People counter

[Frank Cox]

The health regulations allow me to sell a maximum of 30 tickets per show.

I'm sure that most of you folks use some kind of electronic till so you can probably have that show you when you get to 30 tickets, but I use the low-tech method of numbered Admit One tickets.

I can easily figure out how many people are here by subtracting my opening ticket number from the current ticket number, but since I have two admission categories (adult and child) that's two calculations to keep up with. While I can do it quite rapidly in my head it's easy to get distracted when there are people coming in one after the other.

I've installed this on my phone: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/me.tsukanov.counter/

If it looks like there's going to be more than six or seven people here, I just put my phone beside the ticket rolls and every time I sell a ticket I hit the plus on that counter app. Even if I miss one or two taps while selling the tickets, at least I know when I'm getting close to the 30 and can do a quick subtraction to verify that and know how many tickets I have left to sell. And I won't sell more than 30 tickets by mistake.

[Randy Stankey]

Take thirty pennies from the till and put them on the counter.
Every time you sell a ticket, put one penny back into the till.

When there aren't any pennies left, you're done.

[Frank Cox]

Now that makes cents!

[Mike Blakesley]

Are the Covid police coming around and counting your house?

At least here, we have had absolutely zero interference from the health department. I suppose mostly that's because nobody has complained about anything we're doing or not doing (and we try not to give anyone anything to complain about) but even at the beginning when we first reopened they pretty much left us alone. People around here are generally pretty sensible and we've had no issues with anyone getting pissed at being asked to wear a mask. We have a small lobby so we're constantly asking people to wait before going in until the lobby clears, and they've been very cooperative.

[Frank Cox]

Nobody has been checking on me as far as I know, but since the fine for non-compliance is $14,000 that's a pretty good incentive to make sure that I stay between the lines.

I don't want to be putting anyone in danger either, so if that's the number that the powers-that-be consider to be safe, then that's the number that I'll use. Even if nobody ever checks, I can honestly say that I've followed all of the rules.

I haven't actually had 30 people at any single show yet, though it's come close a few times.

My big "No Gathering" sign in the lobby seems to have solved that part of the problem as well.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Last year, we adapted a handful of ticketing services to limit the number of tickets sold for a certain show. The biggest problem is seat reservation, as you need some extra functions in there, making sure no "group of unrelated people" sits too close together when reserving their seats. If you don't have seat reservation, the solution usually is simple: never sell more tickets than allowed for any given theater. Since this function should be already present in even the worst of the worst of the ticketing software out there, the solution is easy: just reduce the capacity of the auditorium inside the software.

Before the most recent round of closures, the maximum number of people allowed in any given venue was 45 if I remember correctly. It didn't matter if that was a room that fits 5000 or 30...