Apparently…

“Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.” – Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Apparently the Moon is telling people to be rude today. Or so it would seem. Ever notice that the general mood of the majority of people is similar each day, but particularly around certain times in the cycle of the Moon?

I’ve worked in customer service for several years and one thing that never fails to amaze me is that there seems to a shared mentality amongst an uncommonly large amount of people in any given day. Sometimes it’s attitude, other times it’s what they purchase. Some days we’ll have a popular candy that we can’t seem to keep stocked on our shelves, other days everyone complains or leaves tips.

None of these behaviors are strange in themselves, but when you notice several people doing the same thing on the same day, you are left wondering what caused the trend. For instance, I’ve had people purchase our combo that comes with a popcorn and 2 drinks  and choose the two flavors as Dr. Pepper and Lemonade.  Not together in the same cup, and never before or since those 5 separate orders on that one day. Some days it’s a nacho frenzy, or cherry slushies, or Milk Duds. Whatever it is, everyone wants it, seemingly independently. You never know what it’s going to be!

The attitude similarities is easier to predict. While it’s never 100% accurate, or even 75%, it is an eerily high coincidence, month after month.  The New Moon tends to bring out the angry side of people. There’s no reasoning with them, they don’t care about your policies and rules, they are pushy, filled to the brim with entitlement, and want everything done their way and immediately. Conversely, the Full Moon is when the aptly-named lunatics come out to play. Befuddlement, confusion despite repeated attempts for explanations, and utter miscommunications riddle the day no matter how hard you try to be clear, direct, and easy to understand.  Then there are the random days thrown in that catch you completely off-guard, like today.

Eventhough Psychology Today disagrees, I’ve seen all of this first-hand many times over the years, be it the Moon or not. As for the popular items in a single day, I’m stumped.  Can it be attributed to a higher degree of Connected Consciousness, maybe? Anyone else have strange and highly-coincidental experiences at work?

What’s Next??? The Fighter, Yogi, Tron, How Do You Know

There is huge variety in this week’s new releases. If you’ve been under a rock for the past 3 months, you don’t know that the sequel to the legendary TRON film opens this weekend.  Also, a companime (computer animated) Yogi Bear will dominate the children’s/family crowd. The Fighter is the dark horse that seems like a sports movie but is more of a heavy drama. How Do You Know is just another one of those tasteless RomComs with loose morals created only to drain the 20-40-something female market with an absurd plot.

WE’RE BACK!!!

After a temporary set-back last night, we’re up and running again! Because of this, we lost a lot of traffic, but we’ll recover with no trouble.

My sincere apologies for the downtime. I hope to continue to provide you all with the hilarity and ridiculi of theater life!

In the immortal words of the Host with the Most, “It’s showtime!!!”

Again with the butter!!!

Guy: “I’ll have the Double Feature – two drinks and a popcorn”

Me: “Okay would you like butter on that popcorn? *thinking, ‘yeah no kidding I know what’s in the Double Feature thank you very much.’*”

Guy: “Yeah.  Lots!”

Me to co-worker: “Double Extra, please”

Guy: “Can I get an extra cup too?”

Me: “Sure, they’re 25¢ each. Would you like it for drink or for popcorn?”

Guy: “Umpf!  You charge for those??!”

Me: “Yes Sir, we do.”

Guy: *grumbles and waves his hand at me*

Me after finishing the drink orders (which were also painfully complicated but I’ll save that for another time) “Okay that’ll be $8.25 please”

Guy: pays and when he gets his change back, “What did prices go up or something?”

Me: “No Sir. $8.00 Double Feature, 25¢ extra butter. $8.25 total.”

Guy: “HMMPF!! I didn’t want you to charge me for the butter! I said, ‘a lot’ not ‘extra’!!”

Me: “Yeah, okay here I’ll give you a quarter back. *opens drawer and pulls out a quarter*”

Guy *waves his hand at me again and walks off mumbling*

Since when does ‘a lot’ not mean ‘more than normal’? Cuz I thought ‘more than normal’ also meant ‘extra’ but I guess that’s what I get for not waiting for the magic word.  So what we learned here is theaters have a gradient of butter, that goes none-light-some-normal-a lot THEN we start charging extra, but as long as you don’t actually say the word ‘extra’ you will never be charged for it, despite it being clearly marked on the menu too.

Peculiar Parking Problem

“What’s with all the cars in the parking lot?”

Why would someone ask this to the box office attendant, and then actually wait for an answer? What I’d like to say would be something like, “Well, what do you want me to do about it?”

It’s a parking lot. That’s right where the cars should be. Now, if the parking lot were full of elephants, I can understand the desire to question. I don’t have a magic button that makes more spaces available when I push it. I can’t move the giant 30 ft snow heap so you can park your Yukon.

If the lot is full, go to the next lot over, don’t drive around for 30 minutes then come in and complain to the box office that you’re late for your movie. Your lack of common sense is not our negligence.

What’s Next? Narnia 3 & The Tourist

Our two new movies this week are The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader (or simply Narnia 3) and The Tourist (or simply Johnngelina).

Narnia 3 was a complete melodramatic snoozefest. Despite being “short” for a movie of this type (read: epic fantasy) it couldn’t end soon enough.  The characters have no depth, the dialogue is full of lulz, the accents are grating to the ears, and there is no real peril until the final battle scene which apparently isn’t even in the book. Caspian and Reepicheep were the only pleasant characters but just wait until you see what they do with that. The effects were pretty good but that didn’t save it. The only epic about this movie is how hard your eyes will roll. Also the music is second-rate Danny Elfman. Just sayin…

The Tourist is a completely different story. The star power alone should make this an incredible movie and, while I wouldn’t go as far as “picture of the year”, it was not disappointing for a second! The story is complex for an action/romance and will most certainly also make you laugh.  Angelina is an angel and Johnny is so charming, they make for a perfect on-screen romance. I’d be curious to see the public reaction to the last 10 minutes.

This week’s winner: both, since Narnia has some good morals, and we didn’t have a new movie last week.

Eau de Canna

I’m not sure which is worse, the customer who bathed in cologne or the one who reeks of pot.

Entitlement Soda

A man comes to the box office and purchases 12 kids tickets and 2 adults for Tangled. No problem!

15 minutes later he returns and says, so matter-of-factly, “I need a refund for 2 of the tickets, I bought too many, and two of my sodas.”

……….o.O?

After many questions and much confusion I finally deduced that he had spilled two of the drinks on the way into the auditorium because he had too many on his tray at one time.  I’m not sure how he expected me to know this, and if he really thought that I (in the box office) was just going to fork over a refund for drinks without an explaination.

Normally, I am instructed to give out passes instead of refunds but I didn’t have passes and didn’t want to deal with this guy while waiting for the manager to come down and do it. I took the extra tickets and gave him his money for them. Then I politely explained that we do not give refunds for spilled concessions unless it was our fault. He then says, “Okay well I’ll just take the two more then.” I’m not sure how he figured that (or how I deciphered it, even). He bought the drinks, walked away, spilled them, threw the cups away(?), and wants us to just hand over money back or replace them on his word? Yeah right, buddy. This ain’t my first day on planet Earth.

I told him that we would not replace the drinks that he was responsible for. If he spilled them and wants them replaced he would have to purchase new sodas. He didn’t like that idea so asked, again, to just get the money back for them.  At this point, I had to remind him that I’m the box office person, concessions would be the place to direct that request, but they will tell him the same thing.

He proceeded to get indignant as if it was somehow our fault that he spilled his sodas. During the course of our exchange, it changed from 2 drinks to 1, back to 2, then ended on 1. I decided I had enough of his backwards logic and attempts to trick/confuse me into giving him something for free, and offered to call the manager. (So much for avoiding a manager call). I said, “The manager is the only one who can issue a refund or replacement but it’s really up to his discretion since we’re not at fault.” The manager ended up just replacing the drink and letting it go.

Long story short, would you go into a McDonald’s, order a meal, drop the drink on the floor and then demand another? No, because why should be responsible for your handling of your purchases. “But I didn’t get to drink it!!” “I’m sorry, Sir. Some people choose to drink their soda, others choose to drop it on the floor. What you do with it is your business. Should we also refill it ” ….. is what I would have liked to have said.

You wouldn’t ask a department store to replace an item YOU broke, even if you just bought it.

This is on par with the people who expect us to give them a fresh bucket of popcorn because they covered it with a flavored topping on that they don’t like.  Also, the people who demand refunds for movies they “didn’t like.” Is it really up to us to pay for their mistakes, poor planning (10 kids + 2 adults?! really?!), and failures?  Own up to it, people. You are not entitled to have your screw-ups covered by someone else.

An hour late and politeness lost.

The concession stand is a happy place on weekdays.  It’s the calm sea before the storm of weekends.  It is a place of comfort and obsessive compulsive control.   And then two people walk through the door and change your whole perception of your little work oasis.  Last night, this particular couplet was composed of two men, obviously in their early thirties but pretending they were still in their early 20s.  One of the guys was ok but the other laughed at me and was being extremely condescending.  News flash:  I’m a human being!  Thank you.  They ordered a double feature combo and it was the last set of the evening so I reminded them that we close the candy stand 20 minutes after the last movie starts, gave them the specific time that this would occur, and informed them they should come out for their refills at or before that time.  Of course over 50 minutes after the time that we closed the decided to get their refills, being generally rude and condescending again, and then rolled their eyes when they couldn’t get their soda refilled because we were closed.  And then they hung out in the lobby for another half hour or so after that.  This wasn’t the worst experience ever, but still fairly annoying.

Better Butter That Better!

Customer: “Large popcorn, please”

Me: “Sure thing! Would you like butter on that?”

Cust: “Doesn’t it come with it already?”

Me: “No.”

Cust: “So does it cost extra then?”

Me: “No.”

Cust: “Okay I’ll have extra then.”

Me: “Extra butter is 25 cents”

Cust: “I thought you said it was free?!”

Me: “If you want extra, there is a charge for it.”

Cust: “So it does come with it then!”

Me: “No, not unless you want it.”

Cust: “But you charge 25 cents for it, right?”

Me: “We put butter on if you want it. If you want twice as much, it will cost you 25 cents”

Cust: “Oh well I’ll take that then.”

Me: “… I’m sorry…. which will you take?”

Cust: “The extra butter.”

Me: “Okay, that’ll be $4.50 please.”

Cust: “I thought it was only $4.25.”

Me: “You got extra butter.”

Cust: “But I don’t want to pay for butter!”

Me: “…………………..*dump out perfectly good popcorn, refill tub, put the normal amount of butter on it.* $4.25 please.”

What a waste of time, popcorn, and butter, all over 25 cents.