Annoying Customer.

I had a first time kind of complaint Friday night. There was a guy who came early for The Spirit. He went over and bought a large popcorn. We have these little yellow kiddie popcorn bags we leave at the seasoning cart which are usually used for people to take some extra seasoning in or split up a bag if people want different seasonings. This guy then proceeded to fill up a kiddie bag with popcorn, put seasoning on it, then put it into a plastic bag. He repeated this with the entire large bag then got it refilled. My staff member and I both thought it was kind of funny, if bending the rules some. I certainly hope he's not on a low salt diet, the seasonings are basically flavoured salt.

At the end of the film the projectionist told me people had been changing seats away from the guy because he was eating his popcorn so loudly it was really distracting. Part of it was the crackling of the little bags and I guess the rest was just plain loud chewing? The projectionist was sitting out in the theatre watching the film and moved into the booth for the same reason.

I don't like situations like this, noise and distractions are one of the reasons people cite for not going to theatres to watch films but it does seem a little petty to ask someone to chew softer?

If I had been in the theatre I probably would have said something, I wish my projectionist had.

I know what the guy looks like so I'll know him the next time he comes. I'll probably either say something to him when he buys his ticket or check on him inside and see if he makes as much noise again.

Maybe if I'm lucky he's one of the people that read this blog and he'll let me know he won't do it again.

Some interesting differences between movie-going in Canada and England.

This was the first trip I had taken outside North America. I've visited the States a few times and overall it's similar to Canada, although I did get some funny looks when I asked for vinegar for my french fries in the US.

There's some interesting differences in England, some good, some bad. I was in enough different cinemas that I think it's safe to say these are probably common to the entire country.

They are called cinemas only, whereas we often use cinema and theatre interchangeably. If I said theatre over there they assumed I was talking a live show. This makes sense to me, I often calls for people looking for the live event theatre on campus.

No cinema I was in had a pre-show, they all had curtains which stayed closed until the film started. I can't decide about that. I kind of like an interesting pre-show and since Western Film has one I'm in a bit of a conflict of interest. On the other hand it was kind of nice being able to relax and just wait for the show to begin.

They play way more commercials and fewer trailers. One show I checked and there was half an hour of commercials and trailers. The proportion was different. Here you usually get about 5 minutes of commercials and 15 minutes of trailers. There it was about half and half. It wasn't all bad though, most of the commercials were quite entertaining, even multiple times. I did wish they played more trailers though as I really like trailers.

As an example, around here we get those boring Telus ads with the fish etc. asking us to turn off our mobile phones. In England they have this.

In some cinemas they have assigned seating. Some of the bigger prestige cinemas, most notably the big Odeon in Leicester Square have assigned seating. It also has different levels with different prices. I'll do a post on it later. The cinema closest to my sister's place had an interesting arrangement. Most of the cinema was general seating but there were a few rows in the middle that had assigned seating and were bigger chairs. They cost extra but it was nice to be able to book tickets for Indiana Jones online and know I would get a good seat.

There's a lot more digital presentation in England, I'll be doing a post on this later.

This one was my sore point. Every cinema had stale popcorn!? I never saw an actual popper as we do here. They seemed to get it in from somewhere in big plastic bags. It was dumped into a bin under the counter and served from there. It was interesting they had a choice of salted or sweetened popcorn. They didn't have butter or similar products. They also didn't have the seasonings we have, white cheddar, dill pickle etc. If I wasn't such a popcorn addict I wouldn't have bought it, especially when it was outrageously expensive once the money exchange was factored in.

An interesting study that states the obvious about concession prices v.s. ticket prices.

Without the high price of popcorn at the concession counter, the price of tickets would be a lot higher, according to a study by the University of California Santa Cruz and Stanford University. Today's (Wednesday) San Jose Mercury News reported that the researchers studied data from 43 multiplex theaters in 30 cities over a five-year period and determined that the concession stand in effect subsidizes relatively low ticket prices and that without it, the ticket prices would rise 25 percent.

This is especially true in cases of cheaper theatres that have a more price sensitive audience.

It's really important for Western Film. A 10% provincial Entertainment tax would kick in if we raised our ticket price even a penny. We would have to go straight from $4.20 to about $5.00 but only make about 25 cents extra ourselves.

With the minimum wage going up significantly we might have to raise concession prices. I'm hoping not.

Drunk people do the silliest things.

There is a bar called The Wave right beside Western Film that's also owned by the USC. We keep a couple things including our juice fridge in their coat check when we aren't set up. Tonight there was a pub so they were using the coat check. In these cases we leave the juice fridge out and I put it away after the midnight movie is done.

One of the things we sell is called a Trough, it's a large aluminum steam pan filled with popcorn. Holds as much as three large bags. No one else sells anything like it so it's a great attention getter. We keep a display Trough with some popcorn in it on top of the juice fridge. In the pic that's two of my staff holding a trough.

Tonight I came out to put the juice fridge away and the display Trough was missing. I assume some of the people at the pub took it.

I actually saw them on the bottom floor and tried to get their attention before they left the building. It's not that I was upset they had taken the trough, it's that it's a display item. The popcorn in it could have been at least a couple months old?!