Unfiltered Story #89008

It’s my first day working box office by myself. I had two training days and I was given an easy Wednesday night as my first shift. The entire night goes by quickly and without issue. I sell barely 200 tickets for an entire 8 hour stretch. The last show we have starts at 10:30 and we stop selling tickets at 11. At 10:45, a family of 17 people come in. Their “leader” walks up to the box office window.

Customer 1: [Speaking very broken English with a heavy Romani accent] 12 ticket to see …

He then breaks away, speaking what I assume is an Eastern European language to someone else.

Customer 2: [Better English, but still very heavy accent] Do you have any horror film?

Me: We currently are not showing any horror. Closest we have is [action film].

Customer 1: [Language] [Film title] [Language] [Forced laughter] [Film title again] [Language] 12 ticket to [comedy film]

Me: Sir. That film is rated R, and your group seems to be made up of many children, and also, I count 17, not 12.

Customer 1: No no no. [He then starts pointing at the children, who are running around and trying to hide their numbers, while he is counting them out and gets to 14.] I’m sorry. 14. 14 ticket.

Me: Sir. You still have too many children to see the film. You have to be 5 or older to get into an R rated film.

Customer 2: They are 5 and up.

Not wanting to argue at this point, I shrug, ring up at 14, just to get them out of my hair and hope that my manager doesn’t find out.

They then spend 10 minutes getting food for the film already 30 minutes into playing.

When they enter the theatre, all of them end up causing so much of a noise that people demand a refund, and the group is kicked out of the theatre.

My brother, who used to work at the theatre and now works as a manager of a theatre further North hears about this.

Brother: So I see you met the Gypsies.

Me: Are they a common problem?

Brother: Large group. Eastern European. Lies about how many. Always come in very late. Always ask for Horror. Usually end up disrupting a place. And then they’ll come in later and demand a refund saying they had to leave before the film was over. We get them all the time up here. That’s the furthest south we’ve heard of them ever going.