Bruce & I JUST got home from going to get our season tickets for the PSU men's hockey team and having lunch. It's 5:08 p.m. We left the house at 12:10 p.m. Tickets went on sale at 1:00 p.m.--JUST to last year's season ticket holders (LYSTHs from here on)--and there are enough excited Cardinal hockey fans to go early to get in line. So we met our friend Bill and were joined by our friends John & Sue; since we all sit together we all bought together. (No one can buy for anyone else. Go figure.)
We walked out of the Fieldhouse with tickets in hand at 2:50. No joke. It took us 2 hours and 20 minutes to pay for 2 season tickets. The set-up for ticket sales was THE worst designed "system" I have ever seen. Literally. I have never in my life seen such poor planning. Add to the wait the fact that the one, yes that's right ONE, computer being used was slow.
Absolutely nothing in the clusterfrak was computerized. The lone computer being used was to re-enter all of our information into a database. For some reason last year's database was not being used for anything, but the Athletic Dept. had printed out the list of LYSTH, so it's clear the database did exist.
The biggest error was that the Athletic Dept., almost certainly after a "meeting with all the stakeholders" and probably thinking they were getting a jump on things, had assigned seats to each LYSTH, in approximately the same place the seats were last year. This is because the seating changed considerably, going from bleachers to theater-style seating. But most LYSTHs didn't like the reassignment. This was the first line to stand in.
The second line was for each single or pair of LYSTHs to go individually (or as a couple) into the actual rink and put a hand on the desired seat(s). Why, I do not know.
The third line was to get that laying-on-of-hands approved by the guy from Line 1. The fourth line was to get each LYSTH's info entered into the database on that one computer. The fifth and last line was to get the actual tickets, one for each home game.
It is truly amazing that no one killed the Athletic Director, who was the guy at the destination end of Line 1. Apparently the idea of using clerical personnel or even work-study students for some of this never occurred to anyone in the Athletic Dept. But I forget, it IS the Athletic Dept. Duh.
We had lunch at 3:10 and after a short stop that I'm sure I'll tell about some time later, we came home. Now I'm going to take 1) a Tums, and 2) a nap.
But we got our tickets.
2 comments:
I think you should have a glass of wine while you're at it. ;-)
Leave it to P-Suck to mess up selling tickets to maybe 10,000 people. See, this is why you and I should run the world. I'm sure, like me, you've already figured out an entirely MORE efficient system that would be ten times easier than this genius's idea. But hey, you got the tickets, right? =)
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