A Strangely Foiled Outing

On Wednesday I met my friend Scars to see a movie, “The Sound of Freedom”. My husband didn’t feel up to a heart-wrenching tale and gave his blessing.

Scars bought my ticket while I paid for our sodas. We walked into a silent theater. How bizarre. There should have been advertisements running and then previews before our 11 am showing.

This is all we saw:

Scars joked that maybe someone needed
to revisit the concession stand...

At around 11:15 or so, he and I returned to the lobby. Five other patrons sat baffled, waiting for word. I’m usually timid but I think Scars’ fearless nature inspires me. I walked behind a vacant service counter, looked into an empty office, and called out. Back in the auditorium, I even banged on a locked door.

Nothing. I later learned everything is automated, run by computer.

At long last two technicians appeared after Scars and/or I talked to a few different employees. Having climbed a ladder into the screening room, they apologetically claimed an inability to clear the glitch. Not even rebooting the mainframe. Issues included the system indicating no tickets had been sold. It all seemed stranger and stranger.

Around noon, the first fellow who approached us as opposed to the other way around returned and apologized because nothing had worked. Even calling their corporate office led nowhere. It seems corporate had been overwhelmed and stymied by this issue. Strangely, the nationwide problem apparently affected this particular movie alone.

I give all the staff credit for their efforts. And each individual patron received a refund offer, free food/drink tickets, and a complimentary movie pass.

All of us thwarted moviegoers remained calm, I’m proud to say. The others got their ticket cost refunded while Scars declined. He is financially well off and wanted the filmmakers to get their portion of the earnings.

Have you ever encountered something like this? Do you, like my husband, think it was a cyber attack on the theater chain?

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