Regal sees employees as fodder. - Associate Manager Regal Employee Review

Regal has zero respect for their theater-level staff, including management. As a staff-member (or manager), you are expected to work every weekend and every holiday. Nights can be as late as 2am for staff, and as late as 3am for managers. Staff starts at minimum wage and annual salary increases are capped at 2.5% (assuming the current federal minimum wage, that allows you a whopping $0.18 raise after your first year). Meanwhile, the CEO had a 33% pay raise last year. (More on the corporate/theater-level disconnect later). Regal is so dead-set on not paying for health insurance for their workers that, to get under ACA thresholds, they cut staff to shockingly-low hours to lower their average. As a member of management, I found my hours reduced to 5 hours per week for the entirety of May, 2014. Morale is unbelievably low amongst the floor staff. Several employees have left my location in order to find better employment at WAL MART, widely considered to be one of the very worst companies to work for. Sadly, they find Wal Mart to be a better experience than Regal. All those holidays that staff are required to work? Only 4 will garner you Overtime pay (Easter, 4th of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas). Other holidays that increase business enough to require all hands on deck are Memorial Day, New Years Day, Labor Day... essentially ANY holiday for which the banks are closed and/or kids are off school. These days do NOT get extra pay, though everyone at the corporate office has all of these days off, with pay. Corporate employees receive benefits (Vacation days, sick days, healthcare, 401k, life insurance, etc.). At the theater level, only a few managers receive any of this (My theater has over 40 employees... of these, 6 managers receive benefits--including the GM). Hours are maxed out at 28 per week to avoid going into ACA Health-coverage requirements, so making a living gets very difficult. Furthermore, the company is VERY focused on reducing payroll every single day. A certain amount of payroll hours are calculated for each theater to be able to use based on the attendance for that day. If attendance looks like it won't be enough to justify the current staffing levels, people get sent home early, losing income. FYI: The numbers used to calculate the allotted payroll usage have no basis in reality. My location's hours were extended by two hours, requiring an additional 8-10 hours of payroll usage per day--our base payroll allotment was not expanded to match. If we have less than 500 customers for the day, just staffing at an ABSOLUTE MINIMUM will put us more than 10 hours over our allotment. The reduced staffing levels mean that everyone has to work harder to accomplish their tasks, lines end up longer during busy times, customers get angry, the employees get upset that customers are yelling at them, the next customers are put off by the clearly upset employees... and it creates a vicious loop of dissatisfaction for all involved. If you're in High School, it's maybe tolerable. Otherwise, you're better off working ANYWHERE else. My Background: I worked for Regal from 1998 to 2007 (most of that in management) and left for a job in Real Estate Finance. When the economy collapsed, I went back to Regal in 2009. I have been back for 5 years as a manager. This review reflects my experience during that time.