The Waiter had to deal with a real asshole at the restaurant recently, and as usual he dealt with this dickhead of a customer with aplomb.
I really don’t understand people like this, he probably had been having a great meal out and then he has to ruin his own night and everyone else around him but acting like a wanker because he feels a little aggrieved. When it turns out that the customer was in the wrong all along he doesn’t come back and apologise no he returns and accuses our man of being an asshole himself.
I’ve had to deal with tossers like this gentleman at the cinema, narrowly avoided being assaulted by one guy a few years back. Most aggravation comes due to shows selling out especially when there has been long lines of people waiting to get in as people will have been waiting ages only to discover that the show has become sold out.
I can understand that they would be disappointed but what can I do it’s not my fault that we’re busy because we have the latest must-see movie and that you failed to book a ticket. But invariably there will be one guy and it is virtually always the men that will take their frustration and disappointment out on our staff members. This has not been so much of a problem the last 18 months or so because we’ve had far fewer busy shows and now that we have an internet booking system plus additional computer stations to take advance bookings people can no longer claim that they tried to book but couldn’t get through to us.
Most of the problems we have been having lately is due to the increased complexity of our programme because we have started to add special showings such as shows for senior citizens, parents with babies, late night screenings or one off screenings of classic films. This means that the times can vary from day to day for our regular programme of the latest releases.
Unfortunately this means that we get customers for screenings that aren’t actually happening on that particular day plus it doesn’t help when our marketing department is cocking things up and advertising shows that we don’t have as well.
So far less assholes recently but still the same number of complaints.
We had a very amusing mixup recently that thankfully my boss got to deal with as he was working at the time. Two old ladies who had obviously not been to the pictures in years came to see Mrs Henderson Presents and then has apparently wandered into the balcony of Screen 1 instead of continuing up the stairs to Screen 2.
So they sat and watched the entirety of March of the Penguins and then watched as the lights went up and saw the audience that had been sitting below them all get up and leave and then saw my boss go in and check the screen and clear up the rubbish left by the audience and all the time they are sitting waiting for Mrs Henderson Presents to start. Quite by chance my boss happens to see them on the balcony as he looks up towards the projection box window which is situated behind these ladies and so he leaves the stalls and goes up the stairs to investigate who these ladies are.
Whereupon he discovers their mistake and has the unfortunate duty now to inform them that they have missed all but the last fifteen minutes of the movie that they had come to see. They are quite irate and are blaming everyone but themselves for the error and will not even take up the offer of the free tickets for the later performance that day for Mrs. Henderson. They were under the impression that the penguin film was the support feature for their film even though support features haven’t been played for decades. They also managed to miss all the very visible signs indicating which movie was playing in which screen and where each screen was.
It’s not like it hadn’t crossed our minds that customers may go through the door to the screen 1 balcony instead of continuing a bit further to find the door to screen 2 so that’s why there is a huge sign pointing the direction to screen 2 and a very noticeable sign on the balcony door saying ‘Screen 1 balcony’. The tickets are marked with the relevant screen number. What more can we fucking do?
Enough ranting about cinema customers for now I’ll go back to ranting about infringements on civil liberties or something else tomorrow. 
