Tweet
I didn't realize floor staff were experts on the ADA.
Unless he's in the aisle, who cares?
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/u...or-purple.html
Unless he's in the aisle, who cares?
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/u...or-purple.html
-
-
In almost twenty years of working in theaters, I've only seen a "wheelchair issue" come up once.
The auditorium at Mercyhurst has "cutouts" at the ends of certain rows for wheelchairs. We called them "companion seats" because, as we understood it, the chair next to the cutout spot was designed for a person accompanying the person in the wheelchair so that they can attend to the other person's needs, if necessary. Besides, a wheelchair user should be allowed to sit next to their companion if they want. Right?
It was a full house with only a few open seats left. The event in question did not have reserved seats. A wheelchair customer came in but there weren't any wheelchair/companion seats unoccupied. The Work Study student who was acting as Head Usher didn't know what to do.
I told the girl (Head User) that the wheelchair spots are marked and that, if a wheelchair customer needed one, they have the right to ask the person sitting there to move. If it was a reserved seating event, the customer could have pre-selected the handicap spot but, in this case, it wasn't reserved, beforehand.
Since we (Mercyhurst) were the host, if a wheelchair customer doesn't feel confident enough to ask another customer to move, it is up to us to ask on their behalf. The user, a female college student, was afraid to ask the customer to move seats. That's where I got called to step in.
I took the student with me, into the auditorium, to ask the customer to move. There really wasn't a big hassle. It was more about me having to teach the student how to handle such a situation. The whole incident was resolved rather smoothly. As I remember, it was an already full house and there weren't a lot of "choice seats" left so we ended up comping a few tickets to keep customers happy.
Comping the tickets was just a matter of calling up to the box office and telling them who got the comp seats. I remember telling the customers to take their ticket stubs to the box office, after the show.
The point of this story is that there is always a way to settle things like this without pissing people off. Somebody had to move seats and they got a free show out of the deal. You can't beat that with a stick!
If there are cutouts in the seating arrangement, they are meant for ANYBODY who needs them. The theater can't pick and choose who is allowed to use them. If there is reserved seating or if there aren't enough empty spots for wheelchairs, that would be a different situation but, normally, the house can't offer special handicap seating then try to tell people that they can't sit there. Whether the handicapped customer uses a wheelchair, a walker-seat or some other kind of equipment to help them, it makes no matter. The customer needs what the customer needs.
The only caveat would be if the equipment that the customer brings is patently unsafe or if it blocks safe passage through the aisles for other people. If you have companion spots for your wheelchair customers built into your seating arrangement, the problem of emergency access should have been addressed, already.
Hell! If a customer wants to sit in a wooden folding chair, I don't care as long as it doesn't hinder other customers. If that's how they want to sit, I don't give a rat's ass!
The people at that AMC theater were WAY out of line! As long as the customer wasn't hindering others or blocking emergency egress, they should have been allowed to sit however they wanted!
I know because I have dealt with that very situation! -
Phil, you need to copy and paste the article to your post (or make a new post on this thread.)Originally posted by Phil Ranucci View Post
Two reasons:
One, your link requires a subscription sign up to view the article;
Two, Articles tend to disappear from sites so that link will not work at all in the near future;
Please copy and paste it to a post when you can. Thanks!
Comment
-
www.nytimes.com /2023/12/28/us/amc-rev-william-barber-color-purple.html AMC Theatres Apologizes to Civil Rights Leader
Clyde McGrady4-5 minutes 12/28/2023
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT AMC Theaters Apologizes to Civil Rights Leader Removed From Movie Theater
The Rev. William J. Barber II was trying to watch “The Color Purple” with his mother when theater staff told him he could not use a chair he needs to help manage a painful condition. The Rev. William J. Barber II, who is a civil rights activist, in Washington D.C., in 2021.Credit...Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via Shutterstock AMC Theaters has apologized to the Rev. William J. Barber II, a civil rights leader, after he was escorted from a Greenville, N.C., theater after employees refused to allow him to use a chair he needs to manage a painful medical condition, he said.
Mr. Barber, 60, was attending a Tuesday afternoon screening of “The Color Purple” with his mother, Eleanor Barber, 90. He said he tried to use the chair, which an assistant carried for him, by placing it in an area reserved for handicapped seating, saying he had done so before in theaters, at Broadway plays and even on a visit to the White House.
He said a theater employee told him that he would not be able to use the chair, which looks like a small stool, because it did not comply with guidelines in the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Employees then summoned the Greenville police and told the officers that they wanted Mr. Barber to leave or be charged with trespassing, according to Mr. Barber, who shared a video of the encounter with The New York Times.
Mr. Barber said he agreed to leave the theater and that no charges had been filed. The video shows a police officer escorting him out of the theater, thanking him for his cooperation and apologizing “for the way this turned out.”
His mother stayed and watched the movie with an assistant, he said.
“I just wanted to go see the movie with my mother,” Mr. Barber said.
In a statement issued to a local news station, the AMC theater chain said it “sincerely apologize to Bishop Barber for how he was treated, and for the frustration and inconvenience brought to him, his family, and his guests.”
Both the statement and Mr. Barber said that AMC’s chief executive, Adam Aron, had spoken to Mr. Barber by phone, and that the two planned to meet in Greenville next week.
Neither AMC Theaters nor the Greenville Police Department responded to requests for comment.
Mr. Barber has a condition called ankylosing spondylitis, and walks slowly with the aid of a cane. He said the disease attacks his joints “like a guided missile” and has forced him to live with chronic pain for almost 40 years. “I describe it like that because it’s a war to live with it,” he said.
He added that people with disabilities often fight invisible battles that can be difficult for people not living with disabilities to understand.
“Disabled people have a right to show up,” Mr. Barber said. “Period.”
Mr. Barber said that he was grateful that Mr. Aron had reached out immediately and apologized, and was looking forward to their meeting.
“I’ve had very positive conversations with him and with the police chief,” he said, adding that he didn’t believe the police even wanted to be involved.
Maria Town, president and chief executive of the American Association of People with Disabilities, a disability-rights advocacy organization, said she found the response from theater staff “just baffling.”
“People with disabilities encounter so much discrimination on a daily basis,” Ms. Town said. “They encounter so many kinds of physical barriers that by law shouldn’t exist.”
The Americans with Disabilities Act, signed in 1990, is a civil rights law that bans discrimination in several areas and widely requires accommodation in public places. “And that’s what movie theaters are,” Ms. Town said.
Mr. Barber rose to national prominence in the 2010s after leading protests against a North Carolina voter ID law that a federal appeals court later struck down, called it an unconstitutional effort to “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision.”
Mr. Barber, a former head of North Carolina N.A.A.C.P., is a fixture at rallies, marches and civil disobedience actions. He said that he has been allowed to use his chair in numerous theaters and other places, including in jail after being arrested at demonstrations.
Advertisement
Comment
-
What a public-relations pooch-screw on the part of AMC. Holy shit. The whole situation could have been avoided if certain staff members had bothered to use their brains.
There is probably a good chance Mr. Barber's vehicle (or the vehicle that brought him to the cinema) was legally parked in a handicapped parking spot outside the theater. The staff could have checked on that. It sounds like Barber would have more than qualified for such parking. So why not let him use his stool in the wheelchair seating cut-out? A stool might not be the same thing as a wheelchair, but the guy had a legit disability. So let him use his stool!
Our local AMC location has some of these "cut-outs" in the auditoriums for wheelchairs. I would never buy reserved seat tickets for the seats next to those cut-outs for the reasons Randy mentioned. I'm a member of an AMBUCS chapter in Lawton; one of the things we do is build wheelchair access ramps for people in need in our region. In Lawton we have a lot of elderly people with disabilities and we have a good number of wounded warrior veterans we help. So, yeah, the companion seats by the cut-outs need to stay clear if possible. Of course, not every movie audience is going to have someone in a wheelchair either. It's rare I see anyone in a wheelchair situated in those spots.Comment
Comment