Diary of a Popcorn SellerA week selling popcorn in a multiplex cinema, by Lucy Fitzgerald. Illustration by Liam Cobb.
Friday, Open shift9.10am I switch on the heated metal popcorn hoppers and retrieve 3ft-tall bags of freshly popped kernels from the back room. Pouring them out I hit the sweet spot, when the bag is positioned just so, and the cascade is an uninterrupted flood of gold. A full bed of toasty fluff fills out before me. I take a moment to luxuriate in the new warmth and then continue with my other opening duties. 10.05am It’s a quiet intake for the day’s first film, Disney’s Snow White. I serve a mother and child: a kid’s box for the wee one (a Robinson’s Fruit Shoot, a Dairy Milk chocolate bar, and a small portion of popcorn – as witness to the popcorn’s full life cycle, I know I’ll see half of it on the auditorium floor later) and one large combo for mum (a mixed popcorn and Pepsi). A firm column-like paper bag outfits the popcorn, and the soda dispenser tower pours without resistance. Placing the goods on the counter is a ceremony that always pleases me. Amusingly, the dutiful motion reminds me of when I altar-served at church as a kid, carrying the cruets of water and wine over to the priest to be blessed for holy communion (imbue the divine in capitalist structures wherever you can, I say). It’s a silly comparison, or maybe not – I take film very seriously, and genuinely believe in dignifying every stage of the experience. Netflix will not anoint your food! 12pm A passive-aggressive customer, with a mixed-signals smile and impatient tapping of the counter, curtly asks for M&M’s on top of their popcorn. This is a popular request, but I start to think of the weirder, disparate flavours some people force together. The funny contours of individual taste. In the cinema, outré pleasure compositions can be obscured in the darkness, though I’ve borne witness to the horror of hot cheese (intended for nachos) lathered on sweet popcorn. Sympathetically, I think maybe it was the person’s Proustian madeleine. Or maybe they were just a pervert. “Placing the goods on the counter is a ceremony that always pleases me…the dutiful motion reminds me of when I altar-served at church as a kid, carrying the cruets of water and wine over to the priest.” 1pm I collect more fresh popcorn sleeves from the popping room where two industrial-sized drums pop and flavour the corn (salt, sweet, and salted caramel); we anticipate a particularly busy afternoon of walk-ins. A booming cohort of Americans brush against the concession stand, inquiring about butter popcorn (a native comfort, I infer) – alas, we don’t stock it. Ironically, I consider the essentially American make-up of the multiplex I’m working in. With a distinct Americana aesthetic come-on, the image of popcorn and cola purchased at the movies enduring and undeniable retro charm. Like a burger and shake at a diner or a hot dog in a Costco cafeteria, it’s a pre-netizen coming-of-age adventure, the delight of a Bueller-esque flaneur. 1.25pm For the next forty minutes, the influx of customers sees me shuttling between the reserve hopper on the back wall and the till, scooping and counting change in a continuous circle. When the shift reaches this bustling high, I feel weightless in my sustained movement. I tell myself I’m working at the pace of a Formula 1 pit crew member, swiftly equipping patrons before releasing them for the rest of their big movie race. For the mixed-sweet-and-salt orders, I maintain the gaze of the customer as I make a show of shaking the contents thoroughly. Consider your sweet and salt well integrated, sir. (Some get pedantic about the ratio, you see.) 2.15pm I attend to the chemtrails of our flight: the swathes of fallen popcorn that now need to be swept. This calls for the two-prong approach of Big Brush, Little Brush. I trace the pattern of scatter, the mounds that have gathered under the stand’s low panelling and the loose sinuous lines – though the dotted pattern of the floor itself frustratingly makes the crumbs imperceptible. It takes a few laps. Between the heat-trapping cunning of my all-black nylon uniform and the heat of having four separate popcorn hoppers open, I am suitably roasting. My sweat seems to compound in the moment I finally stand still. “I tell myself I’m working at the pace of a Formula 1 pit crew member, swiftly equipping patrons before releasing them for the rest of their big movie race.” 4.45pm One woman in the queue’s heavy sigh signals That Friday Feeling relief, and when I eventually serve her, I recognise her eagerness for a treat, to christen this night of deserved escapism. From her tired state and sotto voce conversation with her partner, which references ‘assembly’, I surmise she is a schoolteacher. She warmly receives a regular-sized salted caramel popcorn and a rosé wine with a renewed spirit. I am always stirred when I see the moment someone decides to have a good time, whether it’s basic respite or excessive indulgence; their whole disposition shifting is a contagious joy that transfers across the counter. Saturday, Mid-shift12.30pm Two young people inquire about a Minecraft character popcorn bucket. Though they are perhaps not young enough to be asking after this specific piece of kiddy movie merch, their fan enthusiasm is actually disarmingly sweet. I instantly feel bad for judging them. We are always told we need to upsell where we can, and the most natural way is, after telling a customer the standard food options, tacking on a note about how the more expensive size is actually better value. But these people came in ready to buy the dearest thing immediately, without a word from me. I should be thankful for their keen patronage – the concession stand is where we make our real money these days, since streaming services have localised the general practice of movie watching to the living room (sadly, cinema theatre closures abound). God bless every Marvel completist that has helped sustain the popcorn bucket boom. 2pm The next family group’s order makes the average Super Bowl spread look modest: slushies, sodas, nachos, hot dogs, chocolate share bags, Pick ’n’ Mix, and popcorn. I fetch their mukbang provisions with a smile. 3.30pm A couple approaches, both parties bashful. Glorious. It’s time for what I call ‘Lover’s Window’, a transaction that doubles as an opportunity to discreetly ascertain the status of the relationship in front of me. First date or staid routine precipitating the seven-year itch? It can be determined from the couple’s dynamic in decision making (food selection can invite volatility – sometimes I’m the reluctant mediator between rowing parties). Going off the open body language and chat, here we have a sweet, tactile pair, dropping hands only to inspect the menu more closely. I’m warmed by their easy, genial consensus: a large popcorn to share – the real lovers’ choice! I relish seeing love in action; out loud, out and about, and reasserted in the sharing of food. It’s a revitalising force that reminds you of the good the world still makes room for; an aperture of softness in your hardened workday (for every encounter with a verbally abusive customer or a stony, shoving commuter, there are partners in quiet embrace and giddy conversation). Every customer interaction is a vignette of personhood: psychological insight moored by food. Sunday, Close shift4.00pm I am the usher manning the door tonight, checking tickets and cleaning screens between showings. A group of teenagers approach; they’re walking and talking animatedly, but don’t halt their conversation or make eye contact as they brandish their e-tickets to be scanned. As one particularly aloof kid scrambles for their phone, they lose balance, jolt forward, and all of their popcorn flies in a projectile spasm. The kernels adorn the corridor carpet like settled confetti and I move to sweep it up, but they seem too embarrassed to retread to concessions for a replacement, and hurriedly shuffle ahead. I don’t take pleasure in their instant karmic humbling. Working in the cinema, you see a lot of teenagers figuring out how to act in real time and you feel sharp pangs over their every move of uncertainty. Generally, they’re not uncooperative so much as just unsure. Working out how to be in the world for the first time is a long, hostile process. God bless them. “As one particularly aloof kid scrambles for their phone, they lose balance, jolt forward, and all of their popcorn flies in a projectile spasm.” 8.30pm It’s my break time and thus my chance to claim a staff perk: a free cola and salted popcorn (with the savoury component vaguely gesturing at nutrition, I mix in chocolate buttons to appease my unceasing sweet tooth). I think the basicness of this quasi-meal – it’s too artificial and not filling enough to constitute a real dinner, yet its formidable size tricks you with a placebo effect – is its appeal. I revel in forgoing more mature or artisanal tastes and surrendering to the puerile desire for a sugar high. That viral video of David Lynch exhorting the ecstasy derived from ‘two cookies and a coke’, with his singular nasal timbre, rings in my mind. An unrefined, glorified playground snack on a weekend can be something of a narcotic. 9.45pm I jump over to the concessions stand to help with the clean. As closing duties go, cleaning the popcorn hoppers is the most time-consuming task. I turn off the heat, remove the small pile of popcorn which remains – with a scoop I romanticise as an archaeologist’s trowel – bagging and dating it for ordered stock rotation. Before sanitising, I brush out the surfeit salt and kernel shrapnel (remnant crispy shells and crumbs) from the surface of the inner two panels and bottom catch tray. I am at war with the corners that will not cede their voluminous build-up: there is only me and this intersection of metal wall and salt. With half my body contorted to brush the hopper’s angular dimensions, I giggle to myself at the pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey view of my behind being exhibited for the colleagues that move behind me, and the surreal idea of being permanently trapped in an industrial popcorn bin. There are worse ways to go. Credits
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