The Stolen Tickets
I’ve never been one to make a scene in public and I avoid conflict even if I end up lying awake at night, replaying a conversation in my head and imagining an ending where I spoke my mind. I always thought being Italian meant I should be feisty but that part of my cultural makeup seemed to be on mute most of the time. The mute button came off, though, when I was accused of theft in a packed theatre in front of my children.
For our daughter’s ninth birthday, we surprised her with tickets to see Natalie MacMaster, who was part of our small town’s arts festival line-up that fall. My children studied violin and loved many genres of music. Because of their father’s Scottish heritage and their involvement in Scottish arts, fiddle music was also near and dear to their hearts.
The company I worked for at the time was one of the festival’s corporate sponsors so I was able to purchase four pre-sale tickets through my employer. On the evening of the concert our daughter was vibrating with excitement as we drove to the theatre for our special family outing.
An usher checked our tickets at the door and pointed us to our seats in row M, orchestra centre. As we got closer, we noticed the row was occupied. We flagged down another usher – a self-important, older woman, who seemed bothered by having to do her job. She held our tickets up, and in a voice louder than necessary said, “Oh. These are the stolen tickets.”
My conflict-averse self was nowhere to be found. In a voice louder than normal (for me, anyway), I said, “My company is a festival sponsor and I purchased these tickets in the pre-sale. They are certainly not stolen.” I could feel the heat rising to the top of my head. She waved me off and told me I’d have to go to the box office to sort it out.
“Mummy, why can’t we sit in our seats? Will we still see Natalie?”, my daughter asked. The expression on her face broke my heart but I assured her we’d work it out. I was furious when the box office agent, who was also the chair of the festival board, suggested we split up and take the only seats available – two in balcony row ZZ and two on the opposite side of the theatre.
His explanation made things worse. “We had a break-in at the ticket office and some tickets were stolen. We tried to reprint what we thought were the stolen ones but I guess we didn’t quite get it right. Anyway, so sorry but these are the only seats left.” He was eager to avoid a scene and have us on our way before the performance started.
The volume of my voice rose a notch for the second time that night. “We had orchestra centre seats, it’s my daughter’s birthday, and I was just accused of theft in front of a theatre full of people.”
“Now you’re telling me we can’t even sit together and two of us have to sit in row ZZ?”, I asked. By this time my daughter was almost in tears and my husband, unaccustomed to this version of his wife, was tugging at my sleeve. I took a deep breath, promised my daughter she would indeed see her beloved Natalie, and with one last stink-eyed glance at the agent/chair of the board, proceeded into the theatre.
We made the best of the evening and enjoyed the concert but none of this sat well with me. I complained to our corporate events liaison once I was back in the office and she suggested I write a letter to the festival board with a copy to her. I had nothing to lose so I wrote it all down while I was still seething, ran it by my husband who suggested edits to some of the screaming bits, and sent it. My scathing letter emphasized that a little girl’s birthday celebration included witnessing her parents being accused of theft. I asked for an apology and a refund but didn’t expect anything to come of it.
That is, until I bumped into one of our directors in the fourth floor kitchenette at work. Most people were terrified of this guy. I once overheard him threaten a poor IT guy that if they put a shared printer outside his office, he might just come out and unplug it in the middle of a print job. I was told he held the plug in his hand to demonstrate.
“Your letter made quite an impact,” he said. I couldn’t believe he was talking to me. Even though his big office was beside my cubicle, he never acknowledged me and I was sure he didn’t know my name.
“What do you mean?”, I managed to squeak out as I looked up at his six-foot plus frame.
“My wife is on the festival board,” he said, enunciating every syllable as if it were a threat and peering down at me with coal black eyes. Damn small towns and their zero degrees of separation! I took a deep shaky breath, channeled my inner Italian, and steadied myself for a fight. In the meantime, he continued. “Because of your letter, the board is revamping their ticketing process and updating their system. This isn’t the first time they duplicated tickets but perhaps it will be the last.” I was still holding my breath. “And you will receive a full refund.”
I don’t think I responded before he slithered back to his office. It’s just as well. Trembling incoherent babbling would have betrayed my attempted bravado. A few days later, I received an apology letter and a refund. I guess channeling my inner Italian onto paper and unmuting my feisty button really did make a difference. I slept just fine that night.
