Background: I'm a very shy, quiet person who keeps herself to herself.
All my children in a show and on Friday we watched the dress rehearsal. This is the first show at this theatre group my children have done. Before the start of the show, children came on to the stage and posed for photos (for info, no permission was asked from parents) . Dress rehearsal starts, one of my children comes on to stage and I film him. At their old theatre group, this was allowed. About 30 seconds into the dance, all music stops and one of the theatre group leaders calls across the (packed) hall and says 'who was filming the children?' I looked around as I thought something bad had happened only to notice all eyes on me, so I realised it was me being told off here! So I had to put my hand up and say 'it was me'. I was literally mortified. With that, he came marching over, said to me 'Did you have permission from all the parents in here to film their children? No, I didn't think so. I am going to have to watch you delete it Infront of me right now. This is a safeguarding issue, perhaps you need to come to a safeguarding course that we run for chaperones'. I was actually shaking and deleted the video , whilst being watched by I imagine 300 parents and all the children on stage (including one of mine). My 4 year old son was on stage burst into tears as he didn't understand what was going on. The other theatre leader who is a bit nicer came rushing over to my son and then to me to say 'it's our policy not to film, we should have announced it at the start but I need to check your film has been deleted'. So again, Infront of the packed room I had to prove I had deleted it. By this point I was close to tears myself. I am painfully shy and this was awful.
I watched the dress rehearsal and wanted to cry for the whole hour. As I left with my children at the end, the man approached me in the carpark to once again re-iterate his policies and I said that I didn't appreciate the way it was done Infront of everyone and that I was so humiliated. He said (in a horrible way) 'well you are not giving me the chance to apologise as you are walking away from me' (which I was because I was trying not to cry).
So my question is, AIBU for being so upset? I am SO embarassed that I feel like I don't ever want to go back to the place. If I had known their policy, I obviously would not have filmed. As people were taking photos I naively assumed I could film my son .
I feel that all they needed to do was to tell me discreetly?? Like maybe a little tap on the shoulder to say 'sorry, you're not allowed to film' or to come up to me after and fine, ask me to delete it, but do it discreetly.
FWIW, there are hundreds of pictures of the dress rehearsal all over facebook that I didn't give permission for them or other people to take of my children! (I don't mind, but if I did, I was given no opportunity to say so).
Every time I think of it I cringe, and it's really put a downer on my weekend.