Got Manners?

I was reading another one of those “Reasons I don’t go to the movies anymore” articles online this weekend, and agreeing with all of the points the author was making, until we got to the end and they mentioned that once upon a time theaters hired people with flashlights – called “ushers” – to keep order and tell people to stop doing disruptive things. It sounds great, doesn’t it? Until you start thinking about all of the ways that can go wrong – and all of the push-back you’d get from those being policed. As nice as it might be to impose restrictions on bad behavior – to legislate manners on a private scale, in effect – I’m not sure it would be possible in the 21^st Century…

Let’s start with an obvious pet peeve: people who bring children to age-inappropriate features. There’s no law that says you can’t bring children of whatever age to movies rated R or lower; the Restricted rating just says you can’t see the film unless you have someone over the age of 17 with you (there’s no requirement to investigate whether or not the older person is actually your parent). The people who do this will invariably tell you that their kids are advanced for their age, able to handle whatever happens on the screen, experienced in dozens of similar features, and/or they can’t find or afford a babysitter (and frequently all of the above). And in some cases this is undoubtedly true, but all too often I find myself dealing with people who have brought toddlers (or occasionally infants) to action movies, where the kids spend the entire time screaming, crying, babbling, or running around. The real question is what can you do about it?

You can’t just refuse service to anyone with small children, as that would violate several Federal laws, and alienate the aforementioned couples whose children do just fine at the movies. You can have employees (with or without flashlights and uniforms) ask people whose children are being disruptive to leave, but this will disturb even more people, especially if the problem parents refuse to leave the theater. You can’t very well ask hourly employees to risk serious injury by trying to physically remove someone who is disrupting a performance, and you probably can’t afford the liability insurance you would need to cover either the customer lawsuits or the worker’s compensation claims that would result. And calling the police to eject someone probably won’t work after the first couple of call outs…

Similar problems exist with people who talk during the presentation, people who insist on chewing gum (or eating actual foods) with their mouth open, or people who can’t make it through a 90-minute movie without four restroom breaks, six trips to the concession stand, and a smoke break. It’s easier to get rid of people who won’t put away their cell phones – they could very easily be taking pictures or video of the movie, and that is illegal – but you still have the issue of enforcement…

Now, I’m sure most people would agree that a big part of the decline of the movie theater industry can be traced to high prices and low quality. There are only so many people who will go to see Adam Sandler in drag (as his primary character’s twin sister) as a remarkably ugly woman, or Eddie Murphy having sex with himself (playing both roles) as a singularly ugly woman and an almost equally unappealing man – and even fewer who will pay $10 to $12 in order to do so. But by the same token, it’s hard to deny that part of what makes the movie-going experience so much less enjoyable (and therefore so much less valuable) than it was decades ago is the annoying behavior of your fellow customers…

From time to time we all see editorials about how the decline in civility is destroying our civilization, ruining our idyllic way of life, turning us all into bad people, and so on. I’m going to leave all of those discussions to those better equipped (and educated) about such things, but this much I can tell you for a certainty: some of those behaviors that make your teeth grind are, in fact, destroying whole sectors of our economy. I’ll try to call more of them to your attention as we go along, but for now let’s all just keep in mind that bad manners don’t just make our day less pleasant…