Maybe it's a bit obsessive, or maybe I am just a fan. It's Friday morning, seconds before 10 a.m., and I find myself sitting in front of a computer, frantically hitting the refresh button. In my search for the perfect seats, my computer quietly puts up with unwarranted verbal abuse, mainly aimed in the direction of the evil empire, Ticketmaster. These are intense times, as one misstep could mean the difference between scoring Floor Section B, Row 6, and settling for Balcony 327, Row 13.
When 10 a.m. rolls around, I spring into motion - I hit refresh once, nothing happens, and then five more times, and still nothing. Finally at 10:02 the ticket page appears, and I quickly select two "standard admission" tickets at only $77 each - if only it were that easy.
Next up, the unmerciful beast offers an innocent security test, an attempt to stop those witty scalpers and ticket brokers from snatching up all of the seats with their automated programs, or simply an attempt to frustrate the hell out of me - either way, good luck deciphering what appears to say "unimportance PAIGE," especially when the text is highly distorted. Failing the word test pretty much guarantees you two miserable seats in the back of the house, or even two seats at your own house. If the band is charging $77, I am sure that it has a well-packaged concert DVD anyway. There is no obstructed view from your couch, and with HDTV being absurdly clear these days, you are pretty much in front row, minus the smells, of course.
This was a comforting thought, but I was determined to get through, and on this fateful morning, I failed the test six times. I swear that the words became harder each time - maybe Ticketmaster even suspected me of being a "Bot," which is what they call these supposed automated programs that block customers from getting their tickets. Finally, in a touch of irony perhaps, the word "Mr. Everywoman" appeared boldly on my screen - not even I could mess this one up. I always love when Ticketmaster uses a set of calming words, almost knowing that I can envision what my laptop will look like after it has fallen three stories to its untimely demise. I once was given the words "be HOPEFUL" when trying to buy Clapton tickets, and sure enough I scored eighth-row seats.
During this whole process, I did manage to learn something terribly interesting. The word test also "digitalizes books one word at a time." In my frantic scramble, I never took the time to read these instructions: "By entering the words in the box, you are also helping to digitize books from the Internet Archive and preserve literature that was written before the computer age." After typing in thousands of words over the years, easily misspelling over half of them, I can only imagine the terrible disservice I have done for this project. I apologize in advance to the poor kid who gets my book full of my morbid misspellings.
So I am finally in line, and somehow my original eight-minute wait turns into 15 minutes or more, and then jumps down to five minutes and finally back up to 15. Not even my Operations Management class could teach me a waiting line theory to describe this situation. Unable to let go of the horrors of the word test, I keep myself occupied by creating a playlist of angry tunes, mostly Tool and Rage Against The Machine thrashers.
"We couldn't find tickets that matched your request" is just Ticketmaster's nice way of saying, "You are screwed." Ticketmaster even gives you hope by saying, "If the event just went on sale, keep trying. When a customer is viewing specific seats, only that customer sees those seats, if a customer decides not to buy, then the seats automatically become available to other customers." That's great: I am sure that there are many Pearl Jam fans out there who decided to go online at 10 a.m., brave the word test, and then wait patiently in line, only to decide at the last minute to give it all up.
Maybe it's a bit obsessive, or maybe I am just a fan, but I am already seeing Pearl Jam four times this summer and really had no intention of seeing them at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The thrill of battling Ticketmaster is enough for me because I have won before and will win again. Oh yeah, and Eagles tickets are on sale at 10 a.m. next Monday.
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