Are You Sitting Uncomfortably?

(Our theater has electric recliner-style chairs. They’re very nice, but they are often broken by guests who mistreat them, and so we’re constantly having to fix them. I’m returning from my lunch break, when I see an elderly couple confronting a petite, teenaged coworker of mine. Despite being in their 70s, the husband is HUGE and looks like he could easily overpower everyone there.)

Wife: “My husband is usually a peaceful man! But you’ve pushed him, and now he needs closure and needs you to pay!”

Husband: *fuming* “I’m gonna have someone’s head!”

Coworker: “I’m sorry… What is the issue?”

Wife: “You know what it is!”

Coworker: “I apologize, ma’am. Let me call a manag—”

Wife: *interrupting* “YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID!”

(I rush over and get a manager, who approaches them. I hear the husband and wife screaming on and off for the next five minutes, before they leave, making sure to announce loudly they’re “never” coming back to this theater, and telling every… single… person they can that we’re “cruel” and “worthless” thieves.)

Manager: *walking up to me* “Well… that was interesting…”

Me: “What was going on?”

Manager: “Someone must have broken one of the seats in the screening before those customers, because his seat was stuck permanently reclined, and it hurt his back trying to lay down in it.”

Me: “Oh, were there no other seats that he could switch to? Why didn’t they just have someone come in to fix the chair?”

Manager: “That’s the thing. I just checked, and they were the ONLY ones there. There was literally about 100 empty seats around them… He just decided that he wouldn’t switch seats, and then got mad because the one seat he picked happened to be the one broken one.”

Me: “And that’s our fault, somehow?”

Manager: “Sadly, that’s not even in the top-five of dumbest thing we’ve been blamed for by angry guests this week…”