A few weeks ago, I decided to take my daughter to see a movie. She chose the latest horror flick, a genre I'm not particularly fond of (I still check my closet and under my bed before I turn off my light every night), but when you hand your kid that kind of power, it's bound to come back and bite you in the kiester.
We couldn't go to our small, local (and cheaper) theater, because they weren't showing this movie, we had to go to the exorbitantly-priced, dirty theater that only served the brand of cola I can't stand and which has more parking spaces for the attached pizza restaurant than they do for theater patrons (handicapped theater patrons, that is). Grumbling under my breath, I faked a grin and told my daughter that we would go to the 3:50 pm show - early enough to catch matinee pricing, late enough to avoid the church crowd. At 3:30, we got in the van and made the twenty minute trek to the theater. We had to park in the side lot, since the one handicapped space designated for vans was taken by a Chevy Malibu. I got out and rolled up onto the sidewalk, only to discover there was a car parked on the sidewalk, resulting in me having to roll in the actual road right-of-way to get to the door of the theater. I'm all for boosting profits by capitalizing on advertising revenue, but to allow car dealerships to place cars for sale in the middle of the sidewalk, especially when the vast majority of the handicapped parking spaces are located on the side of the building, is rather disrespectful to customers who would prefer to go to an actual car dealership to shop for cars.
We make it inside without being obliterated by passing traffic, and make our way to the ticket counter, where we are greeted by a fresh-faced young woman with blonde hair and a sparkling smile. Her friendliness helped to dissolve some of my crusty resolve to be grumpy about having to go to this theater, but my frown returned when she explained that our tickets would cost a dollar more because the movie was being shown in a VIP suite. I told her I didn't want to be in a VIP suite, but that I just want to pay the regular matinee price and go sit in a normal, sticky, plastic theater seat in a pauper suite. She smiled, but her eyes were glancing around, presumably to locate a member of the security staff to protect her from this crazy old lady demanding to sit in an ancient, moldy theater suite. She adopted a kindergarten teacher's voice and sweetly declared that I had no choice in the matter because the movie was only being played in the VIP Suite. Well-played, Marcus Theaters, St Cloud. Way to force your customers to pay more for movie tickets.
Downright pissed off now, but not wanting to embarrass or upset my daughter, I paid for the tickets and suggested we get a couple of sodas and a box of candy to share. We got our drinks, trying to avoid the sticky mess that they were trying to pass off as a beverage counter, and a box of Dots, and headed to our VIP Suite, which I assumed came with maitre'd service and a personal attendant, but there wasn't even anyone stationed to open the door for us. Pffft.
I don't like to sit in my wheelchair during movies. I prefer to sit in the theater seat. If I sit in my chair, I'm taller than the person sitting beside me in the regular seat, and I like to get out of my wheelchair now and then. My butt likes variety. I got into the pleather seat and sat back to cover my eyes for the next ninety minutes. I suppose I should have felt lucky, there are places that charge a lot more than $8.50 for a 90 minute nap.
The movie, it turned out, was interesting, and quite good. I suppose I felt this way because it was based on a true story, and I was familiar with several of the real-life people whom some of the movie characters represented. My bathtub-sized Diet Pepsi was sitting heavily in my bladder after fifty-three minutes, and I needed to use the restroom. I made the Herculean leap from my seat into my wheelchair, missed, and ended up on the floor of the aisle. It was sticky. I managed to get back into my chair with my daughter's help, giggling the entire time, and giggling even harder when the horror-movie music in the background made my plight sound somehow terrifying. All we needed was for a maitre'd to come in and shine a flashlight up under his chin to complete the scene. But that would have cost another dollar, so we had to settle for a mediocre comedy-horror scene. Maybe I should have hoped for Tim Conway and Don Knots instead.
I managed to get to the ladies' room, passing a brand new ladies' room along the way because, during the theater's recent remodel, they did not find it necessary to add wheelchair-accessible stalls to the shiny new restrooms. By the time I got into the restroom, I thought my bladder was going to burst. There are at least fifteen stalls in that restroom. Fifteen. Thirteen doors hung open. Two were occupied. The two that were occupied? Naturally, they were the only two wheelchair-accessible stalls. In one was a young woman changing her clothes. It turns out that that particular restroom played double duty as the locker room for employees. In the other was a grandmother with her grandchild. I knew this by the woman's creaky voice, and by the rolled-down knee socks balled up at her ankles. This pleasant woman was loudly demanding that the child in her care stand up to pee. Yes, you read that correctly, she was telling a little girl to stand up to pee. "You can only sit down on toilet seats at the place where you live!", she declared. Ah ha!!!! This explains why I so often encounter toilet seats covered in pee - little girls are being told by their grandmothers to stand up to pee!!!
The problem is, people in wheelchairs cannot avoid sitting directly on the toilet seat. I knocked on the stall door and, in my most friendly voice, told the woman that if she was going to insist on standing up to pee, she should not do it in the stall used by people who cannot stand up. She didn't understand what I was trying to say, and told her grandchild not to go out of the stall because "there's a crazy white woman out there!".
*sigh*
I had now missed twelve minutes of the movie, and I feared I might miss the next thirty-six hours of my life due to a burst bladder and the subsequent surgery I would have to endure to repair it, not to mention the intensive cleaning my chair would require after such a debacle.
Finally, after eight minutes, the young girl who was changing her clothes found her way out of the stall. She walked out perfectly fine, but developed an instant limp when she saw me sitting there. I guess she thought if she faked a limp, she could justify taking eight minutes in a handicapped stall instead of using one of the handicapped stalls in one of the brand new bathrooms (oh they have handicapped-accessible stalls, just not wheelchair-accessible stalls. There is a big difference.). I laughed out loud as I rolled into the stall.
It took a full two minutes to empty my overflowing bladder.
On my way back to the theater, I stopped the friendly blonde girl who had sold me the tickets. She was carrying a broom and dustpan, doing her job, making minimum wage, and I became "that person", the one I hate when I see them acting out in public. I ranted to her about how awful that theater is, from their tricky pricing strategies to selling cars in the middle of their sidewalk to not having automatic door openers (or at least a button to engage an automatic door opening mechanism), to the sticky beverage counters, to the obscenely small number of wheelchair-accessible stalls in the bathrooms. I told her she should let her manager know that whoever the architect and ADA consultant were on their remodel should be fired. She just gaped at me.
When I was done, I felt ashamed of myself, and I apologized to her. She makes $7.15 an hour and had nothing to do with the design of the theater. I yelled at her to alleviate my own stress about the situation instead of taking it to management, as I should have.
There is no excuse to act like a jerk toward those who can do nothing.
I rolled back into the theater as the closing credits were scrolling.
Marcus Theaters, you have lost my business, but that wonderful girl who sold me the tickets, and who subsequently endured my pent-up anger? You should hang onto her. She, along with the other amazing young people you have working for you, for peanuts, are your redemption.
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