People, the public and line-ups
I’ve always known that if you want to identify the most self-centred assholes in society all you have to do is ask people to wait in line. Even knowing that, this week I was surprised at just how little some people care about others.
Friday night, back at the drive-in theatre again, I found the theatre owner, who was in the box office selling tickets at the time, having a stroke. Even though about 50 cars had gone through, nobody had bothered to mention this to the staff or call for help. When I arrived one did have time to immediately complain that the line was moving to slow and that they were going to miss the movie. I, of course, ignored them and opted to call an ambulance instead.
So in anticipation of the ambulance actually wanting to get within a block of the scene, I start asking people to move their cars out of the way of the entrance. There were cars all over blocking the road because, of course, it’d be just to easy to line up orderly (this is a problem that has been getting worse over the last few years — see this post) so that you’re not blocking traffic. So I’m going car to car explaining that we’re making room to get an ambulance through and what do no less than five people tell me (all people who thought lining up their car in the middle of the road was the best plan of action)? “I’m not moving, I might loose my spot in line and miss the start of the movie.” Two people even told me that if we hurried up and sold tickets faster that they’d be soon out of the way. Both of these people could see the guy lying on the ground waiting for his ride in the ambulance. So, as many many years of dealing with the public has taught me, if you really need them to do something and being really nice about it hasn’t worked, swear at them. Cursing ensued and I’m now positive my Irish ancestors would be proud.
So the ambulance arrives and the attendants start doing their thing. In order to keep the owner from trying to get up off the ground to go back to selling tickets I start selling tickets, which is something I do really fast. Nonetheless, as each person pulls up (right beside the ambulance no less) nearly 25% of the women proceed to bitch me out about wanting them to pay for the full ticket price ($7). After all, they’ve missed at most an additional 8 minutes of the first movie of the double bill that they’ve already shown up late for. All of this in ear-shot of the guy on the ground, who the complainers can plainly see less than 10 feet from their car. Some of these people are lucky it’s too hard to climb through the box office window to kick their ass. Others vow never to come back to the drive-in again. I thank them all, the drive-in will be a better place without them.
Intermission comes, no more complaints, except for a few waiting for popcorn (line-up!). Interestingly, and this has happened a few times in the past to me, a number of the husbands of wives who previously bitched me out find me to apologize. Weird. Not one guy complained to me the entire night. Maybe they all thought “that could be me”?
Two nights later, back in the box office again (I’m now working every night until the owner’s family can take over), people start stopping their cars in the middle of the road in the line-up instead of lining up down one side of the road like any sane person would do (and have done for 25+ years). No more than 3 minutes after me going out to the road to tell people not to stop in the middle of the road like an idiot, and being told “what do you know”, one of these cars gets hit by another car going by. What do I know? That you’ll probably get hit by another car if you park in the middle of the road. Especially a back road where people normally do twice the speed limit, including the Southern Georgian Bay OPP.
Another two nights later, Tuesday now, people start lining up on the wrong side of the road (the correct side is obvious from the 50 cars lined up there) again. Once again, I go out to the road to tell them to stop being idiots and to proceed to the back of the line like everyone else. I even tell them that blocking the road isn’t a good idea since getting an emergency vehicle in would be, as I found out earlier in the week, next to impossible, and that you’ve got a good chance of getting hit by another car when stopped illegally in the middle of the road, which I’ve seen many times. Some responses, “That won’t happen” and “I’m not worried about that”. When I respond that, regardless, it’s not very nice of them to cut ahead of 50 other cars in line I get responses of “I know what car was at the end of the line when I got here, I’ll pull in then” and “I don’t care, they should have shown up earlier”. WTF! If you knew where the end of the line is why didn’t you go there. Cutting in at what you’ve determined to be the appropriate time isn’t going to go over well with the good people who got in line. This isn’t grade school anymore, no more of my buddy showed up early to save me a spot crap. And to the person who declared they just don’t care. Why don’t you go see your movies somewhere else. I know that you’ll be the one giving the staff a hard time about stupid things later and they just don’t need it. If you do decide to come back why don’t you show up on time.
People are good. The public is not. Line-ups separate the public from people.
Add comment August 17th, 2006
