IT'S TOO LOUD

The loudest theater I ever went to was in New Delhi, India in 1986. I took my Tibetan Lama friend, Geshela and his translator, Lobsang, to Return of the Jedi. It was the only time in my life that I literally had to watch the whole movie with my fingers in my ears so I wouldn't go deaf from the loudness. I sometimes wonder if people's hearing there was so affected by no mufflers on car and truck engines that they had already lost most of their hearing there.

Today, though was a different experience. I was home here on the Coast in California. Lately, though I go to a lot of movies at the local theaters, there has been a change. This change is the 1/2 hour or more of LOUD LOUD commercials that NO ONE WANTS TO SEE OR HEAR way before the previews and movie even start.

In order for me to get angry enough to write this article I had to go out and ask the theater manager on ten different occasions on ten different movies to turn down the volume on the advertisements because it hurt our ears. Out of those ten different movies where advertisements played that NO ONE wants to hear or see the volume went down only 3 to 5 times. The rest of the time it remained so deafening that many of us just considered going home. Today was one of the times it stayed deafening.

At the end of the movie the ushers came in and told us all to leave because there wasn't any more movie so those of us who wanted to watch the credits couldn't. I think theaters need to be more careful who they hire. If they hire thugs people will stop coming. Also, we are paying you to see the movie. You are not paying us to watch commercials. If I wanted to watch commercials I can do that at home NBC,CBS,ABC on TV. I know there are a lot of problems for theaters staying in business these days. But unless "The customer is always right!" there is really no point at all to be in business in the first place. I like watching movies I just don't want (there are thousands and millions of us) to be deafened unnecessarily and intimidated by people who know absolutely nothing, obviously about running a successful business about creating satisfied customers.

I have run many successful businesses and success always came for me when I understood what my customers wanted and gave it to them. These were always my most successful businesses. I think this is somewhat true of all businesses.