Chicago’s River East 21 has all the ticket booths behind glass, in the 3rd floor lobby. You go up the escalators, and there are the ticket booths, and you speak to them via a microphone/speaker combination. Of course in that situation, the place is plagued by moron customers who cannot figure out how to work a revolving door, so they use the handicapped doors, blasting the whole lobby with cold air. So they might have put in the glass to keep the ticket sellers from freezing.
In some banks, but not others, even branches of the same bank differ. One bank near me has plexiglass a couple inches thick surrounding the tellers. It is actually very attractive, but another branch (in a neighborhood that I would consider more risky) has nothing other than the normal counter separating the tellers from the customers. It might be that the manager prefers the extra security, but it doesn’t seem to be a bankwide policy.
Bob
We’ve got them here. Some cinemas inside shopping malls are unboothed such as in Siam Paragon and The Emporium. But others inside do have the security glass such as in Central Rama III, MBK Center and the Apex theaters in Siam Square. I can only think it must be the inertia of tradition.
At AMC Theater in Tysons Corner Center in Virginia (huge mall), there are maybe 6 ticket booths behind glass, very much inside the mall.
The two movie theaters we utilize most often both have inside ticket booths. One movie theater has them behind glass, the other does not. My bank does not have tellers behind glass at either branch I utilize most.
I was about to say that I couldn’t think of a theatre in Toronto where the cashiers were behind glass, but now I remember that the (recently closed) Cineplex at Yonge and Sheppard had a glassed-in ticket counter as described in the original post.
I think there are several good reasons to put them behind glass - security, environmental, plus glass helps to screen out noise, too. It can be damn near impossible to hear somebody just a few feet in front of you when the room has two thousand chattering people in it. That little screened hole on the glass often has a microphone in it, which helps the attendant hear the person ordering tickets and not the two thousand people chattering behind them.
Have you been up on the movie floor of Siam Paragon yet? Fucking LOUD most of the time, weekends especially, but for some reason that’s one of the unboothed venues. I’d be suffering from hearing loss if I had to work on that floor.
Old booths were wood paneled with glass, sometimes there’s more wood than glass, sometimes just wood and iron bars. They’re clearly outdoor structures meant to keep wind, rain, drafts out.
All of the movie theaters in the Sacramento area that I have been to are located on the outside wall of the building, with glass windows.
My bank recently (in the last couple of years) enclosed the tellers in glass.
So they penned the tellers, huh?
Another point to ponder. Once upon the time, people went to the movies. They went in droves, even if they walked. For a really popular movie, movie-goers lined up down the block and around the corner. So the incentive was to put the box office near the front rather than waste valuable inside space on lineups. The booth was near front - half the old downtown theatres I remember, the booth was on the exterior, for the other half, there was a small indoor lobby/vestibule and the ticket cashiers’ booths were inside that vestibule.
As I said before, the glass was to prevent grab-and-run. This is more of a risk in the downtown area than in a large shopping mall or a building a few hundred yards from the nearest other building, where everyone has to drive to get there. Of course, if outdoors, leave as small an opening to wonderful winter as possible.
Anything recent is done that way to evoke that theater nostalgia.
Are the ticket booths open directly to the mall, or is there a private lobby for the theater. If open to the mall, then its probably just a matter of not having to open/close the security barrier each day.
That actually the complete opposite of what I’ve seen. The glass covered booths I’ve seen on Long Island have all been within shopping malls or at large theatre complexes with huge parking lots separate from other buildings. While all of the theaters I go to within New York City have the open layout. (Except for the 84th St AMC which has the booth in the side of the building on the street and so obviously has it covered by glass.)
Last year my bank had a major upgrade. They did away with all the windows - it is now completely open, more like an open plan office. Our cinema has a counter like a shop - actually it is a shop selling high priced sweets and popcorn, as well as tickets. Mostly we pay online upfront, and get the ticket from a machine in the lobby.
Surely if you want to rob a bank these days, you don’t buy a shotgun, you buy a computer. (or get a job in one).
I saw an article about bank redesigns like that. Online banking is one reason for it. Another is the increased use of ATMs. So some bank branches are set up so that any deposits or withdrawals are made through the ATM and the tellers are there to assist with other things (opening accounts, etc). This allows a smaller branch and means they don’t need some of the security features (and perhaps not even a vault).
Hmm. Well, they are to the mall, and that is probably the reason. But I think there is no time that the mall is open that the movies are not.
The purpose of a ticket is to prevent fraud. It’s a form of double-entry book-keeping: you count the number of tickets sold, and compare that to the box-office takings.
The purpose of having seperate sales and delivery is to prevent fraud. The entrence attendent never handles money, so he isn’t in a position to pocket the money and let people in. The ticket seller handles money, but can’t grant entrence except by providing a ticket.
The amazing thing is that this expensive anti-corruption measure, requiring two people to do the work that one could, plus tickets that you just rip up as soon as they are sold, actually comes out ahead in real life.
So the most common reason for not splitting up the cash/fullfillment functions is that the person you deal with is the actual owner/operator.
In old movies, you’ll also see theatre tickets sold from what is also the managers office just inside the front door. The window is glassed in to reduce noise, cut down on drafts, give a view in and out, and prevent people reaching across to the cash, the tickets, and the keys, when the window is unattended.
I can’t think of a standalone theater or multiplex in the San Francisco Bay Area that doesn’t have externally facing ticket windows. Regardless of whether it is an old movie palace (Grand Lake) or a brand new multiplex (the Century in Union City).
The only ones without, that I can think of, are where theaters are part of a larger structure (such as Metreon, SF Centre, Embarcadero, Kabuki).