Hypothetical Full Time Haunt Job

[Jim Warfield]

I had ONE boss in my life who really knew how to handle employees well enough to get the most happy production from them.
He knew how to compliment, praise, teach, and criticise, reward and threaten, what ever a particulair person needed to make them positively respond and perform well.
My Dad had a football coach who also had this same people handling talent. That coach had world-beater teams from this small school, those "kids" graduated in 1940-41-42, they had a world to go BEAT and they did!
Thank You.
I used to daydream that in the "City" there must be very good foremen, bosses that knew how to treat their people to allow them to achieve the utmost...but no, I guess not, from what I have heard in my lifetime, it's the same where ever you are , stupidity, incompetance, head in-the-sand leadership moreso than not, unfortunately.
Just as a really good employee should be fully appreciated by the boss, same should go the other way in appreciation , a really good boss should be valued by the employee, since they are so rare.
Confidence, intelligence and paying attention to others all have to happen, and this requires time and mental effort , not things always included with the skull.

[UnDeRTaKer313]

I think the the technical director could be my dream job, cause i fit everything on the list, and 900 bucks a week would be cool, cause i would have the coolest job ever

[Old Tree Studios]

Jim, that's the most "serious" post I think I've read from you so far. lol. And what does that say about us? Mediocre minds think similarly.

Undertaker... money aside, enthusiasm like yours is what we were counting on by polling this forum. You're definitely on our hypothectical shortlist.

[Jim Warfield]

..and would the heading at the top of the page of your hypo-pathetical list be saying "Organ Donors"?
"Piano Donors?"
Suiziphone?
"and my organ has free run of the house, THERE IT IS NOW! Stomp! Stomp!
"e-e-e-e-e-e! Blub, blub!"

[Old Tree Studios]

Lol. Now THERE'S the Jim back we all know and love.

[Greg Chrise]

Here's the deal.

Having something to do with a haunted attraction is more of the mind set of someone that desires self employment. Even if said self employment only yeilds $200 a week, it is the freedom to know you aren't having to be somewhere with the keys making sure everyone showed up on time at 7 AM. It is the freedom that if you get tired you take a break rather than the alloted 15 minute break and 30 minute lunch as defined by the time clock.

Conversly it is on the other end of the scale (self employment) if the occasional project profits $10,000, it it your money to do as you please. As an employee you are supposedly able to live a certain lifestyle on a fixed regular income and this only leads to those who have accepted such positions to bitch about everything and spend years saying how they aren't doing this forever.

Being around people who aren't living the dream just plain sucks. The customers at such an uninspired haunted house will think so too. In comparison you can get more out of people who are simply volunteering to get things done for the community than someone making a fixed income spending all of their time calculating how much they need to pay this week and wether bringing a lunch every day will somehow alter their financial place in the universe.

Generally the veil of permanent employment has been lifted to the general public with every day layoffs reported somewhere in the country at any given time. Employees bounce from job to job every two years and do not generally hang out waiting for the end of that seasonal lay off to return to work unless they are sitting on Momma's couch and only needed to go as far as the refrigerator for 3 months.

Also with a haunted house, if they aren't adults, there will be continous family and peer pressure to not dress like a clown and think about getting that education or better career. You can't bounce out of a little door your whole life they will say.

Additionally this level of weekly payroll is what, after tax and insurance matching is close to $6,000 per week. Or even with time off $300,000 per year. So, this kind of implies that right out of the box your event is going to be doing 1.2 million dollars to survive and what is not, or is underestimated on the list is the behind the scenes payroll and expenses for continued promotion. A number of people also maintaining what level of such activity will tear up. So what's next, we pay you good money, if you scare the shiit out of someone, you clean it up!

In the haunting world this amount of income would be 4 or 5 seperate scream parks (each with 4 to 6 events) in a highly populated area, not one magnificent venue in one location. There is some kind of underlying formula even in a tourist attraction of a 20 or 30 year high risk financial pay out. Public investment might sponsor this 1.2 million in operating cost to the tune of 5 years. At that point the 6 million dollar total needs to converge and begin going into the black or everyone pulls the plug and demands a pay out, liquidation and sale of property.

The other way to operate a business is not buying a McDonald's franchise and attempting to pay only slightly more than minimum wage and keep the common man down or have each position require restaffing every week as the prospective employee just got enough to buy a play station 3 and this will require returning to Momma'a couch to enjoy.

A payroll list takes away all vested intrest by the actors or managers to make sure the income exceeds expectations. For example an actor with 10 years experience will bust their azz and develop a $7,000 signature character costume to promote your event for a small percentage of the resultant ticket sales. Some other weirdo might drive a hearse around with your haunts name on it for a percentage rather than so much per week, even if that figure is good. Yet another weirdo might develop all of the haunt physical diplay and scenes knowing it is an entrepenurial investment that with a percentage of ticket sales might pay off big time in a few years. Each as the focus of each task is devoted to bringing in and satisfying the patrons who buy the tickets.

This concept reduces the risk to only needing to satisfy maybe 400,000 per year rather than 1.2 million. A more realistic figure obtainable only with an ensemble willing to go in good times as well as bad. The employee mind set has been trained by our founding fathers, Andrew Carnegi, Henry Ford and the Rockefellers that if you don't get a pay check on time, move to the next available opportunity immediately.

Then you have other problems. Scale for real actors is like $400 a day wether they work half an hour or not. You call them actors don't you? Then they must be and could unionize toward $2,000 a week and be insisting on back pay. Hence even all year long events are not called or expected to be performing the duty of an actor in a production company. This is why you see so many stars out of work on every talk show. It is a $400 some dollar paycheck for being interviewed for 5 minutes.

Yet, if everyone involved is of free will and an enthusiast, these are their choice, not something demanded on them. Typically $600 or $900 a week is going to look real good to someone that isn't making that yet but, can they perform the duties that insure this amount of cash flow continues? Probably not, they are only inspred to show up and collect that good check.

The rules of society limit the take of each individual to also ever exceed these amounts by being in on the profit. As time goes on they are inspired to only continue being an under achiever or become your competitor. This doesn't happen with an employee owned (even small percentage) or multiple partner event.

If you will notice, for the most part big non seasonal events are next to or an annex of a casino, a similar museum attraction or at an amusement park. The other entity pulls up the slack for the occasional increase in profit. Like in real business if you just read the signs. Air conditioning and Taxadermy. Smoothies and video rental. Tax service and accounting. Haunted house and costume supply.
Haunted attraction prop maker and attraction. Locksmith and Haunted house owner. It is sad but reality.

Partnering up with a bigger entity makes you a limited participant as well.

[Jim Warfield]

Negative? Or the REAL World?

Imagine getting four years of a very expensive college experience under your belt, then only less than .03% of the graduates can ever find anything like gainfull employment in that field.
And what field of advanced study requiring talent and an "eye" for things might I be referring too?
ART.

Not everybody has the basic desire or talent, trained or natural to make it happen for them , but even with that degree it still doesn't happen for the huge majority.
Most people with art degrees are only part-timers at best, just like so many people in the haunted house field.
Reality.
Reality with dollar signs attached.
We all wake up every day with a hungry stomach (ours!)
How we going to feed it? Work? Lie? Cheat? Steal ? Kill a Bunny?
Grow 2 foot long infectious bloodworms that sell for $20.oo each?
(Might not be quite called "Art"?)
To even get half a chance at making one's dream come true you really have to focus on it and put in alot more than just a few odd hours each week, with Sundays off and holidays enjoyed Tiddley-Winking....unless you patent a new design of tiddley wink that everyone just HAS to have!

[Old Tree Studios]

Yes, Greg, your comments bring us full circle back to the nature of the original post on the thread.

The question regarding this hypothetical posting for this hypothetical attraction is not about the mechanics of the business model. That's for much smarter people than I to wrestle over. The true nature of the question speaks to passion for the subject matter. And I think that's partly what you were saying in your post.

Put another way. I've worked for quite a while with an animal organization sheparding its growth into what we think is a successful non-profit model. In that line of work, it's all about passion for the subject matter. We've had all types come through, volunteers and paid staffers, some unfortuntely lackluster as you described. In this line of work, however, it's never about the dollar. There is little left over at the end of the day for humans. But there are certain people who are drawn to it by their attraction to the subject. And it is true, within that subset, most quickly burn out when the novelty begins to unravel and they realize there is true honest to goodness work involved. Gasp.

But then, every so often... and this happens very very rarely.... you get the person who harbors the true passion and is not only willing, but dedicated to the point of being a zealot. These are people that daily feel like they've walked into a dream and simply can't imagine working anywhere else. (I fell somewhere squarly in the middle of those groups... dedicated, but not quite becoming a crazy person). Even under extraordinarily adverse human relation situations (see earlier posting) these people stick it out simply for the burning desire and pull to be a part of this work.

But for me, I needed to make a change. So... without getting too far off message... through existing connections and some unexpected unique circumstances, an opportunity has presented itself and caused me to reassemble my old merry band of multiply disciplined cohorts (and freshly recruited new ones) enabling us to explore this new direction. And so here we go. '08 is a transition year. '09 we come out swinging.

Which extremely long windedly brings me to summarize and rephrase the spirt of the original post:

Gregs' comments are a fairly accurate if not somewhat pessimistic take on the state of labor. But my work for The Mouse and other organizations has shown me first hand that there are also people out there who are hungry to work in a field they love, and hungry to work for a company that treats them well and values their input.

And I now know with a degree of certainty, there are some of those people living within these forums.

So I say to those frustrated creative types working at the shoe counter at Walmart... I say to the 25 year old who still lives with his parents, but was one of the first to re-wire and unlock his iphone and hates his job at Taco Bell... I say to you people take heart. Because when the time is right... we will find you.

Dream. Believe. Dare. Do. It ain't just a silly phrase, it's a lifestyle.

Mike

[Greg Chrise]

The big trick

There are dreams and dares and then there are being realistic.

In the world of the Mouse there was never a hint of the behind the scenes funding and sweat required to keep the ambient music going on through out the whole fantasy land. Yet, in the real world, there is so much to do with a haunt that is indeed the dream and with skills and raw materials an artisan can fashion something, a technician can soldier things in a box, some one else can sew some stuff together. All of this is relatively cheap when you remove the factor of meeting a payroll.

Actually operating any business is more like how much raw torture can you deal with as everyone from every level is self serving and possibly intentionally sabotaging your efforts. Does this carry into your personal life and run into further hours of brow beating beyond what you can afflict to yourself? And so there is a difference between being pessimistic and playing defensively.

Here's how to win any billiards/pool game with out talent ro even having your eyes line up right. While the avide pool player breaks the balls from the rack position and doesn some amazing few shots with great skill, You when it is your turn clumsilly just move your balls in front of all the pockets. So the skilled player will have to either put in your balls as well or go to some unconfortable location where you have not blocked. This increases as the game goes on how quickly they will not be able to make a shot when they try. Then as you have all of your balls near pockets, you can clean the table pretty easily as the balls that are to go in are only inches from the pocket.

So, anything can be accompished if each task is delt with somewhat completely. In the case of a haunt, it would mean having a haunt, having the electrical harness, having the sound system, having the location and having the costumes and so forth. In the beginning it might not be the fully fleshed out Imagineering offering but, enough to build a reputation. To build a resume as it were. To build the confidence to then dream of how to make it into something clever. To combine the great elements of all events into something that obviously offers great detail, forethought and shows off investment.

Then what happens once the tools are in hand, then you can make money. Then what you would do with such money if you ever get your hands on it comes to light.

There is something that goes through my head every day. How does this work? Related to businesses. For 30 years now I have sought out every entrepenurial story of success and found life out in the private sector away from being a govenment sponsored genius a little rough.

So an autoparts store amounts to $375,000 worth of alternators and air fresheners. It has an $8,000 per month location and spends maybe $16,000 a week to answer 6 phone lines and sell $30,000 worth of stuff a week. But, they had to pay for the sold inventory too. It isn't really a huge profit actually. Most well invested real businesses are quite happy to earn a 4% profit on everyone's investment while 12% is lost, stolen, damaged or misaccounted for.

There in any business (usually a sales pitch) the comparison of how this dude came up with this golden arches thing, a clown in yellow and red and that 15 cent a meal gain has become the gazzilions it is today. The thing is, it took 20 years of reinvesting that 15 cents to get to where it was worth putting how many were sold on the sign.

Plus, in todays environment, it isn't the starting out story to success that gets me, it is how no one realizes or points out that you are day one in competition with the consumer experience these mega companies have fostered over the last 60 freaking years of a head start. So somehow with a roll of black plastic, a $6 mask and some shoes made black with a magic marker, you are going to use the McDonald's Employee Handbook, or the Disney Ride Operations manual day one.

I'm not saying anyone in particular, I have been participating in these brain trust sessions on here for 9 years and every year a new crop of dreamers arrive with similar questions. A massive business plan list, the word budget when they don't have an extra $20 to buy a video.

[Greg Chrise]

What I would do

How about the starting salary is about $300 a week for an actor. The upper end of the payroll is certainly a potential but, the money comes from the customers, the ticket purchasers. If everyone doesn't prove themselves to be an asset, they aren't going to make it to $600 a week no matter how badly they think they need it.

In other industries it isn't uncommon to pay $900 or $1000 a week to a very knowlegable person who will be supervising and making sure every thing has been done to completion and of the highest quality.

The thing is, in the haunt industry so many haunts are seasonal and really a year of experience is really only 40 hours per year not 2,000 hours per year. Ten years experience is equivelant to 10 whole weeks for a salary that even the jobs in the paper require 3 to 5 years real experience and a certain degree and can speak fluent chinese.

The money, the setting of wage is relative to how much it brings in. What the budget is comes from either your trust fund or the customers and the level of compensation although inviting is perhaps not earned. Not having earned the right to have a position certainly does not make them better at it because they were well compensated from the start.

More likely they will quit at some point and only then realize how good that situation was.

The dream can not have the foundation of paying out the big bucks and demanding or dictating results. The dream must be built with realistic resources over time to be anything. Not that anyone is really going to be checking resumes but, this is also a fundamental team building thing, demonstrated skills.

The people you want will become involved not because it can afford them some 20 inch rims at the rent to own wheel store, they will contribute positively just because it is a year long event and it is similarly what they wanted to do. If a few years down the line they can afford luxuries, they have securly earned it.

I'm also guessing that $900 per week guy is you? Don't count on making more than an actor for the first decade.

[Greg Chrise]

In fact...

Besides the fact that there are infomercials telling you can oen your own business and make $5,000 per day, generally if it requires many to do a task, the owner/manager might go weeks before getting paid just to make the payroll and keep it going until the next big cycle of customers return. The weather gets right, the type of customer is in town, people are in general not scared by the media to spend $20 on a little fun and it all comes together. Not every day does it come together. Maybe once a year it comes together.

In the patern of the economy over the last 15 years, it was something big once a year or twice a year for sure, then once a year, then once every other year to now every business no matter what it is, still works off the formula it did 10 or 15 years ago only that big thing per year doesn't happen. Everyone is working just to keep it together. There is no reason to believe there is any magic industry that it happens magically with ambient music and all. Like heaven.

So then businesses realize they have to also do something else to expand their market and the chances of hitting that once a year thing. With haunts it is only a once a year thing with no way of knowing all the other factors your customers will respond to so, you better have $375,000 worth of inventory for your customers to come glance at. It may be hand crafted stuff that just looks like $375,000 but, this is how modern day customers perception of your event is arrived at, how it is patronized, hence the Darkness does well because yearly they put $100,000 more into the detail. My figures might be high or low, just for conversation.

In reality, Larry has this guy Jim that he says is his partner and gives him $100 a week and a paint brush to bust his butt all year and they say it is $100,000 invested. No really they do spend the money, sometimes $250,000 per year for whole additional attractions to even approach being able to pay salaries like you list. Generally $600 a week goes to a highly skilled sub contractor who has all the tools and the skills and all the right moves. Not a full time position at any one haunt.

[Greg Chrise]

And if all of that isn't a bummer...

The US Dollar is lower than everything else now, so the only people that have $20 to drop are from a foriegn country on holiday. Can you scare in French and German? Japanese?

And... I just learned that the vacines made in 1956 had strains of lukemia, aids and 40 other bad things and this is what school vacinations have been given from. Infected monkeys from Africa used to make vaccines. On the radio, if you are from the ages of 50 to 56 you can make money participating in clinical trials to fight certain diseases. Hmmmm, I wonder why.

Our money isn't any good and we've all been injected with crap and there are reaons why everyone is dieing all of a sudden. What's next, another twinky shortage?

[Jim Warfield]

AWWW! Come on , Gregg, you have those Twinkies all lined up at your door, the line goes all around the block.
And each one has a monkey standing right behind it!
I saw it in a haunted house, it was a hallway, I think it was called "Hall of Illusinashunz".

I kinda like the new natural beige uniforms the Twinkies are wearing now.

[Old Tree Studios]

Jim, reading your posts makes me wish I'd paid more attention in my William S. Burroughs lit class... lol

[HauntedWebby]

So what is this, a haunt that is open 9 months out of the year?

It might fly with me. However for those who would have to relocate from out of state. $400-$600 a week will not cut it in the "rent" or "own" world. I would be a haunter that pays rent for a place to live.

Brian

Depends on where your relocate to. My place is only $500 per month for 29K sq ft. Now if I was in LA, that may get me 10 sq feet to rent.