Summer Job Chronicles: Mental Crisis

So I was at work today. Who would have guessed considering the title! For some reason lots of people decided to go to the movies today, I think we had about 900 people in the first three showtimes, which is a lot for the particular theater I work at. Despite how busy it was, for the most part the day went as I would normally would expect. There were no blow-up dolls, Lord Voldemort didn't force anyone to act against their will, I didn't receive any phone numbers, nor was the internet down. Nothing out of the ordinary happened, I, along with my fellow ushers, waited to pounce when some asshole decided to throw his shit all over the floor.

This sums up my job

The other two ushers and I did manage to find something to entertain us just before the fourth showtime, around 7:00. We were just roaming the back lobby and decided to sit down at one of the tables because there really wasn't anything for us to do at that very moment. Our entertainment revolved around two younger children, I'm not exactly sure how old they were, but I would guess somewhere around the range of 9-12. I am probably completely wrong though, I have never been good at guessing ages. Anyways, this awkward child came over to the table where the three of us were sitting. Apparently he had been playing this claw machine game that contains candy that is probably the only machine that you always get a reward for using because you always get candy! This child shows us a few empty candy wrappers and tells us that's what he got out of the machine. Nice try, buddy, you definitely didn't eat the candy and then show us the empty wrappers. We're on to your cheating ass! Besides, we can't even do anything about the machine because they don't belong to the movie theater and we don't stock them. However, we now had an awkward kid to make fun of!

Are empty wrappers supposed to be in the machine?

I wonder what that kid's motive was anyways. I'm quite certain he ate the candy, so was he trying to get free candy? I don't know, but he could have just played again, the machine isn't very expensive. I think he was acting like a little shit and trying to get some free candy, little asshole. I'm sorry you're an awkward child, but that doesn't mean you get special privileges, now get the hell away from me! So eventually this awkward kid goes away, back to the candy claw machine thing, he must have been lying, probably a future business man. Soon after he left, our attention was drawn to this little chubby kid and either his friends or siblings, but that's not important. This little chubby kid parked his ass at the Time Crisis 2 game, situated right in front of us. At first I didn't give much thought to the situation. I just mindlessly sat there and watched the little porker insert money into the machine and start blasting away.

Our attentions were caught by this little chubby kid because of his behavior. The chubby boy thought he was good at the game, however, he clearly was not. Anyone who has played Time Crisis or a game like it can easily spot someone who sucks at it, and we were witnessing a shitty player right before our eyes. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Time Crisis or similar games of the genre, it is a shooting game in which the players use plastic guns to fire at enemies displayed on the screen. Time Crisis gives the player four weapons. The most basic is the pistol which fires single shots and has unlimited ammunition. The pistol takes a little bit of skill because you need to aim. The other three weapons at your disposal have limited ammo because they take very little skill, maybe even none, to put your enemies on their asses. These weapons are the machine gun, shotgun, and grenade launcher. I think it is self-explanatory why each of these three weapons requires very little skill. Now we look at the specimen in front of us. The little chubby kid uses the three no-skill weapons to kill all the basic enemies in the game and dies very shortly after he runs out of ammo on these guns, when he has to rely on the pistol, which he should probably be using to take out the shitty, pathetic, storm-trooper like enemies.

We sat and watched as the chubby kid continually died and rushed into his pocket to get four more quarters to continue. Upon each continue he was granted pity ammo for the no-skill guns, which he would use needlessly until he died when he was reduced to nothing but his pistol. We watched this pattern for a while with great amusement. While watching this pathetic performance, the little shit-bag that tried to get free candy out of us came over to Chubby and stood over the other gun for the Time Crisis game. Time Crisis allows for cooperative play, and upon Chubby dying yet again, Liar decided to ask chubby wanted to start over and play with him because it would be easier if the two of them were playing. Chubby's response was an instant classic as far as I'm concerned. He said "no, I'm going all the way." That's right, Chubby and his ten dollars in quarters were going all the way in Time Crisis 2. It would actually probably be harder to not go all the way if you were willing to pour that kind of money into the game. So we kicked back and watched the event of a lifetime, Chubby going all the way. I found it so amusing every time he rushed to get the quarters from his pocket after each death.

Upon further consideration of this event, I came to realize that Chubby is the exact type of person games like Time Crisis target. The best customers are those who suck at the game, but want to keep on playing despite their suckiness and unload money into the machine. At least everyone wins in this situation, the owners of the machine make money, but more importantly, Chubby gets to go all the way! Unfortunately we didn't get to see Chubby come to the end because we needed to do our job, but I'm not quite sure he was even able to make it to the end, I hope that doesn't bother him for the rest of his life.