me not to get leader on screen, but to skip a scene at the change-over. You see, I followed the lab cues, not realizing that the beginning of the next reel was spliced onto the old reel after the lab cues! That was playing dirty. That was playing really dirty. The second feature was Chac, with the requisite misframed splices. This was the one time I decided not to make any repairs. Ernie was scheduled to come in to run the evening show, but instead it was Mark who arrived. At the end of my shift, I decided to stick around in the lobby, chatting sadly with Mrs. A. I always liked her. I still think about her. We chatted for maybe thirty minutes, and then Ernie walked in. He did a double take when he saw me, and he was mortified that I was still there. He was sure I would have left in a huff as soon as I could. I had never seen him so nervous. I told him, calmly, that, for the first time, I had not repaired the prints he had vandalized. Then I went home.

I might as well admit it. Growing up, I had never belonged. Yes, I had a family, but there was absolutely no sense of belonging in that. I had some casual friends and acquaintances. There were people who were gracious towards me and towards whom I was gracious. But there was never a sense of belonging. When I first saw how carefree, relaxed, and silly the folks at Donald Pancho’s and The Guild could be, I wanted to belong. Alas, it was not to be. Decades later I had a sudden insight: I do not want to belong. I have a cat. That’s enough.

At the time, at age 18, with zero social skills and even less experience of the world, I was not familiar with the concept of a toxic workplace. I was not familiar with the concept of personality disorders. I was not familiar with the neuroscience of narcissism or psychopathy. When people would put on a façade of kindness or a façade of charm, I fell for it, always. I naïvely thought that people were all basically the same at heart, and that unpleasant behaviors were the result of trauma or confusion. I naïvely thought that anybody (except my father and grandmother) would be receptive to reason. I did not have any concept that evil is born into some people’s brains, placed there as a birth defect; that they’re made that way and that there is literally nothing anybody can do about it. Had I understood any of that, I would have run away from that place screaming three years ealier and I would never have returned.

Now that I have put down my memories in writing, a thought has formed. I had had this thought before, but I never paid it attention. Now I pay it attention. Why did Ernie not inform his boss, the owner, that he had fired me? Isn’t that the sort of thing his boss would want to know? Besides, Ernie was not a manager, and so he had no authority to hire or fire. My guess, and all it can be is a guess, is that Ernie did not expect me to make an appeal. He expected me to depart, glum and brokenhearted, and never darken the doorsteps again. Then he could tell the owner that I just mysteriously stopped accepting any more shifts. That would have gotten rid of a problem quietly, peacefully, and without any drama. I inadvertently added the drama.

Now, in July 2020, a year after scribbling the above, I am able to think a little bit more clearly. If I were a business owner, and if I discovered that one of my employees, who is not a manager and who has no authority to hire or fire, fired somebody anyway, without telling me, I would be upset. The person who did that would be in tremendous trouble. No matter how justified the firing might have been, my authority would have been undermined. At a bare minimum, I would put that person on a one-year leave of absence, with a stipulation that the person not return until after intensive counseling and testing. If my company were small, a thousand people or less, and if a manager, with authority to hire and fire, with full justification fired an employee without discussing the matter with me first, I would have the same reaction. That manager would no longer be a manager. Yet the owner of Movie, Inc., was okay with a mere projectionist far exceeding his authority, behind his back. Why was he perfectly okay with such insubordination, an insubordination that was illegal, to boot? The more I think about this, the less I understand.

I would occasionally try to explain to friends and acquaintances what had happened at Donald Pancho’s, but I tried to keep the story to a few sound bites, because people no longer have the patience to listen to any narrative that is more than four seconds long. In each case, I got hollered down, because nobody believed me. It was obvious to them that the fault was entirely my own, that if I had been any good, I would not have been fired, that, in my childish anger, I was simply projecting, as it were, my own failings onto others. Even when I moved to other parts of the country, and would start to tell my tale as a mere reminiscence, people would shut me down instantly, saying that they wanted to hear no part of the garbage spewing forth from my mouth. As far as they were concerned, they were convinced that I was the one at fault, not my supervisor, not the employers, not the company. This was obvious to them, and they were irritated by any attempt I would make to tell the story. This is America. In America, the rich guys are always right and the victims are always wrong. (Perhaps they asked, out of my earshot: “Well, what was he wearing?”) So, after several attempts at telling my tale, I shut up, and I stayed shut up until the morning of 4 July 2019, when I just couldn’t contain it anymore. I was ready to scream from holding it in all those decades.

Why am I upset, though? The job paid minimum wage, which at the time was $2.30/hour gross, which covered no bills. Nobody should ever work at a job that pays so little. Any boss who pays you minimum wage is really telling you that he would prefer to pay you nothing at all, and is paying you minimum only because the authorities are watching. I should have left before I started, but I did not realize that then. I realized that only some years later.

I was deeply impressed by something, though. The owner said I had made “a myriad mistakes.” Almost no English speaker is fluent enough to use that phrase. Most native English speakers would say “myriads of mistakes,” even though “myriad” has no plural form and does not govern the genitive. So, although the owner was distinctly unfriendly, at least he fired me grammatically. That counts for something, and I had to give him credit. Really. It figures, though, because he and his brother were friends with my twelfth-grade humanities teacher. That might explain his proficiency with the language.

This is all a bit personal for me, because I was disliked by most of these folks. I didn’t realize at first that I was disliked. It took months for the realization to dawn on me that a lot of these folks really disliked me. Well, not disliked. Why do I say disliked? That’s not true at all. I was not disliked. I was loathed — with an all-consuming passion. Yes, I was an annoying immature dumb little kid back then, and I can’t blame them for being exasperated by me, but there are better ways to deal with annoying immature dumb little kids. Instead, I was dispatched with vehemence by a bunch of annoying immature dumb little grownups who vandalized films in order to sabotage someone else’s work, who lied through their teeth and bad-mouthed their fellow employees behind their backs, who harmed the business at which they were employed. I resent them to this day.

This was my first job, and hence my initiation into the work world. In the everyday work world, many coworkers are vicious and they go out of their way to get others in trouble, through rumors, whispering campaigns, sabotage, planted evidence, and whatnot. This is how they entertain themselves, and they don’t feel good about themselves unless they are tearing others down. Such tactics are remarkably successful, and rare is the manager who can see through this. As a matter of fact, most managers enthusiastically engage in it and get a kick out of the process of piling on. I expected others to behave responsibly and honorably. I no longer expect that. On the contrary! At the time, though, I expected it, and I gave the others too much benefit of too much doubt.

What should I have done differently? I had no clue at the time. I knew for certain that I should not have reported the sabotage to HQ. That would have made me look like a troublemaker. I just silently hoped that the sabotage would cease, and that eventually I would be permitted to inspect the prints for my own shows. That strategy was dead wrong. What I should have done, I realize now, was visit the owner at the office, demand a key to the premises, and tell him that if I were to project a print, I would insist upon inspecting it myself, well ahead of time. If he balked at such an unusual suggestion, I simply should have tendered my resignation, effective immediately, no hard feelings. That would have been the proper thing to do. At age 17/18, I did not know that.

Still, though, as I look back upon this whole misadventure, I see ever more clearly that I am to blame as well. If, upon meeting the people at Donald Pancho’s and The Guild, I had simply asked them to tell me about their lives, their interests, their stories, their anecdotes, their views, if I had taken an interest in them, everything would have turned out differently. I am absolutely certain of that. Instead, at ages 14 through 18, from a family that had no friends and no heart-to-hearts, I had not yet learned that basic human skill. Looking back on it, I see that NOBODY at Donald Pancho’s and The Guild had that skill. When I had something to say, it was always about MY interests, MY views, MY experiences, not anybody else’s, and that got awfully grating, to say the least. Had I simply switched the conversations around, to get others to talk, to share, to reveal, there is a fair chance that I would have become the darling of the corporation. All in all, though, it’s probably best that they wanted me gone. It was an unhealthy atmosphere, and I could never have removed all the toxicity. Lost cause. (I’m thinking about this now. Why did I behave so deplorably? Why do I often still behave so deplorably? It would seem that I’m not interested in others, but I am! I just never asked anything personal, not even “What’s your wife’s name?” or “How old are your kids?” Any sort of personal talk, heart-to-hearts and whatnot, was unheard of in my family, and the unspoken directive was clear: “DON’T YOU DARE ASK SUCH QUESTIONS!” That, I understand only now, is why I kept all conversations strictly impersonal. It was quite literally decades before I began to have personal conversations. Very seldom, though. That would have to be with someone I could trust. ‘Trust’ and ‘Don Pancho’s’ were mutually exclusive terms.)

Ernie passed away suddenly of a massive heart attack while driving on the Interstate on 24 December 2018, leaving behind a widow. He was 71 and he had married rather late in life, at age 57. Actually, I am surprised that he ever had a romance. He didn’t strike me as the type who could express or even harbor emotions, and, further, he didn’t seem to have any conception of women except as objects to ogle, but I guess there was more to him than I had imagined. He did nasty things, but he was not, at base, evil, and he did have his sweet side. I was sort of hoping that he might stumble upon this web essay and drop me a note, but I did not realize that, half a year before I had even thought about scribbling this essay, he had already died. Back in September 1979 he had held out an olive branch but I did not accept the offer. Now I regret that. My condolences to his widow.

Another basic problem, as I have discovered over the decades, is simply that I do not do well with alpha males, nor do I do well with those who appease alpha males. At Donald Pancho’s, nearly the entire personnel fit into one of those two categories. They could all be nice. Except for Second Business Partner, they all had their sweet sides, all of them, I admit, and to this day I am still fond of their sweet sides, but I would not care to meet any of them again. Well, I would be happy to see Mr. Master again. And Mark Brown, yes, I would love to see Mark Brown again. As soon as I heard the Mark Brown story, which, of course, was before I began my brief employ, I understood that this place was unstable — but heck, I thought, at least it would be a stepping stone. It was not a stepping stone. It was more like a millstone tied around my neck at the bottom of a river. The assistant manager whom I knew had been canned before he knew he was canned, he was a nice guy, too. Then there was Mrs. A, yes, Mrs. A, I really liked her — a lot. I never got to know her, though. I wish I had asked her to tell me about her life, but I never did. I kept all the conversations superficial, which I shall always regret. She was born in 1905, when roads were dirt, when travel was by horse, when newspapers were four pages long, when almost nobody had seen an airplane, when almost nobody had seen a movie, when few people had access to telephones, when horseless carriages were rare, when heating was by fireplace, when cooling did not exist, and now here she was in the late 1970’s, dealing with a sky crisscrossed with condensation trails, paved roads filled with traffic jams, the incessant sound of sirens, nuclear deterrence, international space programs, and punk rockers. She lived through a few social changes, I’d hazard, and, had I asked, she would have told me volumes of stories. I never asked. I’m certain she’s no longer with us. I am left only with memories.