AtP2: Damage control is no laughing matter
PR would be an easy business, if only we could get rid of all of the non-trained people who make our jobs difficult.
(Of course, then no real work would get done…)
Your corporate reputation is in the hands of every person who draws from your payroll. And we know how many employees don’t wash their hands.
Here’s a case where the employees can do just about every thing you could want, and still get you in trouble. An AMC theater in Florida is now treading lightly after kicking out a developmentally-challenged boy who laughed too much during a movie. The 19-year-old has a little-known condition called Angelman syndrome, which limits his functions to that of a two-year-old.
“Here’s a child that was laughing at a comedy,” Susan Brown said Monday. “His way of expressing delight and joy at this movie was laughing, but because his communication technique got in the way of someone else’s space, he had to leave.”
The family has been to the theater a number of times, but this is the first where there had been a complaint. The staff tried offering replacement tickets to another screening, but to no avail:
“That (the ticket) wasn’t the point,” said Brown, a stay-at-home mom. “Nobody apologized. Nobody looked at Matt in the eye. It was like he didn’t exist.”
About 20 minutes later, Brown said she went in to get her younger son. Once back in the theater, she paused to give the audience a piece of her mind.
“I guess it’s not appropriate to laugh at a children’s comedy and if you have a disability you don’t need to laugh too loud,” she told the crowd. “Have a nice evening.”
This is a tough one… the ADA does give discretion when one person’s condition affects many others. But that typically has been defined as a violence or safety issue… not a disruption caused by laughter.
According to a statement issued by AMC spokeswoman Melanie Bell, “AMC Theatres has great respect for our guests with special needs and we work very hard to provide everyone the opportunity to attend our theatres comfortably.
“In this particular instance, several members of the theater audience complained that the guest’s outbursts were disruptive,” the company said.
The family is petitioning the ACLU to pursue a case, which only serves to keep AMC in the headlines. And it’s hard to beat a sympathetic kid, even when the law appears to be on your side.
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This is a tough one. Now it’s becoming an ACLU and ADA issue, when perhaps the creation and publicizing of specific rules of conduct (e.g., no loud talking during the show, no throwing food, etc.) could have helped avoid the situation. But even then these rules would be open to interpretation.
I know that some movie theaters offer one afternoon a month where parents of infants can enjoy a show without interrupting other patrons. Although I personally didn’t participate in any of these showings when my children were babies, from what I’ve heard, parents seem to like this option.
I’ve also been on the other side where I’ve had bad experiences in movie theaters due to regular patrons blocking the screen, kicking my seat, talking loudly and engaging in behavior better reserved for a hotel room. I just put up with it, figuring that if I didn’t like it, next time I should stay home and rent from Netflix.
Comment by Andrea Weckerle — March 3, 2006 @ 10:38 am
As Andrea said, this is a tough one. I equate it somewhat to the parents of special needs children who insist that their kids be in mainstream classrooms despite the disruption it causes to others.
One one hand, mainstreaming like that can be very valuable for everyone. On the other hand, it can also create situations that make it difficult for the other children to learn.
In an ideal world, the parents would recognize that the theater was put in the middle of an unwinnable situation, and they would let it go.
My PR advice to the theater? Wish I had something brilliant, but I don’t. It sounds like they did the right thing by offering the mom tickets to another screening. This might be one that they just have to ride out.
Comment by John Wagner — March 3, 2006 @ 11:22 am
The only other thing they could have done was offer free passes (multiple) to the offended viewers. It’s a sticky thing… and I don’t think I made the point that the staff could have done a whole lot worse.
Comment by Ike — March 3, 2006 @ 11:26 am
This is only a PR nightmare for the PR people who don’t give the general public any credit.
Sympathetic as the kid might be, most of the people are going to side with the theater because they’re going to identify more with the folks who couldn’t enjoy their movie in peace because of this unfortunately afflicted kid.
If you heard a 19-year-old laughing hysterically at a movie your first thought would be that he was either high or intentionally ruining the experience for everyone else.
The theater tried to do right by the young man and his mother while also taking care to remember that if they catered to this one person they would alienate a theaterful of people.
AMC doesn’t come off badly at all.
My father works at a local golf course. One time a player unskilled at the game and untrained in the etiquette of the course brought a foursome to play on a busy Saturday. His group played slowly, stopped after 9 holes for a long lunch and then became angry when told he couldn’t simply butt back into the sequence of groups on the tenth tee.
He detailed his day in a letter to the editor of the local paper. To the average observer I’m sure this looked like disaster. When my dad read the letter, he could not have been happier. Since the overwhelming majority of players at the course were people who did not want to spend the day waiting behind people like the letter writer, the course was actually enjoying good publicity.
The message to the course’s target audience was this: We enforce the rules of play so that you can enjoy your round in half a day and not half a week.
I know you’re not trained to think so but sometimes you can trust the public to make the correct judgement about a situation. And the ones who don’t are often people who weren’t going to be your customers anyway.
Comment by John — March 5, 2006 @ 7:38 am
Good points, John (and thanks for continuing to drop by.) This really isn’t the end of the world, and you’d hope that every consumer thought for themselves. It would make my job easier. I do see some key differences, though:
1) The universe of potential golfers is much smaller than the universe of potential movie-goers. Yes, there is etiquette involved in both, but the law of the links is more clearly defined for that group.
2) A complaint about a local golf course tends to stay local. A complaint about a theater chain that gets to the ACLU/ADA lawsuit level does have repercussions. People who’ve never been to Tampa have been to AMC theaters — and a cursory glance at a headline that makes the chain out to be mean might sway some folks away. (I am not in Tampa and you are, but I can’t imagine very many news managers kicking this story to the curb. The fact that it runs favors the kid and the family.)
3) Consumers are far more likely to stay away from a business accused of something in the news than they will to patronize one for doing something good. The fervent families of special-needs kids (and their extended networks) have a greater vested interest in bad-mouthing the chain than a “spontaneous evangelist.” In fact, people are 12-times more likely to share a bad experience than a good one.
PR is more than just countering messages and spin — it’s also monitoring what’s being communicated about you. Any and all things have the potential to impact the financials. This is just an example of something that “happens.” The employees did nothing wrong, and as far as I can tell, did nothing to exacerbate it. Yet it is a reality, and a good PR person won’t let an AMC exec dismiss this as “nothing.” There’s still a lot of potential for this to blow up.
Give me a shout — it’s been too long.
Comment by Ike — March 5, 2006 @ 1:00 pm
Certainly the example I cited has differences from the this case but the point it raises is still valid. And that is this: The person complaining thought he was doing damage to the company when, indeed, he was doing the opposite.
At the most cursory glance at the theater situation I get: Theater removes mentally retarded kid from movie for laughing too loudly. To which I respond: Hooray for AMC.
To whom is this a bad situation? The mother of the young man. You’d be hard pressed to prove that the 19-year-old kid realizes he suffered any slight. To the rest of the people in the theater, the theater did a good thing. Even if news stories feature only quotes or soundbites from the mother, all I can think about when I read them are all the times I’ve sat at the movies wishing someone would just shut up so I could enjoy the film.
If I do PR for AMC do I worry? Sure. That’s my job.
As a regular Joe Schmo on the street (which I largely am now, by the way) I simply can’t make AMC out to be the bad guys. The more I think about it, the more the mother gets my dander up. If the kid has the mental acuity of a two-year-old, what’s he doing at the movies anyway? Can he possibly follow a story line at that age? His laughs are most likely prompted by hearing others do it and thinking that’s what he should be doing too.
To me, and my untrained and unprofessional eye, this is only negative publicity for AMC if people think that the chain did someone an injustice. I don’t see it.
Badmouthing doesn’t always equal bad news.
Comment by John — March 5, 2006 @ 6:06 pm
Ike,
You couldn’t pick an easier case study??? On the one hand, someone could argue that the mother of the develepmentally disabled child is litigious and is exploiting the situation (and her son) for personal profit. You can also sympathize with AMD for taking action after several theatergoers complained.
On the other hand, the uncontrolled laughter seems beyond the control of the 19-year-old or his mother…or was it? Clearly this is not the first time the mother experienced this kind offf behavior by her son. In my mind, the responsibility rested on her to quell or at least calm the outbursts. She didn’t, and will lose a lawsuit (in the court of public opinion) if one ever comes to pass.
But of course, this happened in state of Florida, so there’s no telling what can happen!
Comment by Peter Himler — March 6, 2006 @ 8:09 pm
This can be one of the worst situations for a control freak.
AMC and the employees have done all they really can, yet there is still a lot of negative potential here. It’s all in the hands of the family and the attorneys, and they can poison this thing as much as they want.
Years ago, this type of thing was more likely to blow over. It still might, but there is something about the “permanence” of the internet. All it takes is a few blog-zealots to write one-sided hit pieces, and this episode will turn up in all kinds of future web searches.
One thing I’ve noticed about internet “debates:” when it’s time to go back to historical links, people are less likely to dig around and get the whole picture.
This is one case where AMC is along for the ride.
Comment by Ike — March 6, 2006 @ 8:20 pm