Unfiltered Story #205685

(I work in the box office at a theatre, serving customers over the phone and at the front desk.

For select shows, we offer what is known as the “2-4-1 Carers Scheme”. This means that anyone that receives a certain level of Disability Living Allowance is entitled to a free ticket alongside their own ticket, to enable them to bring a carer with them free of charge.

In order to use the scheme, customers are required to show paperwork as evidence showing that they receive the aforementioned benefits.)

Earlier today, I was serving a customer over the phone- she was trying to book tickets for a certain (fairly awful) boy band, and wanted to bring her daughter along with her for free, using the 2-4-1 carers scheme. Technically speaking, we’re only supposed to offer this to people bringing carers with them, but we’re sometimes able to bend the rules slightly, and given that she was eligible for the scheme, I decided to be nice and do so.

Me: “Okay, so it doesn’t look like you’ve booked with us before, so I’m afraid that we’ll need to see the paperwork showing which DLA rate you receive before I can book this for you.”

Customer: “Oh okay, how do I do that then?”

Me: “Well, you can either bring it with you to the venue, or send a copy via post or email- if you email it directly to me, I can get that sorted right away for you, and get these tickets posted out”

(I give the customer my work email address. I’m very aware of the fact that we have around 10-11 other customers waiting in the queue on the phones.)

Me: “Okay so if you’d like, I can give you a ring back to take payment after I’ve received your email, and sorted all of the 2-4-1 details out for you.”

Customer: “Oh no no, that’s okay I don’t mind staying on the line. I’ll email that to you now”

Me: *signs internally*

(At this point, the line went quiet, and I sit there waiting for this email to appear in my inbox. After around 10 minutes of waiting, the email still hasn’t arrived.)

Me: “Hello?”

Customer: “Oh, hi”

Me: “Sorry, did you say that you were going to send the paperwork for the 2-4-1 through to me now?”

Customer: “Oh sure okay, do you want me to email that to you now?”

(Apparently, after saying that she was going to email the details to me, the customer had then proceeded to sit around in complete silence for 10 minutes, doing absolutely nothing, keeping both myself and the now considerably longer queue of customers waiting around for no reason.)