The Thing with an Ironic Title

'Ello, you lucky people!

When you hear the word "master," you get a very distinct mental picture. I'm not going to explain the nature of semiotics because frankly I don't understand it myself, but essentially it's how our mind understands words based on what they symbolize. Think about the word "master" for a moment. What do you picture? A Master Lock? Yoda, who was a Jedi Master? He-Man, who was the Master of the Universe? MasterCard even? At any rate, it's understood that the word "master" should only be applied when something is, in fact, the honest to God best there is at something. I happen to work for a company, The Colorado Ballet, that happens to use TicketMaster. I'm going to tell you all, in case you weren't already aware, that TicketMaster is in fact the LEAST masterful way to buy, sell, distribute, or keep track of tickets. It's an ironic title. It's like calling a big fat guy "Tiny" or a savage Rottweiler "Cuddles." The unfortunate thing, though? TicketMaster ACUTALLY believes it is the master of tickets. In reality, the only thing it IS the master of is bating.

Tonight was my first night working a show at the Colorado Ballet. Every thing seemed to be going well. Was it going well? No. I didn't realize it wasn't going well until the END of my shift when literally none of my reports balanced with any of Ticket-fuckin-Master's reports. And here's why: When you sell tickets at the venue (Secondary as the G.M. calls it) and someone uses a credit card, if the card runs correctly and everything is gravy, it automatically prints two reciepts and you are then able to print the tickets. You keep a reciept and you give one to the patron along with the tickets and you're done. Everything is great. Go have a scone. You want to know what happens if the card is rejected? THE SAME EXACT FUCKING THING. It prints two reciepts and you can print the tickets to your heart's content. The only difference is that the word "rejected" is written on the reciept, in lower-case letters even. Did anyone tell me this was the case? Absolutely not. So I "sold" probably 10 tickets without ever knowing that no money ever actually came in. People were getting in for free. Which is great for them, but shit-tacular for me.

It took my supervisors and me an hour extra to reconcile this and all that really ended up being was a note written to the G.M. saying pretty much "It got all fucked up." This idiotic thing might be enough reason to hate TM, but there's more. It is easily the most archaic and counter-intuitive ticketing system I've ever used, and I've used four. From a selling standpoint, it's incredibly inconvenient. It takes close to 5 minutes to even sell tickets to someone. You first have to find the date of the show using the show code, then say that you want to look up seats, then scroll down to the section of the seats you want, then highlight the zeros on the screen representing the seats, then put in the qualifying codes for those seats, then put in the type of card the customer is going to use, then get their name, address, phone number, e-mail address, and marketing code (for EVERY customer, even during a rush) then actually put in the card number, then exit all the way out of their reservation just to go back into their reservation and finally print the tickets. In case you weren't counting, that's 15 steps. It takes FOREVER if you're waiting to go in to a show.

People seem to hate TM mostly due to the fees. There are fees for everything and there might even be a multiple fee fee. At the Ballet, there is an $8 per ticket fee, and a $3.10 handling fee. The $8 fee is unwaivable, even if someone has a two for one coupon. They pay for one ticket's BASE price, but still have to pay the $8 for their "free" ticket. There's a deal out now from 5280 magazine where people can buy two tickets for the improbable price of $52.80. But really it's two tickets for $52.80 plus $8 plus $8 plus $3.10 making the "deal" $71.10. An extra $19.10. In FEES. The most ridiculous thing is our rush tickets an hour prior to showtime are supposedly half off, making a $49 ticket, you'd assume, $24.50. Not so. It's half off the base ticket price of $41, making it $20.50 but you still have to add the $8 fee so it's actually $28.50 which is only 40% off, roughly. TicketMaster is all about lying to people. And trying to explain that to a patron with a modest income is really not fun for me.

God bless you for reading all that ridiculousness if you did. I just had a shitty day at work due almost entirely to the software and had to vent. I had two days off prior to today which would have been great aside from the fact that I was sick through both of them. I swear the next blog will be more light-hearted. Say, anyone want to get a beer?

Talk at ya later and keep circulating the tapes.