In this National Post piece about movie-theatre manners, author Michael Reid fails to mention one of the worst offenses out there — i.e, people claiming that nearby seats are saved without territorial jungle markings. Under-20s are the primary culprits. They’ll point to three, four or five seats and say, “Sorry, these are saved.” Not without markings they’re not!
As I explained last summer, everyone needs to adhere to “a basic Animal Planet view that you can’t ‘save’ seats without marking them like dogs and wolves and coyotes mark territory by urinating on the ground, or the way Alaskan gold miners stake claims with little piles of rocks in Henry Hathaway films.
“All you have to do is put something on the seat — a jacket, a magazine or an L.A. Weekly page, even a folded paper napkin. But you can’t just point to three or four seats (or six or ten seats…there has to be a limit) and say, ‘These are saved.’ Certainly not when the lights are going down. You can try this with one or two seats, maybe, but not with three.”
The next 17 year-old kid who says “sorry, these are saved” without markings is gonna have to lay it out with me.