Cinemark's 'Bring Your Own Popcorn Bucket' Day Is A Fun Promotion For Moviegoers But A NIGHTMARE For Theater Employees

Apparently this past Sunday was 'National Popcorn Day' (whatever that means), and to celebrate, Cinemark ran a "Bring Your Own Popcorn Bucket" promotion. You bring in a container of any shape/size and they would fill it with popcorn for five bucks.

It's obviously a hell of a deal, especially nowadays when the markup on concessions is enough to make your dad say, "What'd I break a window?!" as soon as he sees the total on a combo, and stuff like this always inspires some funny social media posts. I remember 7-11 doing the same for Slurpees a few years back, and someone topped their prosthetic leg off - and this time around we got pictures of popcorn filling five gallon buckets, Call of Duty care packages, full cabinets, gigantic pots, basketballs cut in half, baby carriages, even URNS....

It's a smart promotion and I totally get why they would do it. Will anybody finish their ten pounds of popcorn before it goes stale? No, of course not (it's probably already stale) - but that doesn't matter. Everyone just wants a funny photo and story, and that's okay.

You know who this promotion was definitely a NIGHTMARE for, though?! Movie theater employees; particularly the concessions workers....

Everyone has their big ass container, one zanier than the next, expecting them to be filled to the brim - because that's what the promotion said - but you can only make so much popcorn at once! Those poor teenage sons of bitches were probably making batch after batch of popcorn only for the lines to grow larger and larger while the customers get more and more frustrated.

Trust me, as a veteran of the game who worked at an AMC Theaters (in Ridgefield Park, NJ) through the release of 'Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice'….

(Seen here with a huge smile on my face!)

….there are few things in life scarier than getting overwhelmed with an ever-growing line of upset moviegoers. It's like one of those stressful scenes out of 'The Bear' where the receipts just don't stop printing and you feel like you're drowning. Whether it's the popcorn machine breaking, taking too long, someone ordering a bunch of food in the middle of a rush, or what - almost nobody has any empathy with the situation and they just want to get into their movie showing ASAP, so everyone's extra rude and it's just chaos. I can't imagine how bad it must've got with the "bring a bin and we've fill it" gimmick. 

My heart goes out to all concessions workers affected - thank you for your service.