I know @Eyebrows_0f_Doom lives in NYC. I don’t know about @iamatractorboy.
But I suspect urban vs. suburban vs. rural plus regional variation plus differing corporate policies has a lot to do with how staffed / unstaffed a theater is.
Since it’s been pretty well established upthread that the theater makes its money from concessions, having a concession stand that a) requires employees to dispense product and collect payment, and b) has no employees present, seems like a failure.
Did somebody finally show up to sell popcorn & sodas?
On the larger issue of staffing in general, IMO this is applicable:
In effect labor has become largely too expensive to use in movie theaters. And lots of other similar retail experiences. The only thing keeping clerks in stores is the shoplifters. If they had a magic way to stop shoplifters from entering the store, there’d be nobody inside except customers. In effect the store becomes a giant vending machine.
Since the cost of a freeloader “stealing” a movie viewing is zero, they’re not much concerned about preventing it. That’s much less true at e.g. Wal*Mart.
Of course, not everyone in a decision-making role trying to optimize profits has perfect information about consumer behavior. Most of the movie exhibition chains have been through multiple bankruptcies. Maybe they aren’t run by geniuses. Personally, I don’t care that much that it costs $25 to pick up a soda, popcorn, and bag of candy, but I will not stand in line for 30 minutes to do it, so cutting that $12/hr concession worker and making the process of buying snacks laborious just makes me head straight to the auditorium without buying food. They would have been better off staffing that person as I would have paid for two hours of their wages. Lots of people probably think similarly.
I wrote what I meant.
LSLGuy is correct, I live in NYC and they almost always scan tickets everywhere here. Very very very rarely they will not have someone stationed in the basement section of Lincoln Square (they only have three screens downstairs, the rest and IMAX are upstairs) but it’s pretty much a 100% certainly that your ticket will be scanned/ripped anywhere you go here. Major chain, indie theater, doesn’t matter. (Theaters are also usually always packed so it’s kinda funny when people say nobody goes to the movies anymore. Well they certainly do here!)
A person at the door is also protecting concessions revenue by enforcing the rules on outside food…not that I imagine they pay anybody enough to actually confront any offender who makes the least attempt to hide it.
Checking for outside food, indeed. I’m reminded of when my sister and I went to see Dances with Wolves. It was a bit chilly so we both wore fairly puffy jackets…which contained a half case of beer. We stuffed it in the sleeves and pockets and each drank a six-pack over the course of the movie. The people around us were pretty pissed (as were we), especially because the empties kept rolling down the sloped floor to the front of the theater.
Had to wait until it came out on VHS before I learned what happened at the end. And I’m more considerate now.
But would you pay enough to have two people at that concession stand during all the operating hours? If the OP saw two people holding soda cups, my guess is that there was a single person running the concession stand in which case they will necessarily be out of sight occasionally ( using the rest room, restocking etc)
I’m curious about some of the comments I’ve seen here.
I’ll admit I’m not as frequent a movie goer as I used to be. I’ll go to see a movie in a theater maybe five or six times a year.
But I don’t have to buy my tickets online and I don’t have to reserve a particular seat. I just walk into the theater, buy a general ticket, get told what room my movie is playing in, and then I go to that room and choose whatever seat I want.
I’ve watched movies at four different theaters this year and they’ve all been the same.
Is buying tickets online the norm now and I’ve just somehow missed it? Same question with choosing what seat you’ll have when you buy the ticket?
Particularly for the big theater chains (AMC, Marcus, Cinemark, etc.), yeah, it is the norm now. You can still walk up and buy tickets at the theater with those chains, but IME, they are doing assigned seating even then.
Google tells me that currently about 75% of all tickets at movie theaters in the U.S. are bought at the movie theater and 25% are bought online.
Assigned seating has no relation to whether you can buy tickets online or not. If the movie theater has assigned seating and you buy the ticket at the box office, you have to choose an assigned seat among those left. If the movie theater has assigned seating and you buy the ticket online, you have to choose an assigned seat when you buy the ticket online.
I kinda said that. 
Theaters that do assigned seating will assign seats regardless of whether you buy ahead of time or not.
I live in the UK. Checking tickets has always been a thing here.
Going back to the OP, I’d say that visiting a cinema midweek early in the day is definitely not going to be representative of a typical attendance (although being school holidays I’d expect some kids there). So I guess as others have said, the boss probably just figures it isn’t cost effective at that time of day to have someone checking tickets.
I’ve been in a theater exactly once in the last 5-7 years. It was for “The Boys in the Boat”, based on the book of the same name. It was an “outing” for folks from The Home. The place wasn’t exactly crowded. Bought my popcorn from a dead-eyed teen girl who clearly hoped death would take her soon. Honestly, despite any hype or “You must see this on the big screen!” comments, I’m just fine waiting for movies to come to a streaming service. And if they don’t, that’s okay too.
The last movie I went to was in a theater that has recliners for everyone, and lots of real food options on the menu that you could order online ahead of time.
I took advantage, and regretted it. (I ordered nachos, but between the dimness of the movie theater, and the recliner thing, they were not as fun to eat as I had hoped. I also felt weird because my half dozen companions only ordered popcorn if that).
It felt weird and creepy to walk in when no one cared about my ticket, although sitting in the right place facilitated the arrival of my nachos.
But I think a lot of the weird and creepy was just Monday Evening, almost no one at the theater.
I heard this story on the radio yesterday, it discusses market trends like OP noticed but also the paradoxical enormous blockbusters this year. In part, rising ticket prices help offset falling number sold.
Don’t forget, buying online (especially for assigned seating, which is for 80% of my local theaters!) is a profit driver! Sure, they are still handing over a huge percentage of ticket sales to the movie provider, but those “service fees” to buy online are profitable.
My preferred local theater charges $1.50 per ticket to do so, and last I tried, I think Fandango did $2-3 per ticket (no idea if part of that is shared to the theater). Profit profit profit. And it can be worth it, compared to driving 5-10 miles to get tickets in person, especially if the “good seats” might not be available and the cost of gas!
But for more than one, or maybe two people, adds up fast!
we caught the Odyssey in IMAX four weeks back, and the screenings that worked with our schedule were sold out in the first three theaters we tried to purchase tickets for (online). They scanned our tickets before we entered the theater hallway, like normal; I don’t believe I’ve ever been to a movie theater that didn’t either tear your physical ticket in half, as God intended, or scan the bar code on your phone. Certainly I’ve never been to a movie without anyone somehow controlling access to the theaters.
I think you’re missing the point - they don’t care what you do after you bought the ticket, sure. But per the OP, no one was even checking to see if anyone even bought a ticket in the first place.
Have you been to a theater in town lately? I haven’t since well before the plague. If so, what is the scene like? I know we are generally behind the times.