The rights of Geeks

[Alastair D'Silva]

Firstly, my apologies in advance to those of you who do not thing this
relevant.

I just had an ugly experience, and am making moves to correct it. Below
is a copy of what has been posted to Slashdot (with the HTML stripped).

Vote with your feet people!




Have you (as an adult) ever been disciminated against because of your
tendancy towards geekdom? Well, I have, and am not happy about it. What
can we do? We'll have to let these businesses know that this behaviour
will not be tolerated! We are geeks, hear us roar!

I just got home from the local cinema (Hoyts Woden in Canberra,
Australia) after watching Matrix Reloaded, at least, that was the plan.
After waiting in line for 2 hours, the manager approached me and said
that my laptop was not permitted in the cinema, and that I would have to
leave it in the car or leave in their possession, neither of which
seemed like a reasonable choice as I had work stored on the laptop that
was not committed to CVS yet. After some discussion, I stated that I'll
leave my laptop in their care, provided that they provide me with a
signed receipt stating that they accept full responsibility for it
whilst in their care. Well, they gave me a receipt, but blatantly
refused to take any responsibility for the machine. About this point,
the hired muscle steps in and starts ranting on about how secure it
would be (totally missing the point that I wanted someone responsible
for my work if the machine is lost).

Now, I was faced with two options - relent and potentially lose my work
with no recourse, or ask for a refund. I chose the latter, which is
where the problems started. I sat down on a couch and started coding,
when the hired muscle came over and stated that I had to move to the
foyer - fair enough, except that the manager had removed all the couches
before asking him to move me!

At this point, I was getting a bit frustrated, and told them that there
was another laptop and 2 cameras inside anyway (since my friends had
them, and in fact Hoyts staff had seen the cameras being used while we
were waiting). The manager stated that he didn't care, and that he had
done his job. The hired muscle had stated that there was no way a laptop
could have got past him, and I offered to show it to him when my friends
came out. He agreed, thus implying that there was no problem with me
sitting in the foyer until the movie finished. However, a few minutes
afterwards the manager spoke to the security guard again who then asked
me to leave the cinema. When asked why, he replied it was because the
staff had to leave and the cashboxes would be unattended (how do they
protect them from those watching the movies then?).

Well, I couldn't be bothered arguing, so I left, but could not shake the
feeling that I was treated unfairly. The only way I can see to educate
these businesses is with our feet, so I call on my fellow geeks to voice
their frustrations and expose these businesses to the community at
large. For those who wish to let this cinema know their opinion, email
me (badhoyts at d-silva.org) and I'll print out and hand deliver the
responses (after removing your email address of course).

If there is enough response, I'll dedicate some time to setting up a
website where we geeks can voice our criticisms and commendations to
businesses.

-- 
Alastair D'Silva           mob: 0413 485 733
Networking Consultant      fax: 0413 181 661
New Millennium Networking  web: http://www.newmillennium.net.au