Food taken into Pukekohe cinema brazen move, says Newstalk ZB’s Ryan Bridge

THREE KEY FACTS:

• A Pukekohe movie theatre has trespassed two women after they brought their own food into the cinema.
• A heated debate ensued, with staff asking the cinemagoers to leave and police being called.
• A video of the incident was posted on TikTok on Tuesday night and has since amassed 171,800 views.

OPINION

Newstalk ZB host Ryan Bridge is a New Zealand broadcaster. He previously hosted the breakfast show AM on Three as well as the Ryan Bridge Drive Show on Magic Talk radio.

Ryan Bridge is wondering where people’s shame went when it comes to breaking the rules.

This is not the most important story that you will hear today, but it grinds my gears.

It’s a small, seemingly insignificant event, but I think it speaks to two things that I absolutely hate about the world that we live in right now.

It took place at cinema three in Pukekohe. You might have seen the video on the Herald website.

So, two women and a child go to the movies, they sneak food in, which I know is not the biggest thing happening in the world right now.

We’ve all done it too, haven’t we?

For an alternative view: Film snacks not peanuts

These guys, these entitled prats, let’s just call them what they are, they had food, they had drinks, they had snacks, they had hot food, they snuck hot food into the cinema. That’s brazen.

The guy working at the cinema goes over them and says, you’re not allowed to bring your own food in.

And these guys just are having none of it. First of all, the worker who comes over has an Asian accent, which they mock. They sit there and they start berating him: “Oh, you’ve made my daughter cry. You’ve made my daughter cry.”

It’s his cinema.

The police came and had to escort them out for goodness’ sake. They refused to move, they demanded refunds, they carried on eating.

They said, I wish I had my vape here, I’d start vaping and things like that.

The staff said they felt unsafe. They had to turn the movie off, so whoever was in the movie missed out.

People, the cinema has rules. It’s clearly signposted apparently five times throughout the cinema complex that you cannot bring your own food.

And so, my feelings: one, if you can’t go an hour forty without eating, you probably should. Two, this is a wider issue. It’s about people not respecting rules. It’s not your property, businesses need to make money otherwise they go out of business and people lose their jobs.

And number three, and this is the most egregious breach for me, they posted it all to TikTok.

Just the audacity to film all of that, berate the poor person working there, and then put it all on TikTok.

It’s shameless. And that is what’s wrong with us today, we have no shame anymore.

You steal something - Oh, it’s the cost of living crisis.

You do something terrible - Oh, it’s my mental health.

Where is the shame from breaking rules?

I don’t see much of it at Cinema Three Pukekohe, that’s for sure.

This article was originally published on newstalkzb.co.nz.