For many young people across the UK, working at a local cinema is a way of combining their job and their passion. It’s a way of being paid to be surrounded by and immersed in the world of film; sell popcorn in the day, see the latest releases for free at night (the dream). But for many, that dream quicky sours.

The experience of going to enormous multiplex cinema chains such as Cineworld, VUE, and the Odeon is designed to be magical for customers, a means of escapism. For the employees, however, overwork, stress and poor conditions are a hard reality. So much so for one “leading” UK cinema worker, Thomas Broome-Jones, that he ended up collapsing on the job “due to a combination of extreme stress and fatigue”. He posted in a Twitter thread on Sunday that the demand for Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Endgame – which has just had a record-breaking opening weekend – was so great that he had to “push” his body “through physical torment” in order to perform his job properly.

“Today, I was expected to clean up after 300 people in 10 minutes, alone,” he says in his thread, “this is not physically possible. I have a history of mental illness and suffered a nervous breakdown seven years ago. Had I continued in my current role at my place of employment, I have to imagine another one wouldn't have been far off.” Thomas chose to share his experience because he was sick of being driven to breaking point by the demands of the job. “I figured it had to be aired on a public forum if it meant cinema employees getting the respect they deserve”, he tells Dazed. “Hours need to be distributed far more effectively and the health of staff needs to be taken into consideration. When it gets to the point that people are collapsing and crying their eyes out, something has gone seriously wrong”.

“Managers would come down to your screen and watch you clean up while timing it, without helping you”

Hannah worked at a major UK cinema chain while she was a student for four years across three different branches in Leeds, Sheffield, and London. Her love for film is what kept her going – the average staff turnover was just a few months. That, and the constant worry that if you didn’t put up with the working conditions, someone else would and you’d lose your job.

Hannah details that in the Sheffield cinema, she wasn’t allowed to carry a bottle of water during shifts, which involved “clearing a screen of 400 people in 10 minutes” several times a day, during which she would be expected to clean up used condoms, fluorescent baby vomit, crushed popcorn, and any number of horrific human debris, all with nothing more than a few paper towels and a plastic bin bag. “If we wanted a drink we had to go to the kitchen area, they would tell us to clock out before going to the kitchen to have a drink of water. You’d have to clock out using a machine on the first floor, then go to the ground floor to get a drink of water, go back upstairs, and clock back in again.”

To top it off, during blockbuster releases Hannah and her colleagues would be timed on how quickly they could clean between screenings in an attempt to meet managerial targets, a task resulting in several bursting bin bags piling up that were so heavy she struggled to carry them on her own. “Managers would come down to your screen and watch you clean up while timing it, without helping you”. The awards that these managers promised for hitting targets never materialised.

This surveillence culture seems to be pervasive throughout the industry; another cinema worker tells Dazed of the constant monitoring by her managers at a Brighton branch of the Odeon, right on the seafront. She reveals how they would display a ranking of each individual worker on the staffroom wall, based on feedback cards they were told to hand out after customer interactions. “It’s like, you’re paying me minimum wage, are you serious?” she tells Dazed, “It was quite dystopian. The card had your name on it and they would be giving feedback on you specifically. There was so much pressure to be on and really friendly.”