"Please turn up the lights because I lost my teeth."

[Frank Cox]

At the end of tonight's show one woman comes out and says, "Please turn up the lights because I lost my teeth."

Really? I've had purses and wallets and make-up and toys and hats and on and on, but your teeth?

She got her teeth and off she went but that's a new one.

[Martin McCaffery]

Better she found them than forgot them;>

[Sam Chavez]

Love to know where they found them!

[Jarod Reddig]

She must of laughed or screamed them right out!

[Mike Blakesley]

Never had that here.... yet!

[Frank Cox]

The movie really bites?

I told my wife that I had a real action-packed night. Had to throw out two drunks before the show and then this teeth thing at the end.

Every day is a new adventure!

[Jim Cassedy]

Some years back, while shutting down the booth for the night, I noticed one of the
theater's regular, somewhat elderly, customers was still down in the auditorium,
and he seemed to be intently searching for something. I thought maybe he had
dropped his wallet or keys, so I went down to see if I could help him. It turns out
that he had lost his hearing aid. It was one of those small, 'in-the-ear' models, and
in the laws of hearing-aid economics, you all know that the smaller they are, the
bigger the price tag. He couldn't remember exactly where he was sitting, except
that it was "somewhere around here". I went back upstairs and got my good flash
light, and then spent several minutes on my hands & knees searching around under
the seats where there was the usual days-worth accumulation of candy wrappers,
dropped DOTS, melting milk-duds, small patches of popcorn & alotta mystery goop
of unknown origin. I was just seconds away from almost giving up, when I suddenly
spotted it, almost by accident. In fact, I had probably looked right at it several times
& perhaps even actually touched it while groping around the floor, - - but, even with
a good flashlight, in the shady shadows under the seats, that tiny hearing aid looked
EXACTLY like a piece of dropped popcorn. It was almost the same size & shape! The
customer was very happy I found it and wanted to give me a tip or reward , which I
refused to accept, and I sent him happily on his way with his hearing aid in his ear.
(. . or maybe it was a piece of popcorn. . . )

[Leo Enticknap]

My worst experience along those lines was working in a small, two-screen arthouse in the south-west of England in the mid-90s. During about a three-minute window when both projectors were at a standstill, I left the booth to grab a coffee from behind the bar. As I emerged into the bar area, the manager called from the bottom of his stairs, at the top of his voice: "LEO - CAN YOU COME DOWN TO THE LADIES AND FIX THE TAMPON MACHINE? SOMEONE'S IN THERE ... SAYS SHE NEEDS IT BADLY!" At that point, the eyes of around 30 customers in the bar all focused on me as I grabbed the key and a screwdriver and headed down the stairs.

Thankfully it was an easy fix - her coin had jammed in the mechanism - but talk about embarrassing!

[Randy Stankey]

Go to the housekeeping supply closet and get one from there and just hand it to the person.

It didn't happen, exactly, to me but happened elsewhere in the theater and I remember one of the female managers getting the key to that stockroom. I realized that something was going on and I asked somebody what was happening. I remember the answer I got was along the lines of what you said. I just went... uuhhh... Oopsie....

[Mike Blakesley]

Our ladies bathroom has a separate "toilet room" which has an ancient (original to the building) door knob with lock. The key has been missing for many years, but it's one of those old fashioned skeleton key locks. You can turn it with a large screwdriver. I've tried every such key I've found; none of them will turn it, but a plain big screwdriver will.

So one night this little kid locked herself in the bathroom and could not figure out how to turn the same freaking knob the other way to get out. We had the mom there saying "it's the little knob under the big one, just turn it" and the kid would only scream louder, I CAN'T! So I went and got my trusty screwdriver, the same one I'd used before during many trial runs, and that thing WOULD NOT WORK. I tried every angle or other possibility I could think of... nothing.

So we had to take the door off. That was quite the scene with the kid screaming and all. And after putting the whole thing back together again, my screwdriver trick worked fine.

That's show biz!

[Eric Thuemmel]

We had something similar - a customer came back in after a show and asked for help finding their missing tooth! It was a fake one, with wires on it, I checked under all of the seats in the area they were sitting and found nothing. Maybe they threw it out with their popcorn? I'm not surprised that this has happened to others.

[Leo Enticknap]

Go to the housekeeping supply closet and get one from there and just hand it to the person.

If only it was that easy. All the vending machines in that theater were serviced by an external vendor who came in weekly to restock them and collect the money from them. Our housekeeping supply closet simply didn't contain that particular item. Furthermore, there were absolutely no female members of staff working that night to go in there instead of me. That was the one and only time in my life that I've ever set foot in a ladies' room.

[Dave Macaulay]

I was servicing a single screen theatre and waiting in the lobby for the last show to get out, talking to the manager. A man came up and asked to have the ladies room checked because his partner had gone there a long time before.
The lady manager went in and screamed. I rushed in to see if I could help and immediately retreated. There was a shivering naked woman moaning softly on the floor, and very fresh diarrhea sprayed everywhere: on her, on her dress on the floor, on the floor, on the walls, even some on the ceiling. Did not smell nice. I have no idea how she accomplished that. I try not to think about it.
I have no expertise in this specialized field of estimating.... but it looked like about a gallon of poop in total.
After the police, firemen, an ambulance had all left the manager looked at the usher/cleaner kid and told him to clean it up. He opened the door, saw the situation, turned around, said "Nope"' took off his nametag, and walked out.

[Leo Enticknap]

The lady involved in this incident was possibly suffering from a serious, and maybe infectious disease. Cleaning up after that is a job for a specialist hazmat contractor, not a 17-year old making the minimum wage.

[Randy Stankey]

If your theater employs a cleaning service they've probably got people trained in such matters as bloodborn pathogens and infectious matter cleanup. The people (from that cleaning service) who work (at your theater) every day are probably not trained but I'm sure that the cleaning service has people.

The cleaning service that my employer hires DOES have trained people but they don't come to the site every day, however, it only takes a phone call to have them come over.

We have some wire/terminal crimping machines in the shop and, on one occasion, some bone head tried to one them without the guards in place. That person got their hand caught in the crimping die and it took a pretty big chunk out of their finger. It was a bloody mess! The person went to the E.R. and was, eventually, able to return to work but, in the mean time, there was a lot of cleanup to do.

The machine was shut down, the area was roped off and the cleaning service was called. They sent two of their people who had the area cleaned up by the end of the day. Maintenance had to tear the machine apart and clean the insides. That took most of a week to do.

I agree... Teenage theater workers shouldn't the the ones to clean up such messes.