One Missed Call = One Sucky Crowd

Well, after getting only two hours of sleep on Thursday night, I was actually looking forward to the small number of openings we had this weekend, including only one sucky movie.. or one I thought was going to do poorly, One Missed Call. However, when a horde for 12-13 year olds began showing up for this movie (it's PG-13), I knew that I might be in for a long night.

Starting at about a half hour before the show started (7:40 it started), I began making walk-thrus of the auditorium to try to get some order in there. It sounded like a middle school cafeteria in there. People were yelling on their cell phones, running around, and pretty much screaming and talking the entire time I was in there. However, since the movie did not start yet, I couldn't really do too much except ask individual groups to keep it down a bit.

Even before the movie started, I had people coming back out and asking for refunds, saying that they didn't feel like babysitting all night, and they couldn't believe how loud those kids were. I completely understood their point, and I admit I felt the same way about babysitting those kids all night. I was just hoping that there wouldn't be any issues.

Of course not. Just as the movie was starting, a group of kids walked in through the exit door of the theatre. Projection informed us, and we quickly went in to check their tickets. Some of them did, some didn't, but the commotion had already started. People were mad that they were sneaking in, and made it known vocally. After about 5 minutes of people yelling at each other, we finally managed to get some order in there, and I hoped that things would settle down in there.

Trying to do some work upstairs, I get called downstairs, saying that I need to meet them in that particular auditorium. When I got inside, I saw that some food and drink had been thrown in there, and there was some very upset young ladies that a drink had landed on them. To add to this, there was a guy who was outside threatening to hit the kids and strangle them. Apparently, some kids weren't mature enough to see a movie in public. Yes, it is a horror movie and some noise is expected, but it is not expected that you throw food or yell unnecessarily in the theatre.

Monitoring what happened in there afterwards, the same guy who threatened to hit the kids started screaming at them in the theatre. I should have removed him for that, but there were only 10 minutes left in the movie and I was hoping to escape without having to pass the entire theatre. It turned out that I did have to give out a large amount of passes, but not as many as I thought I would have to. What was worse is the attitude of the kids who stayed to linger around the lobby, making fun of employees and generally ignoring me when I asked them to leave.

So where does this all go? Parents, I urge you to make sure that your kids know how to behave in public before you let them loose. I'm not there to baby sit all night, and I didn't like that I had to for this movie. How would you like it if they treated you like they treated the people who work at the movies?

Images to come later... internet not working too well.