Ark Lodge, a for-profit business that holds "fundraisers" every other year, is in no position to be throwing stones here.

@2 Oh fuck off. Even if they get a new job, it may not start for a week or more. And their first paycheck may not be for 2+ weeks after they start. A change in jobs can cause all sorts of changes. Not everyone has a large emergency fund that they can tap into.

I interviewed for a job at Vulcan once, and one of the things the reviews consistently mentioned was how erratic and ill-planned the whole venture was. Closing a theatre for a major renovation on a whim sounds completely in line with such an outfit.

I guess my question is do employees consistently give two weeks notice when they leave for another job? I was burned by an employee who took vacation and never intended to return to work. (He tipped his hand by emptying his desk.) The 7th circle of hell for me is doing pagination work...

Employers generally do not give employees a two week notice. Not the smartest move to let potentially disgruntled people run the shop.

@1, huh? Ark Lodge has to throw fundraisers because they’re a struggling little local theater trying to stay afloat. Cinerama, meanwhile, is run by the estate of a massively wealthy person, which could have paid out severance or made other allowances for these people with zero problem. Now they look like blithe assholes.

The first unemployment check doesn't come in the second you get fired. You have to file for unemployment, then they have to verify with the previous employer, etc... You do get back pay if applicable but it doesn't do much if you live paycheck to paycheck and have already been evicted because you didn't have the income you expected because you were suddenly laid off with no notice. I was on unemployment at one point and it sucks. I didn't want to be unemployed, it wasn't fun just sitting around all day applying for jobs hoping that someone would call me back. I much rather would have been doing something and helping someone so that I earned the money.

Ark Lodge is amazing and a great asset to Columbia City. It's very well-loved and for a good reason. They're not swimming in cash, either: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2019/08/16/41098801/ark-lodge-needs-cash-and-a-hug-but-mostly-cash

Anyway, wish I knew about this earlier, now my Cinerama gift card is just going to sit there for months until they open again. I guess that's on me for not using it asap.

Hey, folks, I made a mistake when I tweeted out about a fundraiser, meant to say sales drive, but tweets are forever and I wish I had deleted it before it went viral. We rely on our friends and neighbors to buy Gift Cards or just get down to the Ark and watch a movie and buy some popcorn. I apologize to @1 that I am not in front of the theater with a sign saying, “Will show movies for food”. Come by and say hi!

14, news flash: well-paying, benefits-flush employment is perfectly compatible with weed and skanks. You just have to make sure you get your ass to work every day regardless of what you did the night before. (Learned this years ago from the son of a dairyman who was allowed to run amok as long as he was in the barn at 4 every morning without fail. Good advice, kids!) Good luck to the newly-liberated Cinerama staff.

If the justification for blindsiding these people with the layoff announcements was the fear that they'd trash the place during the last couple of weeks, why not either 1) make the references they got from Vulcan contingent on the condition of the building on the last day, or 2) pay them at three-fourths their current wages during the reno and then promise they'd get their jobs back when the reno was done-a process that most likely won't take all that long? The Allen estate could easily have afforded to be decent to these people-it's ridiculous to act as if the only option was to leave these folks with nothing and do so with no advance warning, and it's not as if Vulcan would have gone bankrupt if it had been humane about this. The Allen estate simply never HAS to do cost-cutting again, or ever just discard people in this way.

@14: Out of interest, why DO you feel entitled to be so dismissive, judgmental and nasty about so many of your fellow human beings? Unless you've personally walked on water or something, who the hell are you to act like you're the Voice of Inherent Superiority? What you post isn't even high-quality trolling-it's just toxicity for toxicity's sake. Unless you've cured cancer in your spare time, nobody deserves this from you. At best, you're a third-rate Eric Trump impersonator.

The full skinny on the story from a former popcorn jockey:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/f20lit/cinerama_layoffs_the_untold_story/