MOVIE THEATER MAYHEM Patron Booted ... WOULDN'T SIT IN ASSIGNED SEAT?!?

[Harold Hallikainen]

https://www.tmz.com/2022/03/26/movie...assigned-seat/

MOVIE THEATER MAYHEMPatron Booted ...WOULDN'T SIT IN ASSIGNED SEAT?!?

The days of free-for-all movie theater seating is over ... something one man simply couldn't come to terms with in what turned out to be a hilarious meltdown that got him kicked out.
Check out this wild scene showing an older gent getting into a shouting match with cineplex staff ... all because he wouldn't go to his assigned seat, which he claimed was just a spot or two over from where he was in what appears to be a relatively empty screening room.


No word on where this exactly took place, or when ... but based on the video alone, you can tell the dude was not happy about the idea of pre-selected reservations -- and made a huge fuss over it.
The employees amazingly keep their cool in this tense situation -- eventually talking the guy down and convincing him to scram calmly ... even accommodating his request for a refund and a little extra. Indeed, the guy asked for a free drink ... and they said they could do it.


While it felt he was gonna have to get hauled out of there in cuffs, he ended up leaving on his own accord -- with a little help from the audience, which told him he was in the wrong.
Funny enough, he made sure to let everyone know he still felt he was correct in his stance ... saying he was the bigger person here. Finally, he turns to the room and sarcastically says he hopes they enjoy the show.

While it seems pretty cut-and-dried -- theoretically, you SHOULD sit in the seat for the ticket you bought -- some have wondered ... if there were plenty of chairs to spare, what's the big deal if he's in a seat or two over from where he should be??? In other words, who tattled???
With that said, we gotta ask ... did the person who flagged down staff to complain do the most here, or is it this fella who's actually doing the most??? The great debate of our time!

[Van Dalton]

Probably another one of these holier-than-thou boomers who thinks that since he was born during a certain timeframe/has a military career background/been on this earth since before your parents were born, he's entitled to get away with murder. Or something like that.

Well, you know, my family's full of 'em.

[Frank Cox]

Wouldn't that guy's feet be right in the sightline of anyone sitting behind him?

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Wouldn't that guy's feet be right in the sightline of anyone sitting behind him?

Shouldn't be. His foot is on the recliner, and he is tilted back

[Mike Blakesley]

Some people absolutely love reserved seats, and others absolutely hate 'em. But the majority are in the positive camp. What amazes me is how long people take to pick a spot. Good grief we're not talking sports arena here.

We never get after anybody for changing seats AFTER TICKET SALES ARE DONE. Up to that point though, we make them sit in their assigned spot and tell them, "we may accidentally put somebody in your lap." Having a little sense of humor about it helps.

I had one instance where it was a chain reaction... somebody came up and reported someone was in their assigned seats, so I went to move those people, and they said somebody else was in THEIR assigned seats. I wound up having to move four parties, all because some goofballs decided they "didn't want to sit that close." 99% of people are cooperative though.... as with almost everything else, it's just the few idiots that ruin the experience for everyone.

[Randy Stankey]

Movies are something that people enjoy because it gives them a two-hour vacation from the cares of the world.

No rules. Nothing to worry about. Just sit back, relax and turn your brain off while you watch the show.

How do assigned seats play into that? They don't!

The "Social Contract" theory doesn't hold water, here. You can't say that people will willingly give up some of their right to comfort in the name of preservation of comfort for all because part of the entire reason for going to the movies is "total comfort." Assigned seating takes away part of that comfort but doesn't really preserve anything.

The only people who receive benefit from assigned seating are the employees of the theater who don't have to work as hard, helping people find seats. The theater saves money on employee labor/payroll while the customer only receives inconvenience.

When a person goes into an auditorium, they will look around, not only to pick the best seat to view the screen from but to be near or away from other people as they see fit.

What if I go there and discover that there is somebody I know? I might want to sit near them. Assigned seats prevent it.

What if I end up sitting near some fat, smelly asshole who smuggled in a six pack of beer? What if I brought my kids to see the movie and, now, I'm stuck.

What if that "fat, smelly asshole" decides that he doesn't want to sit next to my and my family of kids? With assigned seats, he can't move to another spot.

What if I'm just the kind of person who likes to sit in the back row and snooze? I just want to be alone for two hours. Now, that's likely out of the question.

With assigned seating, you don't know who you're going to be sitting next to. It's not possible to tell who's already in the auditorium just from looking at a chart.

Even if I got to the theater early so that I could carefully pick my seat, there's no guarantee that some shithead, latecomer won't pick the seat right next to me and start talking on his cell phone.

Movie theaters hold out the promise of relaxation and comfort. Assigning seats rips that promise away. It's especially bad if people didn't know that a particular theater assigns seats until after they get there. They'll probably sit through the movie then leave, never to return.

Movie theaters are having a hard enough time attracting customers. All it takes is one or two news articles about people getting into arguments over stupid things like this to convince people to avoid going to the movies.

We are in the middle of a cultural shift, away from theaters as a venue for entertainment.

Why are theaters doing everything they can to cut their own throats?

[Ed Gordon]

Be sure to watch the video. The disturbed patron is the guy in a red shirt and pants, with long blonde hair. He appears to have that row to himself, of at least nobody is sitting next to him. Based on the "conversation" he is one seat off from his assigned seat. How pissed off would you get for being called out for such a mistake, or minor infraction? The other question is what happened before the video started?

The theater should have followed the Mike Blakeley rule:

We never get after anybody for changing seats AFTER TICKET SALES ARE DONE. Up to that point though, we make them sit in their assigned spot and tell them, "we may accidentally put somebody in your lap." Having a little sense of humor about it helps.

[Frank Cox]

Reserved seats sound like an ongoing solution to something that's not usually a problem. And if you don't have an usher to supervise the seating in those circumstances, you're just asking for trouble.

[Marcel Birgelen]

So, what was this story all about then? The guy moved from his pre-arranged seat in a relatively empty room. I guess, by the way of moving, he didn't block anybody else's reservation, or did he? Because if he didn't, then what's all the fuzz about? Isn't this the same when you move from the center to the free aisle seat, to give both occupants of the row a little more comfort?

Was anybody else discomforted by him moving to this seat? Is the theater losing money by him moving to this particular seat? If both answers are no, why was this whole scene necessary at all?

[Van Dalton]

I think it was about making for good fake-outrage generating copy on tmz.com, which maybe also helped sell a few ad banners/popups. Though I wouldn't know about that last point myself (you should see my /etc/hosts file).

[Martin McCaffery]

He sounds a bit drunk to me. Wondering if he was being a dick before someone ratted him out. How would anyone know he was in the wrong seat unless they were assigned that seat? Or were they the last person to buy a ticket and memorized the seating chart before they came in?
I do wish the employees had told the person talking the video to take his feet of the back of the seat.

[Jack Ondracek]

Like everything political these days, people seem to be of two minds, with little room in the middle.

In a 150 seat house with 6 people in it, I find assigned seating an amusing, but absurd waste of time. On the other hand, the theatre may not know in advance how many will eventually attend, so...

I like the idea of being able to scout out available seats before getting to the auditorium. I rather prefer that to staring down the crowd from the sidelines.

In any case, I have been to few, if any recent screenings where any of this really mattered.

I do find merit in Mike's practice of leaving people alone, once the show has started. That seems a very reasonable compromise.

[Marcel Birgelen]

He sounds a bit drunk to me. Wondering if he was being a dick before someone ratted him out. How would anyone know he was in the wrong seat unless they were assigned that seat? Or were the last person to buy a ticket and memorized the seating chart before they came in.
I do with the employees had told the person talking the video to take his feet of the back of the seat.

Kinepolis, a Belgian chain now also with a major footprint in Canada, experimented with seat detection in some of their then newly built complexes about 10 years ago. There was an actual console with the seating plan at the entry: White were unsold seats, green were correctly occupied seats and red were wrongly occupied seats, so it was pretty easy for staff to detect wrongly occupied seats. I don't think they ever rolled this system out beyond the two cinemas they tested this in, but those kind of systems do exist and maybe this cinema does have something similar.

As for reserved seating in general. It has been the subject of much discussions around here. I'm not entirely sure what to think about it. When you know the room you're going to watch the movie in, it's a nice system, that allows you to get the most out of your time. If you don't know the room, it's often a hit-and-miss. In shows with low occupation, I don't think it adds any real value, as everybody should be able to get a seat to his/her liking. But free seating also has loads of disadvantages. I recently experienced this with Batman. We showed up early, so we could be assured of a somewhat nice seat, but the room didn't open until about 5 minutes before the show. Then you're standing inside a cramped space, with countless others waiting for the same show, loaded with your drinks and other concessions. You know, we're still not in a comfort zone when it comes down to COVID-19, so this whole situation was more than awkward and in my opinion, pretty negligent. In this case, the waiting area wasn't in front of the room itself, but somewhere in the lobby. Once the room opened, a bunch of people started running, like their life depended on it... I'm there to have a good time, not to fight for my seat with a bunch of morons, like on a cheap all-inclusive cruise.

One big disadvantage of reserved seating is that it has a lot of potential to go wrong and I've seen reserved seating going bonkers more than once. I remember a show where the on-line ticketing system and local ticketing system seemingly divorced each other and started to sell the same seats twice, independently from each other. One of those seats that was sold twice, was my seat... It's pretty humiliating when someone approaches you, quite angrily, claiming you're sitting in their seats and they have the paper to back it up, even though I had mine to back it up too. Obviously, the situation ended up being one big mess, as my seat obviously wasn't the only one impacted.

Also, I remember a show where our reserved seats were wet from some undefined leakage from above. The seats I reserved were the best seats in the house, but since the show was almost sold-out, we ended being moved towards the very first row. I can't help it, but I felt kind of robbed, especially since they didn't offer any kind of compensation for the trouble.

Another experience with reserved seating was when they decided to move everybody into another room, which was much smaller than the previously anticipated room. Instead of trying to map the ticikets to somewhat equal places, they simply started pushing out new reservations based on ticket number. Since we bought our tickets early, we ended up sitting dead left in the back of the room...

[Leo Enticknap]

No rules. Nothing to worry about. Just sit back, relax and turn your brain off while you watch the show.

How do assigned seats play into that? They don't!

Supporting that theory would be the fact that assigned seating has been the norm in arthouses ever since I first went to them and worked in them in the '90s. So for the minority audience for whom moviegoing is an activity for engaging the brain rather than putting it into standby, a good view is important and assigned seating is accepted. But as you point out, the popcorn munchers are a lot less accepting of it.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Supporting that theory would be the fact that assigned seating has been the norm in arthouses ever since I first went to them and worked in them in the '90s. So for the minority audience for whom moviegoing is an activity for engaging the brain rather than putting it into standby, a good view is important and assigned seating is accepted. But as you point out, the popcorn munchers are a lot less accepting of it.

Sounds plausible, but doesn't entirely match with the reality we have over here. Over here, the local art-house had free seating as far back as I can remember, whereas most multiplex chains introduced reserved seating years ago. Only after the arthouse cinema moved into a new building, they started to introduce it.

In their previous building, they had the policy of no food and drinks whatsoever inside the theaters, but since they moved they have let that go... I guess something needs to pay for that new fancy building.