Forget Jolene, Worry About Jenny!

I used to work for an event ticket reseller. Our marketing emails came from “Jenny” because evidently people respond more positively to such emails from women. “Jenny” was actually a dude named Rajesh with a talent for super bubbly “check out these upcoming events!” emails.

I logged in one morning to find that my queue (Fraud) had a hundred tickets open. I usually only got about thirty overnight. Tier-one support had two hundred, they usually had about fifty overnight. Something was up.

It was email after email from one woman, begging “Jenny” not to steal her husband. She was UNHINGED! She sent cutesy couple pics from when they were dating, wedding pics, pics of their three kids, family portraits… PLEADING with “Jenny” to stop tempting her husband, stop trying to wreck their “happy home”. None of us had ever seen anything like it.

Rajesh wrote an exceedingly kind and gentle email explaining who we were and that he was “Jenny” and why, told her “Your husband either bought tickets from us or subscribed to event alerts.” He sent her a selfie!

A few days later, we got a super apologetic email from the husband, explaining that she had gone through his phone and found “Jenny” in his contacts and basically lost her mind. It was not the first time she had flipped over seeing a woman’s name in his contacts, but it was the last he was willing to tolerate. He had purchased Hamilton tickets for an anniversary surprise and was no longer interested in celebrating.

We helped him sell them. It was at the peak of the show’s popularity, so they were snapped up in an instant for a lot more than he had paid.