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Arclight Cinemas

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Arclight Cinemas Reviews

3.1

43% would recommend to a friend

(189 total reviews)

Christopher Forman

35% approve of CEO

23% positive business outlook

Arclight Cinemas has an employee rating of 3.1 out of 5 stars, based on 189 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Arclight Cinemas employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Arts, entertainment and recreation industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

189 reviews
1.0
5 Sept 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Like others have said, you get 4 free movie tickets for you and others every day aside from weekends. Some of the work that you do can be easy and some can be hard. Cleaning theaters is relatively simple, easy, and it seems like your shift goes by fast. Aside from that, there are no pros.

Cons

Turnover and a hiring freeze leads to scheduling being terrible. While we had 30-35 employees, the company wasn't hiring anybody, and large movies were coming out. Employees were working 30-40 hours per week at a part time job which made working there very stressful. I was called in on my days off twice due to lack of crew and support. Very poor work-life balance. Not enough pay for the work you do here. No advancement whatsoever unless you're already a manager like someone else said. One thing that irks me is that the company advertises a 401(k) plan, but the underlying problem to getting that plan is that you must be 21 years old to receive it. That prevents their younger crew (most of the crew) from receiving the 401(k) that ArcLight advertises. With my current employer, I was enrolled in a 401(k) automatically after 90 days of employment, and I'm 19. Overall, ArcLight is very cheap towards their employees and cuts costs whenever possible, no matter how it will affect the crew (giving one person the job of three).

2.0
23 June 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The usual movie theater guff, free tickets and discounted snacks, though still horrendously overpriced compared to a pharmacy or gas station. Most of my co-workers are good people and I enjoyed working with a lot of them, hoping to stay in-touch.

Cons

Arclight seems to really not care if you know what you're doing as long as you're not throwing away money. In my time there I was not trained once for any position. I would regularly clock out late due to poor scheduling that ends up having you forcing to finish a line at concessions instead of having someone else take over for you. Arclight has a strict policy to get you to clock out on time, yet they don't want to assign hours to employees to actually encourage this. I probably clocked out late due to this sort of idiocy 2-3 times a week. No one likes working past their scheduled time. On top of this, there will be many mornings where just a single concessionist is expected to open by themselves. This requires them to get there an hour and a half before the first movie to get everything done. This even happens on weekends when we are expecting tons of business. It would be more beneficial to have 2 openers and have them come in 45 minutes to an hour before opening as opposed to an hour and a half, but that would cost the company "hours". Hours is another thing. If you are looking to afford rent, save up money, or do anything besides get a tiny amount of spending cash, DO NOT work for arclight. As of the end of my employment, I did not receive a single week with more than 25 hours scheduled. If you ask for more, you will not receive it. But, rest assured, you can hope to be called in on an off-day due to the fact they can't schedule properly and end up sending people home that you needed. Speaking of scheduling, it is extremely inflexible to accommodate everyone's weekly routines. Upon being interviewed, you are told you MUST have weekends available. As-in, you're not even allowed to request a day of the weekend off most of the time. On top of this, they expect you to be open up to 4 AM in the morning just in-case you get the short end of the stick one weekend and end up with a bad shift. But despite their insane demands, they still manage to not give out enough hours to make employees happy and end up stressing their workers due to not enough workers being there most of the time. The place is constantly understaffed and the company knows it. There are regular complaints about how slow the concessions lines are (something that could be mitigated with proper scheduling and adequate employees!) Arclight has a policy that employees should be able to do anything a manager should do, including refunds, ticket swaps, and similar things. This would all be fine if not for the fact that you never receive training to actually do these things. On more than one occasion I would ask a lead employee a question about a coupon I received only to be met with a blank stare and response of "I don't know". Later that same day, we had a lead who was going to throw away a half-full bib of oil from the popper because "I don't want the morning manager to get mad at me". How on Earth are there lead positions that are this clueless? It's extremely basic stuff that even a wageslave like me knows the answer to, yet there are leads who don't know? Even the way the theater is laid-out is extremely inconvenient for its employees. Concessions workers rely on so many things THAT THEY CANNOT FIX THEMSELVES in-case something goes wrong. You get low or run out of hot dogs? You have to leave the concessions stand. You need to get extra candy? You need to leave the concessions stand. You don't have any more beer glasses? You need to leave the concessions stand. You run out of change? You need to leave the concessions stand. Soda bib runs dry? Pray that someone can change it because it's on the second floor. Too many concessions items make it so concessions workers are constantly leaving the floor, slowing down lines, making people mad, and making employees stressed.

2.0
23 Feb 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Free movies except on holidays, Fridays after 6, Saturdays, and Sundays before 6. You'll meet some interesting people. 50% certain things. Generally will give you opportunities to try new things (e.g., being a bartender without any prior experience; running the Booth) but this is heavily dependent on how you politic.

Cons

Possibly the worst management team I've ever experienced where favoritism is easily transparent, the hard-working and honest are sapped of their work ethic, and the lazy and immature are promoted and protected. Hypocritical standards are rampant which is further punctuated by a lack of accountability among the leadership team. Toxic work environment with extremely high turnover.

Viewing 1 - 3 of 189 Reviews

Glassdoor has 191 Arclight Cinemas reviews submitted anonymously by Arclight Cinemas employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Arclight Cinemas is right for you.