Odds Of Finding A Seat Are Not In Their Favor

(It is the day before Thanksgiving at the movie theater where I work and “The Hunger Games” has just premiered. Obviously, we are completely swamped. All four open tills have had an unending line of customers for the past hour. Despite this, my coworkers and I are all in sync and nothing has gone wrong the whole night. Suddenly, a family I don’t recognize walks up to me.)

Mother: “Excuse me. You need to do something about this right away.”

Me: “What is the problem, ma’am?”

Father: “You oversold this theater! There’re more people in there than there are seats! People are sitting in the aisles!”

(Our computer system that alerts us when a theater is about to sell out has malfunctioned, so we stopped selling tickets to “The Hunger Games” when there were only five seats remaining, as opposed to the fifteen we would normally. My guess is that they can’t find seats together.)

Me: “I’m very sorry that the theater is crowded. I’ve called my manager down to see what he wants us to do. In any case, you will definitely get a full refund.”

Father: “We don’t want a refund. We want to see the movie! We can’t do that because yousold us tickets to a movie with no seats.”

Me: “You see, there must be at least five open seats in the theater because we can’t sell more tickets than there are seats.”

(I tilt my register forward so they can see it and try to sell the last five tickets, showing them that it physically won’t let me.)

Mother: “Well, you did sell more!”

(My manager arrives. They yell at him, and he instructs me to refund the total of their tickets and concessions purchases.)

Daughter: “Thanks for nothing. We’ll go to a theater that knows what they’re doing.”

Me: *to my manager* “Says the people who came ten minutes late to the most popular movie of the year and expected to find three seats together.”

(My manager later went into the theater to find nobody “sitting in the aisles,” and a total of five unoccupied seats. Not together, of course.)

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