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Originally published at Howard's Public Weblog. Please leave any comments there.
Dialogues from the deep
The patrons at our theatre sometimes expect us to read their minds, and they’ll often proceed to get annoyed at us when we make it clear to them that we can’t. (I suspect this is true for anybody working in the service industry.)
“I want Spiderman 3.”
“That’s for how many people?”
(The patron makes a gesture to the vague crowd of people behind him.)
“Okay, so that’s… two adults and two… kids?”
“YES.”
“Which time did you want?”
“SEVEN THIRTY!”
“Okay, two adults and two kids for Spiderman 3 at at seven thirty comes to [some price].”
“What?”
“Your total comes to [some price].”
“What?”
“That’s for four people in total, right?”
“No…”
“Oh, so you’re paying separately.”
“YES!”
And so on. This is more of an extreme case, but it’s still pretty common.
There’s also the patrons who can’t decide what movie they want to watch. I guess they expect everybody to be a geeky film buff with the time to see every movie we have playing. For some people, this is only a job - they don’t even particularly like movies.
“Hi, what’s your best movie?”
“Best movie? It really depends on what type of movie you like… action? Comedy? Suspense?”
“How about comedy?”
“Well, Blades of Glory’s supposed to be pretty good. That’s the skating movie with Will Ferrell and the guy from Napoleon Dynamite.”
“Have you seen it?”
“No, I haven’t, but my friends said it’s pretty funny.”
“How about Disturbia?”
“Yeah, that’s supposed to be pretty good. It’s about a kid under house arrest who spies on his neighbours and -”
“How about Vacancy?”
“That’s a horror movie. Something about a hotel… I don’t know too much about -”
“How about Meet the Robinsons?”
“That’s a family movie. It’s animated, you know, computer graphics, like Pixar? Like Toy Story or A Bug’s Life or, uh -”
“How about Shooter?”
“That’s an thriller. Mark Wahlberg is an commando who gets hired to protect the president from and assassination, but then he gets framed for it. If you like action, it’s pretty good.”
“Nah. How about Grindhouse?”
“Okay, that’s a two part campy B-grade movie, but it’s done cheesy on purpose.”
“Uh-huh.”
“There are scenes intentionally missing and a lot exaggerated sex, blood, and gore.”
“Uh-huh.”
“They dirty up the film on purpose… and… I really don’t know too much else about the movie. It’s directed by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez? Uh, there are zombies?”
“Sounds stupid.”
“Oh.”
“Why don’t you have any good movies?”
“Well, I -”
“Eh, forget it. I just spent 5 minutes having a pointless conversation with you, accumulating a healthy line-up of impatient patrons behind me. You can serve them - I’m going to leave now.”
That last line’s an exaggeration, of course. And oh, it’s always interesting when shows sell out:
“Hi, I’d like one for Spiderman 3.”
“The seven o’clock showing?”
“No, the one right now.”
“Sorry, it just sold out. The movie just came out, and it’s just been really crazy.”
“What do you mean, sold out?”
“Unfortunately, we don’t have any tickets left. It’s a popular movie.”
“That means we can’t go see it?”
“Not for the one right now. There aren’t any seats left.”
“Really? You’re not lying to me or anything?”
“No. Well… if you really want, I can refresh my screen and check for you again… yeah. You’re in luck, somebody JUST refunded their ticket. Now there’s exactly one left.”
“YES! I’LL TAKE IT.”
“Okay, just to let you know, you’re probably not going to get a good seat. The line-ups are going out the door -”
“Yeah, I KNOW, I’ll take it.”
(Ten minutes later…)
“I need a refund! I’m telling you, the line-up is CRAZY! There’s like a million people in there. The line-up is CRAZY!”