C2 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 , 2020
Adapted from an
online discussion.Dear Carolyn:
My girlfriend and
I had a baby
about seven
months ago. My
girlfriend was a
stay-at-home
mom a nd I work long hours, so I
know I wasn’t much help, but I
did notice she was struggling
with motherhood — unhappy,
distracted, seemed irritated
when I paid attention to the
baby. She even seemed irritated
when I said how smart or
beautiful our daughter is. I
thought she had postpartum
depression and asked her
several times whether she
needed to talk to her doctor or
whether she needed some time
for herself. Every time I brought
it up, she’d get angry and say
she just needed time with me to
herself.
So I arranged for some date
nights, and she perked up while
we were out but went back to
being angry and disgusted whenwe got home and I was so
excited to see our daughter.
Last week my girlfriend told
me this was all a huge mistake,
she’s not cut out to be a mom,
and then she moved out. Since
then I’ve been running around
finding a nanny, dealing with
my job and talking to lawyers.
My plan was to let my girlfriend
terminate her parental rights
and start her life over like she
wants to. I think our daughter
will be better off without a
reluctant, angry mom in her life.
My sister is telling me I’m
making a huge mistake, that I
need to slow my roll and get my
girlfriend some help, since the
root of her behavior is so
obviously postpartum
depression.
Even if she’s right, what more
can I do? I feel like letting my
girlfriend drift in and out of our
daughter’s life would be
disastrous, and I can’t make her
get help if she refuses. Am I
wrong to just want her gone and
this whole mess over with?
— AnonymousAnonymous: T hat’s terrible, I’m
sorry.
If there’s a way to “slow my
roll,” then please do. I agree
with your sister that postpartum
would explain your girlfriend’s
emotional state.
I also agree with you, though,
that you can’t make anyone get
help who doesn’t want it.
The path you’re looking for is
the one that’s best for your
daughter. A mom who drifts in
and out of her life, that’s a no,
you’re right; a mom who’s angry
and resentful, also a no. Those
are easy calls. But a mom who
realizes she was sick, gets
treatment, gets well and wants
to share in the upbringing of her
child? That’s someone you can’t
dismiss as a “mess” to get “over
with.” That’s a human whose
frailties need to be understood
and forgiven, as you would hope
your own frailties to be. And
that’s a mom for your child,
even if you’re no longer a
couple.
So that would be the point of
slowing down, to give your
girlfriend some time to realizeshe needs help and some room
to get it.
You are rallying for your
daughter under heartbreaking
circumstances, an act of
everyday heroism. I am not
questioning that.
I am saying only not to rushto make anything permanent
that doesn’t need to be.
Consulting with a therapist, solo
— since presumably your
girlfriend won’t come — would
bring some balance to the
lawyers on your professional
team.Write to Carolyn Hax at
[email protected]. Get her
column delivered to your inbox each
morning at wapo.st/haxpost. Join the discussion live at noon
Fr idays at live.washingtonpost.comFather faces uncertain next steps after his child’s mother leaves the picture
Carolyn
HaxNICK GALIFIANAKIS FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTis, to combat piracy and have
integrated finances, they don’t
want to release something in
Montana and not release it else-
where,” Rubin said. “But with the
current situation, if they want to
keep in business and keep both
the theaters happy and keep
making the money they want to
make, they’ll have to come up
with that decision.”
On the flip side, new releases
also pose a dilemma to theaters
that haven’t yet opened — espe-
cially in cities like Boston, where
an influx of college students
returning for the fall semester
could lead to a surge in coronavi-
rus cases. Katherine Tallman,
executive director of the inde-
pendent Coolidge Corner Thea-
tre in neighboring Brookline,
Mass., spent a weekend racking
her brain over how to handle
“Tenet.”
The Coolidge has done some
private auditorium rentals, abid-
ing by the state guideline of
limiting indoor gatherings to 25
people or fewer. But a new re-
lease would require a grander
plan. After weighing the costs of
reopening against the revenue
generated from a downsized cus-
tomer base, Tallman shut it all
down.
“We could decide to go
through with this and then have
the guidelines come in and have
us close again — which would be
fine, but why go through with
that?” she said. “Why don’t we
just stop and say we’re not going
to open until it seems safe to
open? And life got a lot easier
after that.”
Thanks to donations and a
loan from the federal govern-
ment’s Paycheck Protection Pro-
gram — designed to help small
businesses continue paying
workers — the Coolidge can af-
ford to remain closed. But inde-
pendent theaters without a safety
net face greater pressure to re-
open, sometimes to the concern
of employees.
Jake Weisman, 33, recently left
his job as an assistant general
manager at an independent thea-
ter in Chicago, where he worked
for six years. He said he under-
stands why the owner chose to
reopen, but he “just couldn’t roll
with it.” Theaters make the bulk
of their money off concessions, a
relatively risky purchase now
that eating requires guests to
take their masks off indoors. It
might be all right for now, with
customers slow to return and
theaters rather empty. But, Weis-
man wondered, “What happens
when ‘Wonder Woman’ comes
out and everyone has decided it’s
safe, and they actually start sell-
ing out shows?”
Weisman left the theater
alongside his boss, 34-year-old
general manager Strohschein,
who worked there for eight years.
Customer service jobs require a
stomach for unpleasant tasks,
she said, recalling an incident
many years ago that involved
human feces. She has seen and
dealt with a lot in her time.
But a virus of this magnitude is
unprecedented.
“Nothing has really changed
since March except that there are
some safety procedures that peo-
ple keep saying are going to keep
people safe, but they don’t know
that for certain,” Strohschein
said. “And so they’re lying.
They’re lying because it’s a des-
perate situation for a lot of these
people. They’re losing a lot of
money right now, all these thea-
ters being closed.... But they
really are putting money above
people’s lives.”
[email protected]go to see movies sick” and leave
their used napkins and tissues in
the drink holders for employees
to pick up.
“When you’re in a job where
you don’t really have health in-
surance or any kind of net to fall
back on, if you get sick and you’re
getting in the hospital for, like,
who knows how long with the
coronavirus,” Isabella said, “[it]
could get you fired from your job.
It’s definitely a worry, going back
in that environment.”I
n some parts of the country,
theaters reopened months
ago. Noah Rubin, the 25-year-
old general manager of a Golden
Ticket Cinemas location in Butte,
Mont., said his small venue
showed older movies for a bit
over the summer and, when it
didn’t, sold popcorn curbside.
Butte hasn’t been hit as badly as
the larger cities where his
friends’ theaters have remained
closed, he said. “At least here, no
one was worried.”
Rubin’s theater worked with
the local health department to
figure out how to accommodate
guests for two or more hours at a
time, he added. One of his con-
cerns now is whether there will
actually be new releases to safely
screen for guests, given that stu-
dios have gone back-and-forth on
the matter.
“Part of the issue of Hollywoodtion and will now pay concierges
at reopened Texas locations $2.13
an hour before tips. Several em-
ployees told The Washington
Post that the company rushed
theater reopenings and, in some
cases, didn’t notify staffers of a
reopening date until after post-
ing about it publicly on social
media.
An Alamo Drafthouse spokes-
person said that this was an
oversight but that the company
had otherwise maintained steadycommunication with current and
furloughed employees through-
out closures. The representative
described the tipped concierge
position’s base salary as a service-
industry standard.
The least companies could do
is provide hazard pay, according
to Isabella, a 23-year-old em-
ployee of a midsize theater in
Memphis who spoke on the con-
dition of partial anonymity out of
fear of losing her job. She con-
tracted the flu last year, presum-
ably from “all of the people thattion Cinema in Grand Rapids,
Mich., has heard stories about
theaters that haven’t enforced
safety measures as promised and,
as a manager, finds it dishearten-
ing. But he said it also seems
somewhat inevitable when you
consider that a lot of the entry-
level jobs are filled by high school
students or recent graduates.
“Movie theaters aren’t exactly
an essential business,” Marek
continued. “Obviously I’m sure
this is hurting them financially,and I understand wanting to
reopen, but I’m just worried
because the theater business is
for the most part a minimum-
wage job, and that doesn’t lend
itself to giving a bunch of clean-
ing guidelines and having to do
all this extra stuff so we can all
stay safe and so everyone can stay
safe.”
Low pay is a point of conten-
tion at workplaces including the
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema chain,
which has previously faced accu-
sations of improper compensa-the topic of covid-19 is divisive.
Some of the managers they know,
who are supposed to help enforce
rules such as the mask policy,
believe the pandemic is a hoax.
In response to these concerns,
Regal spokesman Richard Grover
said the company has committed
to NATO’s CinemaSafe program
and developed “an updated oper-
ations manual detailing all of our
new health and safety procedures
as well as a mandatory online
training course” for employees. In
a separate statement, AMC
spokesman Ryan Noonan said
that theaters, which are staffed
based on projected attendance,
are “being staffed at a higher-
than-normal rate.”
Even for those with coopera-
tive colleagues, some worries still
plague service workers of all
kinds. In lieu of the usual horror
flicks, this summer brought
about viral videos of “Karens”
throwing fits over mask policies
everywhere from Trader Joe’s to a
local bagel shop. How long will
an usher have to interact with a
stubborn customer before get-
ting the okay to show them out?
How difficult will it be to enforce
mask-wearing in a dark theater,
when it’s already hard enough to
get people to silence their cell-
phones?
Lower-level workers also tend
to skew young. Sean Marek, a
21-year-old employee of Celebra-Not everyone has a choice.
Even if the general public doesn’t
return to a pre-pandemic rate of
moviegoing, for as long as venues
are open, their staffs must report
to work. The Washington Post
spoke with more than a dozen
movie theater employees about
the concerns they have as cine-
mas reopen across the country.
Most said they understand the
economic pressures of the situa-
tion — especially those fur-
loughed — but some question
whether it’s worth gambling
e veryone’s well-being. Many
doubt the feasibility of safety
measures.
“I don’t see how anyone sees
this as realistic,” said Hilary
Strohschein, who has worked in
the theater business for 17 years.
“It’s dangerous for the customer,
it’s dangerous for the employee.
All these people making the deci-
sions to open theaters are not the
ones who are going to have to
work there.”I
n June, chief executive Adam
Aron told Variety that AMC
Theatres, the largest movie
theater chain in the United
States, would not mandate masks
when the time came for theaters
to reopen because it “ did not
want to be drawn into a political
controversy.” Naturally, the state-
ment proved controversial. The
company reversed course the
next day after backlash from the
public and criticism from com-
petitors.
Companies have since become
more cautious in public, devoting
Web pages to guidelines such as
limiting seating to below 50 per-
cent of capacity, suspending
drink and popcorn refills, man-
dating masks and, in some cases,
installing special filters in their
HVAC systems.
The National Association of
Theatre Owners (NATO) last
month distributed an eight-page
safety document prepared with
guidance from an epidemiolo-
gist, the World Health Organiza-
tion, the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention and the
Occupational Safety and Health
Administration, according to In-
dieWire. (IndieWire also noted
that NATO doesn’t have the abili-
ty to enforce the guidelines.)
But employees of chains across
the country expressed doubts
about whether these new work-
place standards would be met
everywhere. Some were given
only a few days to prepare to
return to work, where they would
have to contend with twice as
many responsibilities and a frac-
tion of the staff. Employees of
AMC and Regal Cinemas pointed
to understaffing as a major con-
cern.
A team leader at a Regal thea-
ter in Florida, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity out of
fear of being fired, said that on
any given shift, they are joined by
only a few other employees. One
or two ushers are tasked with
making sure guests wear masks,
ensuring that the bathrooms are
clean, wiping down game ma-
chines in the arcade, sanitizing
handles, cleaning theaters be-
tween showings and emptying
the trash. Another Regal em-
ployee, who for the same reason
spoke on the condition of ano-
nymity, said that although work-
ers are adequately protected
from customers and vice versa,
there aren’t enough social dis-
tancing measures in place to
protect employees from one an-
other.
The team leader added thatTHEATERS FROM C1Movie theater employees raise doubts about reopenings
ALEX SCOTT/BLOOMBERG NEWSETHAN MILLER/GETTY IMAGES
Movie theaters are reopening with new distancing and sanitizing protocols in place, “procedures that people keep saying are going to keep
people safe, but they don’t know that for certain,” says Hilary Strohschein, who has worked in the theater business for 17 years.KEITH SRAKOCIC/ASSOCIATED PRESS“What happens when ‘Wonder Woman’ comes out
and everyone has decided it’s safe, and they
actually start selling out shows?”
Jake Weisman, who l eft his assistant general manager job a t a Chicago theater