My very first job was during high school at a movie theater. It was at the AMC 6 in a small town in California. I thought it would be a fun job because I would make money at one of my favorite places to be other than the mall.

This was in the 1990’s. They paid me, I think, six dollars an hour, but I’m not altogether sure. Maybe eight. It could’ve been minimum wage back then. I had to wear a tuxedo with a golden name tag pinned to my left breast. The tuxedo was tight and hot. My neck perspired from the uniform being so tight, as did my armpits. I felt as stiff as a mannequin in that damn thing. It only got worse from there.

My favorite thing to do was rip tickets. It took the aggression out of me, ripping those glossy papers as the customers came in. It was better than serving them popcorn and soda in the heat behind the counter. I’ll tell you that. Pretty much everything was hot in the movie theater.

The only place to keep cool was the theater itself, where they let me sit on my break, eat free popcorn, and watch part of a movie. They did that on purpose so the moviegoers would get cold and hungry. I worked during a summer when not very many good movies came out. I kept watching one where some idiot would put on a mask and turn into a superhero. It was a comedy that wasn’t very funny. The character kept making goofy faces to compensate for the lack of humor in the film.

But it beat having to usher and clean up after those slobs who sat in their seats. They couldn’t control their popcorn buckets or soda cups. The floors were always sticky, and the popcorn kernels would stick to my shoes. I had to clean up vomit one time. Someone had actually puked in the theater and left. Who does that?

And then the theater suffered from a rodent infestation. Rats. They would crawl through the theaters from one to the next. I would hear them squealing. Everyone knew about them. The girls who worked there wouldn’t dare go inside. A lot of them quit, so it was mostly us boys who worked there.

Cameras were everywhere. I was accused once of stealing from the register. One of the boys had ratted me out over something I’d never done. The supervisor called me into her little office to question me.

“We have you on camera,” she said.

“Doing what?” I asked.

“Stealing from the register. Don’t do it again.”

She showed me footage of me pulling money out and scratching my ass. She thought I was stuffing the money in my back pocket when I really wasn’t.

“Count it,” I said. “Was there money missing?”

“Not that I know of,” she said.

“Then why’re you accusing me?” I said. I was only seventeen.

She was kind of a dumb lady.

And I knew the boy who’d accused me—he was chubby with long hair. For some reason, he didn’t like me.

I didn’t work there for very much longer, maybe a week before I resigned. It made me miserable. And on top of that, the paranoia became too much.

Whenever I go to movie theaters, I think about how awful that job and those clothes were. No one should have to wear such uniforms when they’re being paid that little. They should be able to wear shorts and T-shirts. But what do I know?

I drove by it a few months ago, now in my forties. It’s a Dollar Tree. It used to be a dollar theater after I’d worked there, but they showed movies that were over half a year old—movies you probably would’ve seen already.

I went in there one time, even though the place gave me bad vibes, and watched a movie with an old friend. It wasn’t a family experience anymore. The homeless slept in the back row in the afternoon. And it appeared that the rodent problem was never fixed.