FIRST OFFENCE got you thrown off the property, not just the theater, but the entire mall as well. And that was permanent, not to be revoked.

After six weeks of this, the theater that had been a haven for young teens and gang bangers, had been transformed into a nice quiet family theater.

There were of course many new offences down the road, but only about once a month after that. The worst one was when we had a rowdy bunch of teenagers just celebrating a mission calling (here in Utah, that makes sense, it is when we send away a rowdy teenager for two years to give their parents a break, and also to spread the word of god, or something like that).

So here were these 9 teenagers, all large and all much taller than I. They were the only ones in the theater for this movie (can't remember the title). They were yelling constantly to start the movie, started getting nasty about it, and when I started it (ON TIME BY THE WAY), they yelled up at me "bout fuckin time asshole".

These are all nice mormons by the way (I also am one, and yes I swear, most of us do, we just don't advertize it like that).

SO I turn off the show, turn up the lights, and go have a "talk" with them. At first I was not going to toss them, just ask them to have a little respect, considering that one of them was about to go work for this God fellow.

They got rather pissed at me, and started threatening me, and started kicking the seats, breaking two of them and ripping an entire row out of the concrete.

As I headed for the door, two of them ran after me. Remember that these are good boys just trying to have fun. I yelled out across the bathroom wall for help, and in came four armed police officers, all of the bearing. These guys froze in thier tracks.

All of them were cited for inciting to riot, and riot and civil commotion, as well as property damage, assault, attempted bodily harm (just the two that ran after me), and disordly conduct.

All of them pled either no contest or guilty, and as I learned, the young man who had his mission call was "delayed" while he played out his probation of three years.

All this just because they felt they owned the theater.

Not all theaters are lucky enough to have a mall paying for your cops, but it helped to have them there.

I was even NICE to them, I just didn't want thier night to escalate to property damage, just for fun. But they did anyway and I escaped (just barely) without a scratch.

These teenagers today, no matter how much they claim they are just skateboarding, hanging out, or no matter how much thier parents claim that little johhny is innocent, they are all becoming more and more violent. They blame the media, and refuse to take responsibility anyomore. The media they blame lets them off the hook, so do their parents.

What would I do to prevent this type of problem? Prevent anyone under whatever age from attending a theater without thier parent or guardian. It is drastic, but would solve half the problem right there, and either increase ticket sales, or keep hollywood from pumping out total crap every single week.

Just think about it, if thier target audience would not be allowed to see it without thier parents, and thier parents dont want to see it, then DAMN. No more tom green movies, YEAY!!!

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(and emptying a fire extinguisher into the audience is vandalism).

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Not only is it vandalism, but that yellow powder stuff in them is dangerous. Spraying it caused a HUGE cloud of dust and set off the fire alarms. This stuff started billowing into the hallway, so the ushers freaked thinking it was smoke and grabbed the fire extinguisher. So the police couldn't do anything since the offender AND the ushers' prints were on the extinguisher. Some of the audience left, and the ones that remained couldn't confirm it was the person that did it. What a mess!

I have a question... how do you exactly throw someone out of a theater without touching them? ("NEVER touch a customer!") Some of the managers in our theater were only a few years older than the teenagers causing the trouble, so asking or telling them to leave would yield more yelling, swearing, and trouble. If they had an idea the cops were coming, they would leave only to come back next week. Not to mention the commotion it would cause in the auditorium for those trying to watch the movie.

What is the most irritating is that about 75% of those causing trouble, when asked for it, have conveniently "lost" their ticket stub.

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These teenagers today, no matter how much they claim they are just skateboarding, hanging out, or no matter how much thier parents claim that little johhny is innocent, they are all becoming more and more violent.

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While this may be true, not all teens are bad. I had a hard time growing up being labled as a "troublemaker" just because I was between 13 and 19. Some of the looks I got from cashiers or police officers as if they were just waiting for me to sneeze so they can cite me for spitting were disappointing. These jerks give us good kids a bad name.

Someone told me that it's because these are the kids of the snobby, stuck up, 80's "materialistic" Gen-X generation, and the attitude gets worse with every passing. Maybe my generation, raised mostly by peace-loving hippies will have better behaved kids. We can only hope.

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When I and the two other managers took over operations of the rink, Friday and Saturday nights were just a big hang-out-and-cause-trouble-and-go-smoke-pot-in-the-john kind of time.
These "angels" were dropped off by their parents (most were under 16), who never stayed with them.

We were determined to clean it up. So we hired the local police to be security. We started a zero tolerance policy. All three of us managers and the cops kicked kids out just for looking at us funny.
Then about an 30 minutes into the skate session, we would go through the whole facility and kick out anyone who didn't have a pair of skates on. We told them "you bought a ticket to skate, now go skate or leave". Most left.

After about 4-5 weeks of this, the kids got tired of being harrassed and stopped coming around.

The result - record attendance for rest of the season on Fri and Sat.
We became known as the family place to go.

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As for not all the kids are bad, that is true. But the real problem is that a greater percentage of them are apt to become bad, more now than they used to be. At least 65 percent of teens now admit to doing just about anthing criminal, just to get into popular crowds.

Back in my day, in the 80's, it was about 40 percent. This gets worse as time goes on, and parents become lazy.

How about reserved seating. You have to sign up on the internet first, then show your id at the door to get your ticket. Then we know where you live, and with our new infrared cameras, we can prosecute your ass to the end of time. SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND (detention)!!!

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Have you ever tried stopping the movie when people start acting up? Shut it off, turn on the cleaning lights, and refuse to start it again until you know who was doing what, and they leave. People will be more than happy to rat out a group of kids that are bothering them anyway. Then proceed with your polaroids, police, etc.

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I'd think that stopping a movie shouldn't be done unless absolutely necesary, since it is a disturbance for those who are behaving. Also, in some theatres, stopping and starting a movie may cause other problems with the presentation. There is one theatre I hear about in the Shoals where if a show is stopped, it is a few minutes before the lamp can be relit. It would be a bad idea in such a theatre to stop the movie. I have the philosophy of not punishing a group for what a few people do, so I think dealing with the troublesome teenagers should be accomplished in a manner that minimizes the disturbance or inconvenience to others.

Once teens start throwing drinks and stuff, it's time to take action. I think the cell phone battle has already been lost. But if a teen will throw a Coke where people are known to be sitting, then they'll throw it at a theatre's screen or other fixtures, possibly causing throusands of dollars in damage.

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I've got it! The perfect solution. Shoot the little buggers. Some staff training might be needed, to ensure that your ushers don't miss and start killing trouble-free adult customers by mistake. Another possibility would be to install an electric chair at the front of each auditorium next to the screen... whenever some teenagers start getting rowdy, they would provide ideal fodder for some free 'entertainment' before the start of the next show. But if you're going to stick to the shooting option, it might be worth installing red carpets throughout the theatre to cut down on those cleaning bills.

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That's funny. Somehow, I think of the architect sketch from Monty Python. "Just direct the teenagers throught there past the rotating knives." My my, were you thinking of slaughtering my customers? "I thought you wanted an abattoir".

"When you're in drag, the whole world's Southern Baptist"

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I've got it! The perfect solution. Shoot the little buggers.

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I've always wanted to hang out the port window and shoot people that had their feet on the seats with a paint ball gun.

It was always fun shooting popcorn seeds through a milkshake straw at the bosses daughter while she was on a date. I'm sure you could easily find volunteers for the paint ball gun method.

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I have been known to boot out many unruly patrons. Moreso with theaters I worked at previously - as I was a shift supervisor then, (and am currently my theater's head projectionist). Didn't phase me one bit if they were bigger and/or taller than myself - and I'm only 5'5"! (1.651m for you folks that are more familiar with the SI.)
The key is in being authoritative and calm. Of course, having a well practised evil glare can help in some cases.
NEVER use vulgar language when dealing with some fiesty freak of a problem. If they direct any nasty words at you - you can nail them with assault.

Monitoring dark auditoriums can certainly be a pain, but it can be done. Sometimes something as simple as bringing the lights up just a wee bit (don't click up to the between shows brightness, just a slight turn of the dimmer), is enough light to find your annoyances without being too bright & washing out the on-screen image. Been there, done that.

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One of my favorite incidences of me booting people out:

~film - American Pie.
a 7PMish show on a MONDAY.
Number of tickets sold: 33
One employee & his guest also in the auditorium.

I had an usher walk into the auditorium with me, and had asked him to do a head count. I started counting also.
After getting to 60, I gave up, and didn't check my count against the usher's count.

Mind you, the trailers were running, not the feature itself.

I walked towards the front of the auditorium and made an announcement that was something like this:
"I apologize for disturbing everyone here that has a ticket for this movie, however, we will now begin checking tickets, as there nearly twice as many people in here as there were tickets sold for this show, so please, get your tickets ready."

With that, a small group made a quick exit. Then the usher and I started at the front of the auditorium and worked our way to the back, checking tickets, politely thanking people for their patience & apologizing again for the interruption if they did indeed have tickets, otherwise, they were directed to exit, pronto. Most were quite calm about it.

Then it got to the point that there were still six people too many. And one row of nine teens that had their tickets checked by the usher, other than one male on the end of the aisle I was in, who had given me quite an attitude, and insisted that he had lost his ticket. (Yeah, right. ) ...And I had noticed some shuffling near people's knees when they were showing tickets.
I stood next to the row and stated "If all nine of you are going to sit here and watch this movie, I need to see nine tickets, now."
Five people got up and left, three girls moved to the middle of the row, in consecutive seats, and each held up a ticket, and the one guy on the end reamained, still giving me grief.
I informed him that if he could not show a ticket, he would have to leave the auditorium. Then this charmer took it upon himself to call me a bitch. He was then informed that he would now have to leave the building, and if he did not cooperate, the local PD would be called, and they would be more than happy to remove him for theft of service, trespassing, and assault.