I work for a theatre company that produces several shows over our season. It’s not uncommon for people to call in to exchange their tickets for a different date, different show, or different location.

Me: “Good afternoon! This is [My Name] at [Company]; how can I assist you?”

Customer: “I’d like to exchange my tickets, please.”

Me: “Can I have the order number, please?”

The customer gives me the order number and I see it was for a performance the previous weekend.

Me: “I’m showing [Show #1] for last Sunday. Did you mean to give the number for [Show #2] in four weeks?”

Customer: “No. That’s the right one. I hated the show and want to exchange it for something else.”

Me: “I’m sorry the show wasn’t to your taste, but I can’t exchange your ticket after you’ve used it.”

Customer: “Yes, you can. If I don’t like a sweater, I exchange it. This is no different.”

Me: “This is very different. You purchased a ticket to an experience; you had that experience. I can’t exchange your tickets. I can ask for a manager to review and be in contact with you.”

The customer hung up. My manager did the review, and it turns out that this person has a history of this type of behaviour. He’d created a new profile on our system so the history wasn’t available to me. He did not get his exchange.

My first job while in high school was at a local theater. I have quite a few fond memories of that place, but this experience always has stuck with me.

This is a unique live theater that is called a “theater in the round”. You have to go up a flight of stairs before going into the theater and then go down into a sort of pit to view the stage in the middle with seats all around. It’s pretty dark, so there are ushers at each door with a flashlight if someone needs to exit the theater for whatever reason.

The managers are very firm about manning your door and get upset if you are absent for any amount of time. You also have big doors to get through the outside of the theater before the door to your seating area with another usher to help out latecomers.

In this instance, an older gentleman comes out of the theater with an urgent need for the bathroom. The bathrooms are right next to the openings to the doors, so while he’s doing his business, his usher is standing next to the door usher just chatting. This guy is taking quite a while, so a manager swoops in to tell off the usher for not manning their door. When it’s explained that they are waiting on a patron in the bathrooms, the manager grumbles and says they’d better not be much longer before heading off.

Fast forward a bit, and it’s almost time for intermission. I’m setting up concessions on the other side of the lobby with a clear view of the two ushers standing at the door, who are now looking worried about the patron still in the bathroom. He finally emerges.

He dashes over to the two ushers, says something, and then proceeds to sprint down the stairs and out the front doors. The two ushers are looking perplexed when a look of horror suddenly spreads over their faces. Then, they start to uncontrollably dry heave while trying to cover their mouths.

They soon follow after the patron and run outside to get fresh air. The manager has missed them running out, but she has noticed that a door still isn’t manned, so she is on her way up to rip an employee a new one. She gets about halfway up the stairs before she appears to hit an invisible wall, sways a bit, and then cries out, “DEAR LORD!” before retreating quickly back down the stairs and also outside.

At this point, the other ushers at concessions and I start to look very worried about what is clearly headed our way and what we should do…

….and then the tone rings for intermission and the doors to the theater open up.

After all the chaos is over, the theater apologizes and makes the excuse that a sewer main backed up into our upper-floor toilets. One of the newer ushers draws the short straw to clean it up (which we now know was illegal). He has to take frequent breaks and just keeps asking, “How?”

To this day, I still wonder what exactly was wrong for one man to produce something so toxic to almost clear out a whole theater.

While this didn’t happen to me, it did happen to my best friend who is like a sister to me. She’s been in Los Angeles working as an usher at a fairly prominent theatre in Hollywood for a good few years. She’s seen quite a variety of patrons come through her doors.

During a long run of an epic modern musical about a certain Founding Father, she has to handle a loud and rather disorderly patron. 

Finally, the patron cries out:

Patron: “I spent $400 to be here! How much did you pay, hmmm?”

My friend replies in a calm gentle tone but still can’t keep the slight smugness from her voice.

Friend: “Sir. I am paid to be here!”

I purchased tickets to a small community theater production in my area. Instead of will-call like they used to do, the tickets were emailed to me as a PDF. Yay, electronic tickets — progress! But no. Each ticket was a separate page that consisted of a small QR code and a bunch of ads. At the top of each 8.5 by 11 page was the large bold text, “This is your ticket. Print this entire page and bring it with you to the event.”

It seemed silly not to be able to use the electronic copy on my phone or to at least only print the QR code section from all the tickets in my group on a single page and ditch the ads, but I didn’t want to take any chances. I don’t travel around with a printer to be able to print the full page if they reject the other options, and we wanted to see the show we’d paid for.

Apparently, most other people had the same thought, as we were all there with our full-page tickets.

The young ticket scanners started complaining, getting louder and louder with each patron showing up with their printouts.

Ticket Scanner #1: “You are all so wasteful!”

Ticket Scanner #2: “Can’t you get with the program and use electronic tickets?!”

In their eyes, we were horrible old people who were stupid and didn’t care about the environment.  

Finally, one patron had enough and marched right up to them, handed them their ticket, and pointed to the words at the top.

Patron: “I want you to read these words out loud. And then, I want you to apologize for your snide comments!”

The next time I got tickets from that particular theater group, the tickets still had that phrase at the top, but the email they were attached to had a section that told us that, despite what it actually said on the PDF, patrons were welcome to just display the QR code on their mobile device if they wished. Apparently, they had purchased the ticketing template/system from a third party but no one had bothered to read the whole page until they had a bunch of insulted patrons.

Back in 2019, my husband and I purchase tickets to see a well-known comedian at a local theatre in April 2020. For obvious reasons, the show gets postponed. The venue confidently picks a new date of April 2021. Everything will be fine by then, obviously! No shock that we receive an email a few weeks before the show to say that, too, will be rescheduled.

A few months go by, and the health crisis situation “improves” in the UK to the point where most similar events are now going ahead. I’ve heard nothing about when this show has been rescheduled to, so I email the venue asking what’s happening. I don’t hear back, but I’m not too worried. To be honest, we’d only be selling the tickets anyway, as my husband is CEV (clinically extremely vulnerable to [contagious illness]), and it wouldn’t be safe for us to sit in a packed theatre.

And then, one evening in March 2022, I get an email from the venue with information about current [health crisis] protocols to be aware of for the show… which is happening the next evening! What the f***?! I double-check my emails and, sure enough, this is the first I’ve heard from them since the show was postponed in the spring of 2021. I immediately email them to point this out and request a refund.

Over the course of the next month, I go back and forth with the venue. They claim they emailed about the new date but, when challenged, they cannot prove it. They deny receiving my email asking for the new date, but I show them evidence of having sent it to two of their email accounts. They say they can only offer a refund if requested a week before the event. I point out that this would be hard for me to do when they didn’t tell me the new date until twenty-four hours before the show!

Eventually, they offer me free tickets for any of their shows. I point out that this is no use to me as theatres aren’t safe for my family. They continue to refuse a refund, insisting it’s impossible.

Finally, I ask if they have a governing body I can escalate this to or if I should just go direct to Trading Standards.

Weirdly enough, I get an email offering me a refund not twenty-four hours later!