A sensible plea from a concerned parent, submitted to I, Anonymous:

It is true that I could have used a nicer tone. And I understand that you want to be a good corporate, minimum-wage making schmuck. I get it. You are doing your job, and so I don’t object when you tried to supersize my daughter as she purchased a small coke and popcorn at your theater. We have prepared her for this, and she politely told you no. All is good.

But this is what I don’t get. You then try appealing to me, her parent, in your effort to persuade my daughter that more must mean better. That although the small popcorn and coke already contain more than ½ the calories that she will need for the entire day, she was being foolish for not spending the extra 25 cents to get even more of that greasy popcorn and sugar water you call food. Do you really expect that any semi-sensible parent would support you in that undertaking? That we would want to encourage our children to develop those habits that will inevitably lead them to becoming obese. At least with this, I suspect you won’t make the same mistake twice.

To all the popcorn-scooping and sugar-water dispensing jockeys out there, I am not asking you to be a superhero. I am not asking that you defy the Man or anything so banal. I’m just asking that you consider foregoing the hard sell when the customer is a child. No one will be the wiser and you will have done a small but nonetheless good deed for the day.

David Schmader—former weed columnist and Stranger associate editor—is the author of the solo plays Straight and Letter to Axl, which he’s performed in Seattle and across the US. His latest...

59 replies on “Dear Concessions Workers: Please Use A Lighter Touch with the Up-Selling”

  1. Look lady, I’m just trying to do my job, and yeah maybe I’m a corporate schmuck, but I’m a corporate schmuck with a job that I can be stoned out of my gourd at, work for 15 minutes out of every two hours, and watch all the movies I want for free.
    I get it, you’re better than me.
    Listen, I’m sorry that I asked twice (did I mention that I was really baked?) but considering how you seem to understand the man’s constant demands that I up-sell couldn’t you have had a little sympathy for a low-life sugar jockey and just politely said no again? But whatevs, everyone behind you was like ‘wow, what a bitch’, you’re still mad, and I’m about to forget all about it, again, as soon as I post this.
    Maybe someday you’ll learn to take joy in seeing a movie with your daughter and let the little things wash away.

  2. @42, You would have to drink a fuck-ton of diet coke to get any meaningful caloric intake from it. Hell of a lot more than a gallon anyway. It’s mostly water, salts, and chemicals the body doesn’t process. I think the aspartame is the only thing with any caloric content in diet coke, and that is negligible until you get up to about a teaspoon of the stuff (even then it’s a tiny amount), and it takes quite a few cans of diet coke to hit a teaspoon of aspartame.

  4. @53 :: If more people put HALF the math skills to work on meal planning and nutritional intake awareness, as you have running to the defense of the ‘Better Living through Chemistry’ endeavor that is today’s non-nutritive sweetener industry, there might be hope for more people reaching adulthood at less than 300 pounds. They might even be able to do division without a calculator… mind boggling!

  5. If I wrote an anonymous letter to everyone who annoyed me during a day in any city, then I’d have…a lot of anonymous letters. I have found taking deep breaths to be more effective in getting over it.

  6. I’ve worked at a movie theater… while working two other jobs in college!
    I’m sorry but when a manager who has a HUGE list of goals from corporate, holds countless sales meetings about the “values” of upselling and gives the delightful stink eye across the lobby that a clerk making a minimal wage isn’t going to ask your bubbling bag of love butter for an extra 25 cents?

    Let’s be totally and completely honest here MISSY, when you allow your daughter to purchase disgustingly popped buttery popcorn with butter from yesterday, YES YESTERDAY, and soda that’s full of carbonated crud…whose REALLY being the good parent now?!

    Why don’t you use your efforts to fight a bigger battle or do you have enough sports watches already?

    AGH!!!

  7. @10 and letter writer and all the other self-righteous parents out there,

    Please parent your own children and stop expecting the rest of us to build our lives around your decision to procreate. Teaching your kids moderation and how to politely refuse someone is a valuable lesson, one of the many opportunities to teach your children that you squander when you act entitled and arrogant.

    Thanks. And by the way, I am not a baby hater. I think kids are awesome, but I don’t think having one makes you any more important than anyone else, particularly in the day-to-day situations in which so many of you get up on your high horse. Here’s a shout out to all the parents (like mine) who approach parenting with humor and as much dignity as they can muster.

  9. Ugh, clearly this lady has never had to work a shitty minimum wage position. What a condescending bitch.

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