Some­times a fly likes to take time out from fre­quent­ing the fine bars of this city to spend some time in the fine cinemas of this city.

But when one buzzes into a cinema foy­er, one does not expect to find that one has walked into a staff meet­ing, espe­cially when one is in the posh sec­tion of the cinema – the part that charges $31.50 a tick­et.

Yet there I was, try­ing to pro­cure tick­ets to Mamma Mia for me and mi amore, when I found myself the unin­ten­tion­al audi­ence of a man­ager who was loudly announ­cing some import­ant news to staff: the posh $31.50 tick­ets would soon no longer come with free pop­corn and soft drink.

That’s loco, crazy-insane, I thought. Pop­corn and soft drink cost cents to make – surely they can afford to give it away to cus­tom­ers pay­ing $31.50 a tick­et.

The prob­lem was, the man­ager explained to his charges, that punters were filling up on the free pop­corn and drinks and not buy­ing any of the food offered on the menu. It was, after all, a busi­ness that needed to make a profit. And not, one pre­sumes, a food bank.

Now I don’t want to go read­ing too much into this, but I can­’t help but won­der if man­age­ment is tak­ing the wrong approach here. I sug­gest they start with not hold­ing staff meet­ings in pub­lic areas, and then con­sider how many people just take the free food because it’s there, rather than because they’re hungry/thirsty.

I was plan­ning a romantic night at the posh lounge cinema see­ing the Dark Knight, but instead I’m switch­ing to some nibbles at Sweet Mother­’s Kit­chen, fol­lowed by a private screen­ing of the 1966 Bat­man movie ($9.99 from the Ware­house).

Photo cour­tesy of Aim and Shoot!‘s Flickr pho­to­stream.