u/Excellent-Cow-2487

Did you know they can pause a movie?

I went to see Ice Cream Man in Westminster, CO yesterday (not a great movie, btw). Five minutes in, these two women walk in. They're probably drunk and trying to find their seat. They are talking to each other loudly, trying to hear each other over the movie. One whips out her phone full on, not even trying to find the light. Of course, they're sitting right next to me.

They sit down and continue to talk full volume to one another. I leaned over and said "Could you please stop talking." The woman looked at me and said, "Maybe I'll stop if you stop asking." and continued to talk.

I got up to leave, but there wound up being three ushers in the hall, so I just told them and went back into the movie. Walking back to my seat, the woman pulled out her phone, turned on her camera with flash, took a picture of me and said that I assaulted her.

Ushers came in once to tell them to stop talking, but they continued to talk. Another person went out to complain and the ushers came back (maybe with a head usher if that's a thing? He looked older) who told them that they were going to pause the movie and that the women were going to need to leave. The usher was actually really good at deescalating the situation. The woman informed him that I had assaulted her, and he just politely said that her money would be refunded and he'd be happy to hear her side of the story outside the theater. She said she would only leave once the movie was paused.

They paused it, and the two women made a big showing of slowly getting up, checking to make sure they didn't leave anything and walking out. People clapped and yelled thank you to the ushers. It was that bad.

Anyway, just know that they'll pause the movie for a theater if they need to get rid of someone! Never seen that before, but I'm glad to know it's an option.

I don’t know if this is appropriate to post but it’s a pretty satisfying story so I wanted to share. My friends and I went to go see Spiderman last night on discount Tuesday, the theater was still packed like opening weekend and people were excited since the movie is still new. Right in front of my friends and I was a mom with her kids, I would say ages 8-12. All of the kids had phones and so did their mom. This is an important detail. But the movie starts, and periodically, this woman keeps opening her phone on MAX brightness to text people, check her email, check the weather, search things on Google, anything but the movie. It was so unbelievably distracting especially since she was sat right in front of us. I avoided saying anything for a little bit because I didn’t want to embarrass her kids who weren’t doing anything. But after about the third time she did it, I was about to lean over, two people in a row even farther from her beat me to it and shouted “CAN YOU PUT YOUR PHONE AWAY!!” My friends and I also jumped in on it after and asked her to please put the phone away, as did some others in the theater. I could tell she was embarrassed and put the phone away. She didn’t take it out for the rest of the movie, thank god.

But it’s just so embarrassing to me that a grown adult can’t go 2 hours without going on their phone during a movie while none of the kids even touched theirs. It was so bad that people in public had to scold her.

Anyways I just wanted to share this satisfying story to let you all know that shaming these assholes does usually work, especially as a group effort. They should know that they aren’t at their house but are in a public space where basic etiquette should be observed.