Fear on Wheels!

Everyone else seems to talk about their jobs on their blogs, so I thought I should do the same. Then after I'm done we're all going for Starbucks and some bridge-jumping.

Working at [Name Withheld Due to Legal Reasons] cinemas, you deal with a lot of dumb, rude and unpleasant customers. Of course, the dumb ones you can kind of forgive. For the most part, they're orindary folk who suffer the unfortunate downfall of doing the same slightly-dim thing that about a billion other people do every other day of the week. It's not their fault that the repetition of this one act drives the person working there so crazy they want to kill-with-a-hammer the very next person who does it.

The people who play keep-away with their tickets like it's the world's funniest and most original joke, on the other hand, are just stupid jerks. You wanna play keep-away with your ticket? Fine. I'm going to play keep-away with your movie. How do you like 'em apples?

All of this is kind of irrelevant, though. The thing that got me started was this one woman I had to deal with today, whose actions have been mystifying me ever since.

I came out of cinema 3 after having done a routine check (all the movies were in and I was bored), and I noticed a young kid holding the door open to cinema 2. I'm a terrible judge of age, and seeing as blogging is a non-interactive medium I can't do my usual thing of saying "He was this old" before indicating how tall he was ... so let's just say he was very young and call it even).

I walk over to him to ask if he's lost his parents or something when his mother comes out of the cinema, sees me, and immediately says "Oh, it's okay, he's just afraid of the dark". I smile, say okay and turn to leave her to it. She starts to pull the kid into the movie, he starts to cry ... and then she starts screaming at him. He starts to cry more. She smacks him. Then drags him crying into the cinema, shouting at him for good measure. ("Shut up! SHUT UP! I'm not going to sit in there alone! I paid good money for your ticket and you're going to watch the movie!", etc.)

Now far be it from me to judge a more-than-likely stressed-out mother, but that kid's just going to end up riddled with all kinds of complexes after that. Especially given that his mother, having lurched from the shadows and - despite his protests - plunging him into the underworld, was taking him to see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This may sound harmless enough, but I've seen that movie, man. I wouldn't be game to take a kid who's afraid of the dark and just been shouted at and hit by his mother into that movie, what with the whole plot revolving around the monsters the Turtles have to fight/capture.

I don't know where that kid is right now, but I guarantee, as I'm writing this, he's having nightmares.

Yes, bitching about one's job is cliche. Yes, judging the parenting abilities of others - especially when you yourself are young and childless - is obnoxious. But damn if it isn't cathartic!

~S