Do You Think Theaters Are Pushing The Limits Of Hospitality?

Okay, a theater has 400 seats.  They sell 400 tickets.  This is very much a problem. An usher comes in trying to get everybody to squeeze together so that later arriving groups can sit together.  This happened to a friend of mine who went to the opening of FF6.  The usher may not have been ready for what happened next.  More after the jump.

So my friend went to the theater to see the opening night of Fast And Furious.  The theater was at sell out status so an usher was sent in to ask the crowd to scoot together.  The usher asked for entire theater to stand up and 'move toward the center".  The usher was promptly told to "shut up" and "f@#K off" by a few people in the back.  Yes, that's a bit rude, but why should anyone have to move to accommodate people who showed up late in a large group?

The second part of this is, movie theaters need to realize that they are not planes.  If they have 400 seats, they need to call it a sell-out at 380 or something.

I arrive at the movie theater early so I can have my choice of seats. I'm long legged and I have to have an isle seat.  I'm ordinarily a very accommodating person in social situations like this, but I wouldn't move.  If I was with some of my bros and we had the "empty seat between" thing going, we would probably scoot together, but I'm not 'moving towards the center' or to another row.

People who arrive late, should understand that they may not get to sit together.  Usher's and theater managers should establish a better way of dealing with these situations other than moving an entire audience. Most of all, these type of situations should lead to the opening of more movie screens with more hospitable management and staff.

So what about you?  What would you have done?  Would you be neighborly, or hold onto the seat that you 'claimed' when you got there?

And all of this reminded me, of the Carlsberg commercial, check it out: