Remember having to pop “cron” upstairs? Management would make some slacker go and pop say, 100 lbs. They’d fill up a super size drink with their favorite beverage and begrudgingly stomp upstairs and prepare for hours of boredom with the knowledge that they will spend the rest of the evening smelling like stale popcorn. In order to speed up the process of popping the 100lbs, some employees would attempt the shortcut know as the dreaded “double batch”. This was putting in twice as much seed into the popper then it was designed to handle.
Rather than start popping in 30 seconds, and overflowing the popper in about 2 minutes, this would take about 1.5 minutes to start and 3 minutes to finish and lead to a half full popper of half popped / half burnt kernels. The employee could shave a full minute off of 2 batches, finish up 1/3 quicker, with the only negative cost being the production of 100lbs of an inedible product. Seemed like a fair trade-off for minimum wage!
One Xmas we added green and red food coloring to the popper and made colored popcorn! No one bought it! We stashed a full bag in the ceiling tile above the popping room. I bet it is still there!
I can’t help but think of all the poor homeless cockroaches!
Remember having to pop “cron” upstairs? Management would make some slacker go and pop say, 100 lbs. They’d fill up a super size drink with their favorite beverage and begrudgingly stomp upstairs and prepare for hours of boredom with the knowledge that they will spend the rest of the evening smelling like stale popcorn. In order to speed up the process of popping the 100lbs, some employees would attempt the shortcut know as the dreaded “double batch”. This was putting in twice as much seed into the popper then it was designed to handle.
Rather than start popping in 30 seconds, and overflowing the popper in about 2 minutes, this would take about 1.5 minutes to start and 3 minutes to finish and lead to a half full popper of half popped / half burnt kernels. The employee could shave a full minute off of 2 batches, finish up 1/3 quicker, with the only negative cost being the production of 100lbs of an inedible product. Seemed like a fair trade-off for minimum wage!
Mr. Neil… can you come in and pop two weeks from yesterday?
R.I.P. Uncle John!
View link
I worked there from around 1983-1985.
One Xmas we added green and red food coloring to the popper and made colored popcorn! No one bought it! We stashed a full bag in the ceiling tile above the popping room. I bet it is still there!