Rude Audience Members

Parent Cafe
1

<p>I was at our high school’s annual talent show Friday night. After intermission, some teenage boys moved seats and sat behind me (no assigned seating - just an open auditorium).</p>

<p>These idiots could not keep their mouths shut and had to say rude comments throughout the second part of the show. </p>

<p>I am probably the most non-confrontational person I can think of, and true to form, did not turn around and say anything. But I really wanted to. But I couldn’t figure out what, if anything, I should/could say that would actually be useful or helpful. I didn’t just want to be rude back. But they were disrespectful and really interfered with my ability to enjoy the show. I don’t understand why they were at the show if they had to say something nasty about everyone who had the courage to audition and perform.</p>

<p>Several years ago when D was in 6th grade (she’s a junior in college now!) I experienced an unfortunate incident at her first middle school orchestra concert. A parent seated in front of me asked a parent seated in the row behind me to be quiet during the orchestra concert. It was a joint orchestra/choir concert, and evidently the noisy parent behind me was there for the choir part.</p>

<p>The “noisy” parent got upset after being asked to be quiet, and actually gave her small children keys, and told them to be as loud as possible, and spent the rest of the orchestra concert ruining it. The parent in the row ahead never looked back. Our schools are in rather rough neighborhoods and I was a little afraid for my safety - the chairs were not anchored down and I was envisioning a Jerry Springer outcome with chairs flying. Thankfully, while ruining the concert, there was no violence.</p>

<p>I’ve been at vocal concerts at our high school where the music director has stopped the concert and called out rude audience members and publicly embarrassed them. They usually just leave in a huff.</p>

<p>Any ideas on how to best handle such situations? At the talent show they have school officials on duty, and my preference would have been to find one of them and ask them to handle it. But I didn’t want to leave my seat in the middle of a row, climb over several people, and disrupt the show in order to do this.</p>

<p>Would love to hear some suggestions so if (when?) this happens again I can handle it better!</p>

2

<p>Wow, that’s unbelievable about the orchestra/choir incident.</p>

<p>As for the noisy boys sitting behind you at the talent show, I think I would have felt on safe ground turning around and saying, “Would you guys mind keeping it down? I’m having a hard time hearing.” I think the adult/kid dynamic would have come into play and they probably would have quieted down. They’re still accustomed to doing what grownups tell them to do.</p>

<p>For future events at the school, here’s one possible strategy: As you enter the venue, have a word with one of those school officials and tell them what’s happened in the past. Then take a seat on the aisle. If a problem arises, you’ll be able to leave your seat without much fuss and find someone to deal with it.</p>

3

<p>On my HS facebook page, some former classemates were lamenting that its too bad the days are long gone when teachers could throw erasers at unruly students. Maybe that would have worked with disrespectful parents at concerts :)</p>

4

<p>When I started teaching in the 80s I was at a junior high school. I remember the whole school assemblies that we had. You could hear a pin drop. Not one child would have dared to yell out or disrupt the function. And that was in a very tough town.</p>

<p>Nowadays, it is a free for all at every event I go to! People hoot and holler and whistle at will. They scream people’s names, carry on conversations and talk on their cell phones. What is happening to common sense and basic good manners?</p>

<p>I was at the movies a few weeks ago with a friend and I got a text message on my new phone (it was on vibrate). I took it out to look at it and the woman behind me leaned over and asked me to put it away. The light from the phone was disturbing her. I was taken aback at first because I never had thought of that as a problem but, again, it’s a new phone and brighter than my old one. I didn’t mind her speaking up and was glad she made me aware that it was bothersome.</p>

<p>As far as handling disruptive people. I would contact the school and tell them about your experience. THEY should be setting the standard of behavior at the event and enforcing it. It shouldn’t be up to the audience members. </p>

<p>Good for that band director for exercising his authority over his concerts. Its okay, IMO, to shame someone when they should be ashamed of themselves.</p>

5

<p>EPTR-
Many movie theaters are now announcing that in in additon to “no talking”, they are reminding people that cellphone screens do glow, and are very distracting to viewersmany rows back. Thanks for being so responsive to the patrons feedback.</p>

6

<p>We just saw a movie this weekend in a theater. Three toddlers (from different families!) were allowed by their parents to roam up and down the stairs and run in the aisles. It was distracting and annoying.</p>

7

<p>I have several times been the parent to turn around and tell some noisy kids to keep it down. They don’t like it, but they generally are somewhat quieter for a while.</p>

<p>I don’t think this is a new phenomenon, unfortunately. I can remember at my high school in the 1970’s when a visiting theater company performed “The Glass Menagerie” at an assembly–a bunch of kids laughed at the main character’s limp. I still remember how embarassed I was.</p>

8

<p>A number of years ago at a youth symphony concert, a family with a baby that looked to be under a year old chose to sit in the middle of the front row of the hall. (This is a real symphony hall, not a HS auditorium.) The kid cried through the performances of several of the younger string groups, and those idiots just sat there. Finally, when the major youth symphony started to play the major piece, accompanied by a chorus from the local university, the conductor stopped after the first section, turned around, and said “Not everyone likes Prokofiev. But if you are going to cry, you should leave the hall.” The idiot family got up and left. The rest of us somehow refrained from breaking into applause. :)</p>

<p>This is a family event, and people often bring young children, which is fine. But those with really young children normally sit at the back near an exit, just in case.</p>

<p>The woman with the kids and the keys simply boggles my mind. I feel very sorry for her children.</p>

9

<p>Two words: legal murder.</p>

10

<p>In the cartoon “Rhapsody Rabbit,” Bugs Bunny is conducting an orchestra, and he takes out a pistol and shoots an audience member who keeps coughing.</p>

11

<p>I’ve shushed people during performances before. It does tend to embarrass my family members but I’ll be darned if I’m going to sit through something silently when a quick shush will solve the problem. This summer my husband and I went to a professional baseball game and a bunch of young teenagers sat behind us. Their parents were nowhere to be seen. The boy behind me started drumming on the seat right next to me. I let it go for awhile but when it didn’t stop, I gently touched his hand and said, “stop please”. He immediately stopped. I doubt that he realized he was doing it and there were no hard feelings.</p>

12

<p>I make speeches to drum up business, where I give people free lunch to attend my speech.</p>

<p>A number of times, right in the middle of my speech, an attendee will get a cell phone call, and talk to the person on the phone right in the middle of my speech. </p>

<p>I handle that by stopping my talk, and looking at the guy, and eventually, people in the audience will reprimand him.</p>

13

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<p>It is so tempting to get nasty with someone who is being irritating, but as you showed, there is power in the simple, direct, and polite approach.</p>

<p>But sometimes, again: legal murder.</p>

14

<p>I was at a solemn memorial service and a woman’s cell phone rang and she answered it while still in her seat “Hi, how are ya!” She walked out into the vestibule (where we could still hear her) and shot the bull for five minutes.</p>

15

<p>I saw a guy take a call at a naturalization ceremony while Sandra Day O’Connor was speaking.</p>

16

<p>Many years ago, when cell phones were still new, I called my husband while he was giving a speech to 6000 people. He hadn’t turned his phone off. It rang, he answered, asked if everything was okay, then told me he’d call back after he was done with his speech. I’m still embarrassed by this.</p>

17

<p>Nowadays, people just seem to think that any public space is just an extension of their couch at home. I was at a popular music concert recently where the entire family behind me was chatting as loudly as they would at anywhere. As I had not paid $75 to listen to the story about Grandma’s colitis, I turned to tell them that their voices were carrying further than they knew(further as in, right into the back of my head) . The response: “Honey, this aint the public liberry. I can talk as damn loud as I want.” As if they had ever stepped foot in a “liberry”. They then proceeded to kick the back of my chair. I got a manager and had the riff-raff escorted out.</p>

<p>***note: these people’s ages ranged from about 45 to 60. The kids to my right and left, in their 20’s were polite as could be.</p>

18

<p>I have seen much the same thing, people have really forgotten what manners are. It is not unusual during a music concert (talking classical here) for some idiot to have their cell phone on with some obnoxious ring tone (funny story, one concert I was at some moron had the opening to Beethoven’s fifth as their ringtone, went off during a cadenza in a violin concerto…conductor stopped the orchestra and soloist, and then spoke out, quite forcefully, “Beethoven is a wonderful composer, but he doesn’t go well with Dvorak…and I suggest you get a new ringtone, that one is painfully out of tune”… A number of years ago Liam Neeson was doing a one man play about Michael Collins the Irish revolutionary,during one particular passage, some lawyer type (according to descriptions in the newspaper) got a loud cell phone call, and then proceeded to talk as if he were in his own home, going on about some case, etc…Liam Neeson had stopped speaking, and stared down at the guy from his considerable height, glowering at him, and he motioned to some ushers, pointed at the guy, and did his best baseball “yer out” sign, guy was escorted out to the cheers of people in the theater, then the play went on. </p>

<p>There is an even bigger annoyance at classical concerts and it has to do with who the audience is I am afraid. Classical music audiences tend to be older (quite a bit older) and it can be pretty hard to go to concerts sometimes. I realize older people have trouble hearing and such, but often they are talking at the top of their voices (one time my S was performing in a concert with a youth symphony, and a senior group came in, and it was like a comedy sketch, talking loudly trying to find their seats, arguing, meanwhile the concert was going on). You also have candy wrappers rustling, banging on chairs, etc… normally I would be a lot more forgiving, but the same people seem to spend their time complaining about everyone else’s behavior, and when families have younger children they will often sit there, just waiting for the poor kid to rustle or do something they don’t like, then there is hell to pay…</p>

<p>I realize things are a lot more casual, but it should be obvious to turn off the damn cellphone and not text in the middle of a movie or concert (especially since phones kindly have a ‘click’ sound most people don’t turn off). </p>

<p>Reminds me of this women, on a line in the store, gabbering away about how her daughter’s boyfriend was no good, her sister’s family were jerks, etc, nonstop, and when people started answering back snidely, like “I think Suzy should stay with Jess, he seems like quite a guy” and other such remarks (in irritation), the woman looked around and yelled “you are all so rude, I am trying to have a conversation here, a private one” and this big guy, looked like a football player, yelled back at her “did you figure out, you nitwit, that you are having a private conversation in a public place, and that maybe no one cares about your white trash family or its doings?”</p>

19

<p>I guess there’s no controlling how people will react when confronted. If (when) this happens again, I will try to get my nerve up to say something politely and discretely to the offender. I know no one wants to feel attacked or humiliated. </p>

<p>There was an announcement at the beginning of the talent show about turning off cell phones and small children ( the audience always chuckles at the instruction to set children to their “off” position). But these weren’t small children or cell phones, and I don’t know if they were there at the beginning of the talent show since they were not sitting behind me. </p>

<p>The middle school, to its credit (where the horrendous concert took place) had a new principal the following year. They asked some 8th grade students not involved in the event to be baby sitters in an adjacent area for young children of guests in attendance, and they imposed a dress code for those performing on stage (dark pants or skirt, light colored top), and they gave a polite little introduction about how part of the concert included learning how to be a good audience member. It helped a great deal for the future concerts. Although I’ll never forget by the time D was in 8th grade performing a classical piano piece, and an appreciative audience member was whooping and hollering and yelling “you go, girl” at a particular difficult part. I know she meant well, and was trying to be encouraging, and luckily it didn’t seem to throw D off.</p>

20

<p>I am so glad to find this thread. I was recently at an Alison Kraus concert and countless people in front of me were taking pictures throughout the show, on either their cell phones or digital cameras. The viewfinder on all of these devices looked to me (from behind) as a bright, white square in the air between me and the act on stage. I didn’t say anything as I had not been to a concert in a long time and was unsure of the current concert protocol. Needless to say, it was very distracting. But what can you do - there were probably 15-20 people between me and the stage taking photos.</p>