July 07, 2007

Lucky 7-7-7 My Ass

Mother Nature is mocking me.

It is bright blue, sunny and puffy white cloud skies outside and I am on the sofa having morning toast and coffee.

Shouldn't you be at the festival already? you ask.

Why yes, except that Mark lost the tickets.

800 Euro worth of tickets gone. And why are they gone, you ask? Because our Compatriots of Indecision cannot make a decision to save their lives. Miles decided it was in his best interest to stay in Dublin and watch the Rugby finals this afternoon and then join us this evening for the concerts, in spite of the fact that South Africa is playing their second string, who Miles estimates as "crap". And Matt decided he was too sick to camp out but could endure the 2 hour ride to the campsite both mornings in order to see the concerts. So Mark agreed to bring the tickets with him into work on Friday, in order that the boys could show up whenever the hell they liked. All of which is fair enough except that Mark had to travel yesterday, which means he was up at the crack of dawn to catch a train for a client meeting out of town, returning just in time to drop off the tickets, collect me and head out to the campsite. Against his better judgment, he packed the tickets in his bag. And that was the last he saw of them.

The bag was searched by 3 people. His house has been ransacked 4 times. He called the client and had them search their offices. Then he tried to track down the confirmation number in order to call Ticketmaster in an effort to find us some options other than sitting on my sofa, having morning toast and coffee and seething. He couldn’t find the confirmation and that’s when he started to wonder if he’d imagined it all. After a prolonged search of all his email accounts, he located the confirmation only to find out that Ticketmaster was closed and wouldn’t start answering their phones until 930 this morning. I got the text from him at 945:

Ticketmaster can do nothing. Will search once again but at this stage I think we are not going.

Two months of planning have gone into this. Two months of staking out the bands, lining up my preferred concerts, soliciting advice on camping out. Two month's of taking shit from friends for agreeing to go camp out. I now own a tent for god’s sake. And rain gear. All purchased for this event. Instead of rocking out to the Fratellis and the Klaxons, I’m sitting on my sofa. I’ve been up since 7am. I couldn’t sleep any longer and I spent the night dreaming about not finding the tickets. In fact, we were all in the house I grew up in, in my childhood bedroom, and when I woke at 9, the guys were all packed, so we could leave at a moment’s notice, watching Mark with the phone to his ear. I was the only one still in PJs, which is ironic, since I’ve been telling him since yesterday that it wasn’t over until we spoke with Ticketmaster.

I mean, really… what the hell is the point of putting bar codes on the tickets and linking it to my credit card number if the process cannot work backwards? There is no possible way Ticketmaster cannot cancel those serial numbers and re-issue us tickets? The scanners are clearly able to scroll thru thousands of serial numbers in a heartbeat, verifying valid tickets. You’re telling me there’s not way for that information to be updated? I cannot believe in this era of computer technology that Ticketmaster cannot cancel serial numbers. My god, think of the money they’re losing in replacement fees. Perhaps no one should inform them; they charge too much as it is. But still… Lost or stolen tickets? You’re screwed, thank you for chosing Ticketmaster.

And to top it all off? It’s georgeous outside! First time in weeks. I wonder how much of this gear I can return... That’ll be a fun way to spend Saturday afternoon.

And why are you returning this? Because my friend lost the tickets.


I hope it snows.

5 comments:

Lifetheuniverseandeverything said...

Well, at least, you're taking the whole thing well! :-)

Unknown said...

As my mom used to say: one of these days, you're gonna look back on this and find it pretty funny........well, whenever she said that it just pissed me off even more so embrace your anger & turn up the Metallica! It's sure to be a wild ride........ron

B said...

Excellent advice Ron, I shall spend a little quality time with my boys. They've been dying to get out of the CD holder for awhile now anyway...

Anonymous said...

Shhhhhhhh.....
...it.

That'll teach me for not popping by here more often. I missed this.
Dang.
What an utter ****.
.....
And how are things now between you and the, er, offenders?

B said...

You just don't spend enough time focused on me. It's all You, You, You... Oh wait, that's not right.

Things are fine between all of us. We're currently searching for a Do-Over Concert. I was just really angry and disappointed and had to have someone to blame. And really, isn't that what men are for?