We finally saw “Fahrenheit 9/11” this afternoon. An amazing piece of work, in many ways, and also infuriating in other ways (as everything Michael Moore does is).

This isn’t going to be a review of the film, though. What happened as I was buying the tickets was almost more startling than anything in the film.

We went to the Showcase multiplex on Carpenter Road to see the movie. We went an hour or so early to get tickets; Steve waited out in the car while I ran in to get them. I got in a not-too-long line. There were two cashiers, a woman and a man — more accurately, a teenager, because he couldn’t have been older than 18.

I asked him whether the 4.10 show was sold out. “No, there’s plenty of seats left,” he said. I was getting my money out to hand to him and he gave me a strange look.

He said, “I don’t know. Personally, I think it’s a disgrace.”

He couldn’t have been talking about the lack of sold seats. He couldn’t have been talking about anything other than the movie. I was so startled I didn’t know what to say, but to keep the transaction moving along, and curious to see if he’d go on in this vein, I just said, “It is?”

“Yeah,” he said, then, seeming to realize he had stepped out of his bounds as a cinema employee, he sort of looked down sheepishly as I handed him the cash and got my change. He mumbled something else, but I was too shocked to hear what he’d said.

A guy who was supposed to be selling me a ticket had just told me that the movie he’d taken my cash to give me a ticket to watch was a “disgrace.”

He gave me my change. “Enjoy the show,” he said, incongruously.