Seat-Stealer

I had a Curb Your Enthusiasm moment last night while waiting for Inside the Actor’s Studio to begin taping.

I wish, wish, wish I’d been able to channel Larry David a bit better. I tried, I really tried. I tried to be assertive on behalf of the people who were the victims of completely absurd human behavior but I had to stop because I was afraid that I was going to punch The Blonde Girl in the face, or at the very least pull her pony tail really hard from behind her.

Picture it:

James Lipton says “You may all leave. Just take a bracelet and make sure that you come back at 9:30 when the taping will begin.”

People take bracelets and leave. Presumably they will be coming back. What sort of person wouldn’t come back?

The show was sold out, packed to capacity. People had been waiting in line, hoping for last minute tickets, that sort of thing. People were rabid for this event. A lot of people couldn’t find seats during the initial seating. It’s General Admission with reserved seats for guests, but there weren’t even enough seats for the guests.

Here is the original conformation of people sitting in my row (the top row) and the row in front of me (the bottom row). My group is navy blue:



As soon as people got up to leave, The Blonde Girl from the Light Blue Group started asking us what we thought would happen. Would it really start at 9:30? How long would it go? Would it be rude to leave early? She has a job and has to work in the morning! Poor thing!

The next thing I know, The Blone Girl and her two lackeys move their things and just steal the seats of the people who were sitting in front of us, so now it looks like this:



Meanwhile, three members of our group left to get food as they’d been waiting for hours and wouldn’t, now, be able to eat dinner afterwards since afterwards would be, like, midnight or later. Three of us stayed behind to watch over the seats.

Then this happened:



The Red Couple, very nice people, returned to find their seats stolen. Rather than cause a scene, they make a move for the two seats remaining between us and the Purple Trio, who have now taken the seats that The Light Blue Group abandoned. I wasn’t mad at the Purple Trio, however, because the Light Blue Group gave up their seats to steal the seats of the Red Couple.

I said “Oh, I’m sorry. Those seats are saved.”

“But these people stole our seats!”

“I know, and they suck.”

The Blonde Girl rolled her eyes. She said “Why don’t you just sit next to us?” rather bitchily. So the Red Couple sat down next to the Light Blue Group.

All was fine until the yellow group returned!



“You guys are in our seats!” they said.

The Red Couple said “We’re sorry. We know. We have nowhere to sit because they stole our seats!”

“Well, we want them back!” said The Yellow Group.

They looked at the Light Blue Group, and the Light Blue Group refused to move. “Look, I was told that we could move seats,” said The Blonde Girl. A lie.

“No she wasn’t,” I said.

“Look, we just want our seats back,” said the leader of The Yellow Group.

“But those people stole our seats!” The Blonde Girl complained. “They just took our seats!” she said, pointing to The Purple Trio who hadn’t stolen her seats. They hadn’t stolen her seats because they saw her give up her seats to steal seats of another. She was trying to play it off, blame those people, but she never offered to get out of the seats she’d stolen by reclaiming her old seats.

She’d moved because she wanted to sneak out early because, woe is her, she has a job and has to work the following day.

“Well, you took our seats and you need to move,” said The Yellow Group leader.

“But those people took our seats!” she yelled.

“No, they didn’t,” I said. “You are the first one who stole seats and now nobody has a seat and it’s your fault.”

“What? What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with you people? Like you expect to like get the same subway seat every morning when you commute? Like its your seat? You people are ridiculous!” she said.

“We’re not leaving until you give us our seats back,” said the yellow leader.

“She stole all these seats,” I said again.

She finally backed down and she and her lackeys moved to the middle of the row.



Now she was in the middle, unable to sneak out effectively. Mwa ha ha!!!

She was throwing a fit for like the next 20 minutes, pissed that the people wanted their seats back, trying to blame the people who moved into her seat after she gave hers up. She said things like "Everyone here is so ridiculous. I don't know what their problem is. Why do they have to be so mean? What's wrong with them?" She was all in huff. I said to The Yellow Group “I’m glad you guys didn’t back down. She sucks. She totally just stole your seats.”

“Oh, I wasn’t going to back down.”

Then, of course, it happened again. The Green People came back and wanted their seats.



The Blonde Girl threw another fit, turned around to The Purple Trio, and said “They started this! They stole our seats so we had to move here! JUST SIT SOMEWHERE ELSE!!”

Lies. All lies!!

“No, you’re in our seats.”

This went back and forth for like ten minutes, and finally the leader of The Green People got an usher who ordered her to move!

Did she!? NO! She WOULD NOT! And what happened when she did not move? Nothing, because The Green People (not the leader) backed down and said “We can just sit somewhere else.”

NO!

They left.

The Blonde Girl got away with it.

I hate her.

She lied, and worse, blamed other people for what she did. You can’t blame the people who took your seats after they saw you take someone else’s! What is wrong with her?

It is perfectly appropriate, once the show has begun or even shortly before it is about to begin, to move forward if there are empty seats. Everyone does that.

This situation, granted, is morally ambiguous. Without a concrete decree of what will happen to the seats, I suppose its a free-for-all.

But I feel like the right thing to do is not steal someone else's seat until you are certain that the person is not coming back.

Maybe it’s not so bad that she took the seats. Maybe it’s more her attitude about taking the seats. Clearly she knew stealing the seats was wrong, which is why she turned around and blamed the people who allegedly stole her seat and pinned the whole situation on them, the Seat-Stealers!

I could have killed this girl.

I wanted to be Larry David and just say what was on my mind, how she was being absurd.

Although, I guess in this situation Larry David would have sided with the Seat-Stealer, because really, why would a seat be yours if you’re not sitting in it?

I crave order.

And I hate entitlement. It is one of my biggest pet peeve. I kept wanting to yell "Who do you think you are!?!?" and then "I hate your ponytail!"

I hate this girl’s attitude. I hate that she lied. “I was told that we could move seats.” No you weren’t! I hate that she tried to pawn it off on people who were uninvolved. And I hate that nobody put her in her place, which is why she, and people like her, will continue to feel entitled.

All she had to say was “I’m sorry, I was hoping you weren’t coming back” and I wouldn’t have wanted to throttle her.

But no. She's allowed to do whatever she wants and gets mad at people who get in her way.

I felt violent. D said "This situation is so stressful."

I said "I think I want to beat that girl up."

"You're going to have to get in line."

D's friend said "Too bad you finished your Skittles because we could have thrown them at her head all night."

That would have been good.

I know this is the worst story ever, but I'm still wound up about it and may want to feel insane about it again in a year, at which point the diagrams will be helpful.