Confessions of a Box Office Manager: the drunken punter

Ten minutes until curtain up, and all's well.

Not that many COBOs (or Will-Calls, as our American friends would have it) to be picked up, a queue that never gets more than three patrons deep, no agency tickets doubling with house (so far!) and a handful of seats to play with in the event of any last minute problems. We've had no drunks, no death threats, no customers with chronic body odour or bad breath (this last a genuine consideration when selling tickets to a comedy), no tricky patrons with an outlandish sense of entitlement (in all seriousness, I once had a lady hurl her tickets at me with the immortal demand "upgrade me please, I'm a personal friend of the Chief Rabbi" ….and no I was not working at the time on 'Fiddler On The Roof' in case you're wondering). No parents/spouses/agents of cast members moaning about the location of their seats, no Company Manager standing behind me gazing in wonderment at my computer screen and saying for the umpteenth time "now remind me again, which are the sold ones?"…..

All in all, this is what I would call a smooth incoming, and I am already anticipating getting cashed up promptly, catching the slightly earlier train, and being at home on the sofa with a family bag of Maltesers in plenty of time for some really trashy reality TV. Or a mind-improving documentary. As if.

Invariably when I start thinking along these lines, just as I'm about to remark to my colleague how well it's all going and just as the pre-performance bells start to sound, something goes awry…..and, sure enough……..

I try not to blanch as I'm hit by the first blast of slightly stale Valpolicella.

"Hi, how can I help?"

"Whatdoyouneedfromme?" she slurs, grinning inanely.

Well, I think to myself, she may be hammered but at least she's friendly.

"Are you collecting tickets?"

"Yesh"

"Could I see the card you paid with please?" I ask, aware that the duty manager is already starting to hover.

She emits the biggest sigh, once again enveloping me in enough wine-tastic fumes to make driving a car or operating heavy machinery a dangerous proposition for the next half hour or so and, with a grunt, hoists a designer "handbag" big enough to sleep at least three toddlers, onto the counter.

"Babe, hold this" she says as a cowed-looking gentleman lurches into view from behind her, beaming weakly. With that, she proceeds to take out the entire contents of aforementioned bag and dump them onto him.

Finally, with a cry of triumph or at least recognition, she finds her purse and waves it at me (by now the one minute bell is sounding, the overhead announcement is asking everybody to please take their seats, and I can feel the duty manager's eyes bearing down on me). Unsteadily, she removes her card and hands it over.

The name on it is Davies. I check the collections box: nothing under D. With the warning bells ringing in my ears, I quickly flick through all the other letters: no, her tickets haven't been misfiled and there's nothing in there that even LOOKS like Davies.

She's still grinning at me as I ask "Is this definitely the card you paid with?"

"Yesh"

"Did you definitely ask for the tickets to be left at the Box Office for collection?"

"Yesh"

"Could they be under any other name?"

"Nooooo"

"Do you have any other cards we can check, just in case?"

I try typing the numbers of five different credit cards into our system to see if there's any record of her booking with us. Bingo! The fifth one comes up with something. Yes, it's a pair, yes it's for tonight but the name is not Davies.

"I've found a booking made with this card" I tell her, trying to ignore the duty manager waving his Rolex at me, "but the name in the account is a 'Mrs J Wilson'"

She stares at me as though I have two heads.

"Yes!" she snaps, suddenly remarkably sober, "that's my married name. We are newly weds." This last is delivered in a tone that suggests that it should have been abundantly obvious to me that they are a recently married couple, and that by extension I should have guessed that the name on the card would differ from the one on the tickets.

However, with the bells going crazy and the duty manager going a funny colour, there's no time to congratulate the happy couple and wish them a prosperous, and hopefully abstemious, future together.

I smile to myself as the pair stagger across the foyer towards the Stalls entrance, chivvied along by our harassed looking manager. The last thing I hear is Mrs Wilson asking "have we got time to nip to the bar?"

The show is going up a little late, and I wouldn't be surprised if a couple of patrons seated in the Wilson vicinity ask to be reseated at the interval….and I'm going to miss the beginning of my TV programme……

But hey, nobody died.