One of the "bonus" jobs we had at the movie theater was to post the new movies and times on the big sign outside for all the traffic to see. I call this a bonus job because it was only included when new movies came out, and the person who did it got fifty dollars added to their pay for completeing the task. Now you would think that when your being paid minimum wage everyone one would be fighting for the opportunity to make fifty dollars with one task. But due to the dangers that the job intaled, only a very select few were willing to take up the task. I was one of the few.
So before I get into the incident that I want to talk about, let me first explain the proccess you had to go through to complete the job. First, you had to figure out what letters and numbers you would need to take up with you for posting the names and times. Than you had to go grab these foot by foot cards with the numbers and letters, and stuff them into a bag which was used to carry them. Once that was together, you needed to grab a ladder out of the closet and take it outsid to the big sign showing the films.
Now this sign was around ten to fifteen feet in the air, so you needed the ladder to get up. Unfortunitly, the ladder wasn't as long as the pole holding the sign up, so it had to be hooked on from the top. But because the ladder was not touching the ground, it tended to wobble when you went to make your way up. This made it difficult when carrying the bag of cards over your shoulder because they were heavy and you tended to sway back and forth when climbing up.
Now when you got to the top of the ladder, you had two metal walkways on either side of you because both sides of the sign needed to be changed. There was no step to get onto the platform and the ladder didn't go high enough that you could just walk on. I liked to swing myself on the bar over head and pull myself high enough to get onto the platform. Other people I've seen tended to just grab onto the floor grating of the platform and drag their body up until their face down on the surface. Once that is done, than comes the hard and scary part.
There were six rows on the sign that needed to be changed and each one went higher up. To get the cards into the sign they had to be slid into their position. To make this process easier, we tended to use a broom to slide the cards into their position. On many ocassions they tended to get stuck so you needed to put in a little more effort to get them into place. So after replacing the first two rows, you than had to move onto the last three, which could not be reached by the metal platform. Instead you had to climb onto two wooden planks which were higher up to reach the last rows.
Now bear in mind that through out this whole process their is nothing to stop you from falling to the ground. The planks were directly connected to the face of the sign so you only had about two feet of wiggle room. Believe me, it was scary to be up their when a strong wind was blowing. Their was a pipe over head that you could use to hold on, but it was high up and I could only reach it if standing on my toes. Most of the others didn't use it because it just made it harder to maintain your balace or they couldn't reach it. Once on the plank you than had to go through the process again of exchanging cards. The plank was about two thirds as wide as the sign so you needed the broom again to make sure they get to the end.
The worst thing is when a card got stuck in an area where the plank didn't reach. In those case you had to find a way to reach it with your hand to wiggle it free. In some of those cases I had to grab the pipe over head and shimmy my way to the end. I than had to hold onto the pipe with one arm and use the other arm to fix the stupid card and get it back into position. Because I'm so far to the end, I was beyond the leingth of the platform, so their was nothing but a fifteen foot drop waiting for me if I fell.
I remeber I once did this during a thunder storm and the others thought I was suicidal. After completing both sides of the sign you had to figure out a way to get back down the ladder and put everything away. I should also probobly mention that these title changes had to be done at night, because the public wasn't supposed to see it happening.
I apologize for this whole explination taking so long, but I felt it was important for you to understand for the story. You see, a friend of mine at the job wanted me to show him how to change the sign because he had never done it before. So I agreed to show him so he might be able to take over for me some time. It wasn't until I got him onto the first metal platform that I found out he had a terribal fear of heights. This story will be continued.
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