self entitlement/rude behaviour — Page 3

I get very angry when people talk or interrupt a performance and i have NO problem telling them to be quiet.

I have had 2 big situations happen when i told people to be quiet.

At The Little Mermaid I was in the Mezz 3rd row from the top. A woman in her 20's was sitting behind me and thought it was OK to sing-along with all the songs she knew. By the time we got to "part of your your world" I had already shhhh-ed her a few times and I finally snapped. I turned around and said "I didn't pay to hear you sing the show" She said something smart back to me with an attitude and it only got worse because she now was talking at full volume "no he didn't, tell me to shut up! etc". I got up and walked down to the orchestra and told an usher. They let me move down to the 5th row (because the Orch was 1/2 empty). The show was still terrible. lol

AND at A Little Night Music, I kept shhhhhh-ing 2 foreign people who were talking next to me the ENTIRE first act. At intermission i had enough and i said to them "Its rude to talk thorough a show". The male got in my face and started flinging gay insults at me. After my friends pulled me back (I have a mouth also)I found the house manager, told him what happened and he moved me and my friends to a box seat.

If you are paying almost $100. a ticket to a show WHY would you talk through it?

I think my favorite instance of rude behavior happened the last time I saw Phantom a few years ago. There was a middle aged couple in front of us, and the man felt compelled to sing along through most of the first act. But only with Christine! It was kind of amazing. Eventually his wife shushed him.

at theatres owned by the Shuberts, the company that runs the bar is Theatre Refreshment Co of NY. If you need to make complaints you can write or call that company.Or more effective, contact the Shubert Organization. Juat know that all profits made at the bars are shared between Theatre Refreshment and the Shubert Organization.

I too am amazed at how incredibly rude people are at theaters. I have been at many shows at my local venue where people literally crowd at the doors of the auditorium to the point where no one can move. It's assigned seating, folks- no one is going to take your seat! I also find it annoying- though amusing- when people are absolutely drunk. My favorite would have to be at August: Osage County about a year ago. The two women behind me- both of whom reeked of alcohol- were looking at the season advertisement on the back of the Playbill; the next show that would be coming to our theater was Mary Poppins. These two proceeded to begin singing as many of the songs as they could remember, including an especially version of "Chim Chim Cher-ee." Classic!
Apparently, this sort of thing isn't that unusual. I'm friends with the house manager and when I told her this story, she had about ten more to share!

No, but I accidentally sat in someone's seat at Blood Brothers in London during intermission. It was accidental because I had meant to move to the mostly empty row in front of that one but somehow ended up in the wrong row and was embarrassed when a woman and her companion returned asking why I was sitting in her seat.

I initially moved to escape miss piggy.

At any rate, I recently wanted to mention the rather awkward experience I had in my 3rd row, dead center orchestra seat at the Los Angeles production of Follies, but I'm afraid the person sitting next to me could have been one of you, LOL. I know several of you attended the final performance, too. So, I'd rather not, but man, there were points I felt the person was going to fall onto my lap!

This is the 3rd time a patron gets uncomfortably close during a show. What is it about me that causes this to happen 3 times??? It's not like I'm warm and cuddly or wear alluring cologne or anything. I'm a skinny midget who sometimes gets mistaken for an usher, or some other service person, LOL. Ugh, people are weird.

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"But to be honest, those folks likely thought YOU were being self-entitled."

True, but it really isn't their place or business, either, to dictate where I can or cannot sit. What if the usher had given us permission to sit in those seats prior to the encounter?

I don't like when people can be self-entitled either (hence I just decided to leave instead of dealing with the problem), but there are times when it just becomes too petty to even bring anything up. I think I was just dealing with a grumpy couple on a bad day.

Just my two cents.

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Updated On: 6/25/12 at 01:01 PM

I saw the matinee today of The Lyons.

I was in the orchestra and it was mainly filled with an older crowd. 4 different cell phones went off in the first 15 minutes. Tons of people asking the person next to them "What did he say?" "He said f*ck"

and also people repeating the lines that were said and then adding "oh thats so funny"

That will be my last Wednesday matinee for a long time.

When I saw Ghost recently I was up in the mezzanine next to two people who seemed theater savvy who were visiting from Spain. The husband spoke English, but the wife did not, so he translated the ENTIRE show out loud to her as it was happening. It was annoying...then again, maybe it made the show a bit better. I can't decide.

GavestonPS, I am also 6'3 so I can identify with you. But it also has it's pros and cons. Sitting on a plane or in some theatres it's definately a minus. But if I am attending an all standing concert it's a plus. If I am sitting in a seat that I paid for, and my head blocks the person behind me, thats their bad luck. It's no different if the person in front of me has big hair or a hat. That would be my bad luck. Most people usually don't say anything to me. Who knows...along with my height, I lift weights, so maybe they are intimidated. (LOL) Or they recognize it as "it is what it is".

Updated On: 6/28/12 at 08:58 AM

I once had an older woman at a matinee complain that I was "too tall" and she couldn't see. Not directly to me, of course, just passive aggressively complaining to her companion. I'm only 5' 8"- tall for a woman, but not tall for an adult human being. Perhaps if this woman is so short that she can't handle someone who is shorter than the average American man, she should always buy the ticket to the seat in front of her, like a fat person on a plane.

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Really, skittles, the woman IS allowed to be disappointed at not being able to see -- you TOOK it as passive aggressive.

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If you are shorter and know that you often will have someone in front of you making it hard to see, take a pillow to use as a booster. No one will be upset with you, as long as it's not like adding a foot to your height.

It's been two years (almost) since WICKED was last in Houston, TX, but I have some great stories of horrible patrons during that show. I worked i the front of the house, mostly helping with elevators, but I still got to experience some real characters.

For example, anyone who lives in Houston knows to allot for traffic, especially on Highway 59. So, please, please, please when you're late to a show in Houston do not complain about the traffic on 59! You're right, you couldn't have avoided it, but you could have left your house 30 minutes earlier. Yet, this one woman at WICKED actually wasn't that late, we could have seated her in her lower Orchestra (I think she was row 2 or 3) seats if she had not argued about how rude the box office was to her. I overheard an employee telling her, "Let's talk about this at intermission, I only have about a minute to get you into your seat before the orchestra starts. Once the orchestra starts, I cannot seat you for 18 minutes." The lady ignored this request and was fuming and railing off, while the employee was trying to tell her to go take her seats because she would not be able to be sat until 18 minutes into the first act. Well, before you know it, the overture started and then the lady got the clue and tried to go into the auditorium. Then she got mad and screamed and yelled in the lobby for the next 18 minutes about how much her seats cost and how rude we were for not letting her sit and making her watch the opening of the show on a monitor.

Then, there were these college aged people from out of town. They got dinner and drinks before the show, and came into the theatre a bit tipsy. One of the guys, who had no desire to see the show, drank four or five drinks from the bar in the lobby. Well, when the Wizard head rolled on, all the flashing lights negatively affected his alcohol-induced nystagmus, causing him to projectile vomit on the people in front of him. Lucky for them, he turned his head as he did it, so he hit 8 patrons... not just one or two.

On the flip side, I have to give major kudos to one father during the run. His young son (I think he said he was was frightened by the loud noise and the moving dragon during the overture, so he calmly walked his son from their second row Orchestra seats to the lobby and let him calm down. Once clam, the boy was afraid to go back into the show, so they watched the rest of the first act and the second act on the monitor in the lobby. We got them chairs, and they never complained or fussed. They never asked for any type of reimbursement or compensation. The child was well-behaved and so was his father. That was a great experience!

Updated On: 6/28/12 at 12:21 PM