Leadership / 06.19.24
Summer 2024 Tales From the Ticket Office: Customer Apologizes, The Dog Really Did Eat These Tickets, Who Is Robert Plant and More!
Christine Payne
The ticket office is the heartbeat of every live event venue and entertainment organization. Countless stories unfold there, and we just can’t get enough of them. In this new installment of our long-running series, we explore timeless ticket office tales of yesteryear, when rotary and corded desk phones were the norm, plus some modern-day stories that will make you laugh, smile or both!
Cowboy Hats and Concert Chats
Jamie Neptune, Box Office Manager at the Findlay Toyota Center, fondly remembers a heartwarming moment when a spontaneous connection unfolded at a concert.
“I once had a lady buy tickets for her and her boyfriend, and he bailed on her at the last minute. She went in [to the show], and we knew where she was. She had great seats! Then a nice tall drink of water gentleman came up stating his date also had not [shown up],” Neptune recalls. “He had decent seats. We told [him] about [the lady who had arrived earlier] and how great her seats were. Long story short, we introduced them, and they both got to enjoy the concert in good company!”
Neptune continues, “He was so polite. I walked him up to her seat, and he took off his cowboy hat, reached out to shake hands, and asked if she wanted company for the next two hours. Her face lit up. Later on, we saw them both just chatting, drinking a beer in their seats and enjoying Clint Black!”
Recording or Real Person?
Sometimes, reality can be funnier than fiction. At Ravinia Festival, a fan seeking tickets to see author, singer and humorist Garrison Keillor unwittingly became the source of amusement. The caller mistook a lively ticket office greeting for an automated recording.
“Years ago, we had Garrison Keillor’s ‘A Prairie Home Companion Live’ coming to Ravinia,” Director of Ticket Operations Duncan Moss explains. “These were the days of phone sales being greater than or maybe just equal to the internet. We have always had a phone room in our ticket office with about eight ticket staff on the lines, and a customer called in wanting tickets for this performance. After being greeted by our staff, ‘Thank you for calling Ravinia Festival — how may I help you?’, the customer yelled slowly and relatively clearly, ‘GARRISON KEILLOR,’ instead of saying hello back. To which our staff member replied, ‘Are you looking for tickets to that performance?’ The customer replied, ‘Oh, I thought you were a recording, not a real person.’ To this day, we tell this story and laugh about it.”
Lost in Transit
In 1990, David Winn was working at Ticketmaster. One of his clients was the Boston Symphony and Tanglewood, where he now works as Tessitura Liaison and Associate Director of Tanglewood Ticketing. Alongside his decades-long ticketing journey, he shared the tale of a mailing mishap and a 20-year postal adventure.
“I had created a mailing program for the tickets sold by Ticketmaster that could be manually fulfilled by the BSO ticket office. The program created two labels. One with the seating locations that they affixed to the ticket envelope and an address label for the mailing envelope. The BSO ticket office would use their own tickets to fulfill the order,” Winn says.
So, that is exactly what was done, and a pair of hard tickets for the symphony were mailed.
Winn continues, “According to the postmark, the order in the photo was mailed on May 24, 1990, from the BSO ticket office in Boston. There is a stamped message on the envelope that says, ‘Delivered June 26, 2010.’ The yellow return-to-sender sticker is dated Jan. 24, 2011. I have no idea how this was resolved on June 15, 1990, but I assume it involved a location voucher. Thankfully, when I started at the BSO in 2002, we had computers.”
To this day, Winn proudly displays the envelope and tickets on the door to his office at Tanglewood. “It always raises questions from staff and visitors when they really look at it,” he says.
Remote Work Trailblazer
What is your earliest memory of working remotely? Anja Arvo, who works as Senior Sales Lead for Ferve Tickets, has a great story about adventures in remote ticketing. And it dates back almost two decades!
“I was working as the Ticketing System Administrator at The Corporation of Roy Thomson and Massey Hall in Toronto, Canada, where I met my husband. We were going through a spousal sponsorship process, so I asked my employer if I could work remotely in Mexico City for six weeks for the immigration interview, and it was granted. This was 18 years ago, so there was nobody working outside of that office itself, and [it was] very rare at that time.”
Arvo continues, “Three amazing women at this organization approved and coordinated this for me, including the VP, Box Office Manager and IT Manager. A laptop was configured for me with VPN access. I had to buy a large internet device in Mexico that plugged into the laptop. My luggage did not arrive. I had to wear my husband's clothes and some gloves as our apartment was freezing, and it took a long time to warm up on my first working days. My co-workers in Canada thought I might be lounging at the beach and soaking up the sun, but there is no beach in Mexico City, and it does get cold a couple days of the year! They wanted a picture of this ‘outfit’, but I refused! I administered the ticketing system and sent ticket print batches from Mexico City daily to the Boca printer located in Toronto, as there were large mailouts every day. It was very cutting-edge at that time! It’s funny to think back from then until now how remote work has become commonplace and how far technology has come!”
Ticket Window Surprises
Over the years, customers have come up with all kinds of stories about why they need tickets reprinted. Ashley Voorhees, Vice President of Administrative Services for Omaha Performing Arts, has one she can’t forget.
“This may or may not have urine on it,” the patron said while passing a ticket through the window to be reprinted.
Did the patron elaborate beyond that?
Voorhees says, “He started to, and all he got out was ‘urinal’ [before] I interrupted and said, ‘I’m good, throw that ticket away behind you in the trash and I’ll reprint it for you.’”
Lori Murphy, Director of Ticket Sales and Operations for Georgetown University, also has a tale (or should we say “tail”) to share about damaged tickets.
“A guy came to the window once [when I was working with the Washington Nationals] and said his dog ate his tickets. I laughed. Then he produced the chewed-up tickets in a Ziploc bag as proof,” she says.
Murphy has also had some interesting conversations with fans while working for Georgetown.
“A patron came to the window asking why his ticket didn't work when trying to enter [Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C.],” Murphy recalls. “We explained that the Capitals were playing in New York and not at that moment. They did not understand. They swore up and down that the hockey game was happening right then. We again said, not possible, there is a basketball game going on right now. We would not be here if there was a hockey game since we work for Georgetown.”
And the fun continued, shares Murphy.
“Another group of people showed up, again asking why their tickets were not working. I explained to them that there was a basketball game happening at the moment, and their tickets were for Capital One Theater, which is a good 45 minutes away, in Tysons Corner.”
Murphy has also had timing mix-ups herself!
“This actually happened to me and a friend. We were meeting to have drinks and food before a hockey game. When I showed up, around 4:30 p.m., my friend looked at me really sheepishly and said, ‘The game started at 1 p.m., and it's now over.’ I said, ‘Oh, OK, let's eat, then figure something out.’ So, we then walked toward Capital One Arena and realized [D.C.’s basketball team] the Wizards were playing, so I called a friend, and he got us tickets to the Wizards game. Yup, we were in our Caps gear at a Wizards game, jokingly asking where the ice was.”
From Pushy to Pleasant
“I finally had a patron admit she was rude,” Cate Foltin, Business Manager for the Macomb Center for the Performing Arts, shares. “We had an on-sale, and this woman came to the ticket office, [and she was behaving badly] to the point where my staff came back and got me. I pulled her aside. She was talking about how bad my staff was, which they weren’t, they’re excellent. Finally, she said, ‘They were rude, and they said I was rude.’ I said, ‘And were you?’ She paused and said, ‘Yes, I was. And I apologize.’”
Foltin was shocked!
“I have never had that happen before, so I think I’m going to mark it on my calendar and notate it,” she says, laughing.
For those wondering, it was a dance recital on-sale, so the customer in question was a dance mom. “Many people will know what that means,” Foltin says.
There is more to the story, too. Ultimately, Foltin and her team took what started as a customer service challenge and did a pirouette, and their dance mom left the venue happy.
Foltin explains, “Not everybody can sit in row A. They sold 1,300 tickets in less than six minutes for this dance recital. We were trying to grab seats as fast as we could. I asked [the customer] if she had created an online account. She said, ‘Yes.’ I asked, ‘Then why did you wait two hours in the parking lot for the ticket office to open?’”
It turns out, reports Foltin, that this mom was new to the dance studio and other mothers had given her incorrect information about the “lines” for the on-sale. “So, even when she got here at 8 a.m. and saw no one, she still waited. Now mind you, none of those [other] dance moms were here waiting. As far as we could tell, they had purchased their tickets online.”
Foltin continues, “She finally got her seats, and we walked her through the theater. She had never been in our venue before. All the other dance moms had hyped up how fast tickets went, so she was scared coming in; she was on edge. We got her calmed down and she apologized to all my staff on her way out the door. ‘Well, were you [rude]?’ is not a question I would normally ask, but it just came out. It made my day.”
Now, we dance over from Michigan to hear stories about being “Midwest Nice” in Wisconsin.
“One of our sites has a big holiday event, and one year they brought in these high school Norwegian dancers to enhance the program,” Jenna Loda Eddy, Box Office Manager for the Wisconsin Historical Society, says. “I received a call from a dancer's grandmother explaining that their group needed their tickets refunded because they could no longer go, as this young dancer had been injured. I elected to make an exception to our policy and refund their tickets, but not before I was regaled with a full description of how the grandson was injured (basketball), the current condition of the grandson and the prognosis for recovery!”
Another ticket office tale from the Wisconsin Historical Society involves a team member unexpectedly becoming an impromptu travel agent.
“A guest called in looking for information on one of our sites, which my team member provided,” Loda Eddy recalls. “What was at first venue information turned quickly into my team member being asked to plan the guest's entire trip, including what route(s) she should take to get to the venue, where she should stay, and what else she should do in the area. Being ‘Midwest Nice,’ my team member, graciously on the fly, looked up a variety of options for the guest. Twenty minutes later, the guest’s trip was planned and ready to visit with tickets and a full itinerary. Now, if only we could increase our pay for all these additional services we apparently offer!”
Donielle Gross, who works with Ticketmaster today, remembers a call that didn’t end quite as well.
“I once had a customer call in and say we shorted them a ticket. They bought five tickets, seats 6–10, and kept arguing they only had four. I finally asked them to count the tickets with me — 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and they slammed the phone down. This was obviously before mobile phones.”
Fool in the Rain
I couldn’t help but use a Led Zeppelin reference here. “Fool in the Rain” is a great song. Led Zeppelin is a great band. And foolish questions about rain are part of our next ticket office story!
Last year, Georgetown’s Lori Murphy was working a show at Wolf Trap. “It was raining all day, and the show is rain or shine,” she says. “This lady came up [to the ticket window] and was trying to figure out where to sit, inside the pavilion or on the lawn. She then asked me if the grass was wet. Yup. Is the grass wet? I said, ‘Ma'am, it has been raining all afternoon, so yes, the grass will be wet.’ My friends and I still laugh about that to this day.
Our final story for this edition of “Tales From the Ticket Office” is some generational worker fun from Ravinia Festival’s Duncan Moss.
“Recently, we had Robert Plant and Alison Krauss at Ravinia, and during the concert day, after helping a customer, one of our younger staff turned to everyone and said, ‘Who is this Robert Plant, and why are people buying tickets to see him?’ To which everyone answered in unison, ‘He’s the lead singer of Led Zeppelin!’”
The young staffer, says Moss, replied, “Oh. That makes sense.”
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Tags: Leadership , Tales