DAY 1
09:39 Starting off on the right foot this week. Made it in time to use the computer that works. Boomtown!
10:00 The phones are on, the "closed" signs are down and we are all set for a big day at box office.
11:14 We just checked the phones to make sure they're working. They are. Still no calls.
11:23 RIIIING! Phone call! It's an internal call from the offices across the road. Apparently I'm to "Ask if that's done it". Done what? "She'll know". Well that was cryptic and helpful. Thank you.
11:28 We have a walk-in. Just about. Old lady with a walking frame wants two tickets for "the first show". She doesn't know what it's called. Bad start, She wants to go "for the Friday". Not getting better. Seats in the "upper grand circle". Shit, this is a terminal case. "For one of the £10 ticket nights". Christ, she's talking about the previews isn't she? She's 2 months early. They don't go on sale til mid-August. She'll be back, unless there's a sudden cold snap.
11:40 A renewal of a season ticket received through the post. They want the same seats as they had last year. They're a month and a half past the point where we'd hold their seats for them. Decent seats too. Centre stalls. HA! Good luck....fuck. How? Lucky bastards.
11:48 Some finance guy came in to the box office to tell me about....some finance stuff. Lots of nodding, and eye contact until he went away. Gave him the phone number of the people who would actually have anything to do with what he may or may not have been talking about. He came back to ask my name. The over-familiarity of it is galling.
12:07 Spoke with colleague about the tatters of her social life. Let's call her Cinderella. Seems she's dating a scarecrow made flesh by the whims of a demented wizard now. Brought to life to serve as his retribution against a world that has dared preach feminism, and who shall pluck out the eyes of all who stand quivering before him. Good for her. He may be the enchanted nightmares of a thousand screaming children, and clearly enjoys disemboweling crows for The Watch, but he does play a mean mandolin.
12:18 An old lady enters the foyer. Time stands still as we pray her vision is based on movement. Alas, no, and she has ruined youtube time in boxo. She rejects me, and chooses Cinderella. It stings. She just wants our brochure. Cinderella tells her where it is, and helpfully points to the location. I parrot Cinderella's words just to feel like I belong. The old lady is confused by rudimentary direction. She is lost now, brochureless and possibly in Narnia.
12:30 LUNCH! Chocolate Buttons and crisps. Healthy as fuck.
13.34 First real customer. She was collecting tickets for our Christmas show, and handed me her confirmation print-out without looking at me. She merely grunted. Her face looked as though I'd just stolen her last Rolo....and had sex with it in front of her. Man, I want more chocolate now.
14:09 The Rain Gods have made their displeasure known. Or is rain the sign of a happy Rain God? Fuckers must either hate or love Scotland so. Watching women in too high heels stumble awkwardly past with jackets over their heads. If your jacket barely reaches the bottom of your neck when placed over your head, it's not a fucking jacket! Still, this probably means there's graduations on next door.
14:16 Human contact from the outside world! A very confused young lady wants to know why she hasn't heard back about front of house recruitment. The painful journey from beginning to end of our conversation tells me she likely has not been hired for reasons of chronic cretenism, but I can't help I'm afraid. Stage Door.
14:25 "Scarecrow don't have no babies to pay for. Least not that I know of.". Oh Cinderella.
14:37 Kind of worried that my other colleague hasn't made a sound all day. Hope she's not dead. Checked with her. She's not dead. Sticking with the Disney theme, she shall be known as Flounder. Flounder's alive, likely dreaming of being Kanye.
14:50 The seagulls are massing outside the glass facade of the box office. They're plotting. If you're unfamiliar with the nature of Edinburgh seagulls, think Hitler with wings. Fuckers are just striving to find a Final Solution for all of us.
14:53 Further seagulls are approaching the original winged Hitlers. Shit's about to go down. I can tell they're not on the same page by the general West Side Story vibes being given off. The interlopers are clicking rhythmically.
14:55 Aladdin has ventured across from the offices to conduct an interview with a soon to arrive cast member from one of our upcoming shows. He comments upon my "famous wit". I've always liked that man. Charming and intuitive. Cinderella disagrees with his statement. Not on the "wit" part though, just the level of notoriety it has attained. The consensus is my delightful humour should be world-renowned by now.
15:06 Aladdin still awaits his interview subject. She is evidently running late. Al has now been gripped by morbid curiosity over what a seagull has dropped outside. The working theory is "some meat". Cinderella's suggestion that the offending "meat" be captured for posterity on Instagram has fallen on deaf ears.
15:11 "This is probably a stupid question....". A solid 40% of calls start with a customer saying that, and a far greater percentage would be accurate if they did. She was pleasant though, so that''s nice. Didn't buy any tickets, mind.
15:19 Did some filing. It's all go here.
15:29 "Can't help you with that, I'm afraid. I can give you the number for Stage Door. No, I understand that. Yes, that is unfortunate. This is still nothing I can help with. I can still give you the number for Stage Door". And repeat.
15:40 "Hi there, this is Andi from [company name]. How are you today?"
"Well, Andi, I'm...."
"That's great. Just so you're aware, our calls may be recorded for training purposes."
"That's great. Just so you're aware, our calls may be recorded for training purposes."
Andi proceeds to not buy tickets.
15:46 We've had a genuinely almost busy 20 minutes. Which is to say we've had about 5 calls between us. I think I need to lie down.
15:48 Face to face communication with an outsider. Yes, the youth theatre are rehearsing across the road. You're welcome. It's been a pleasure. Come again.
15:56 A woman enters, and proceeds directly to the leaflet stands. A nervous tension settles within the box office. Youtube is silenced. She may be a customer. She may be a seagull. We may never kn....oh, wait, she's just a woman looking to get out of the rain. Not a seagull. I repeat, not a seagull.
15:57 Probably not a seagull.
15:59 High point of the day- a dog has entered the foyer. She is cute, even if she is a poodle. Poodles are famously evil. A middle-aged lady is speaking to her in tongues, as another lady (Friend? Enemy?) mimics the dog.
16:04 A child nearby is masking his boredom through fart-trumpeting with his stupid little mouth. His mother has abandoned him. Good for her.
16:25 Is that SuBo outside!?
16:30 Should I grow mutton chops?
16:43 Maybe phones don't actually ring. Maybe customers don't actually exist. Maybe I don't actually exist. DO I REALLY EXIST!?
16:46 There's an old lady outside with the legs of a teenager. I mean, she's got the tiny, frail bird body of an elderly woman, complete with one of those heads that looks like it belongs to a novelty bobblehead toy sitting on someone's desk somewhere nodding at them as they relay another tale of how Margaret doesn't really understand them or their love of model World War II planes. Dude, Margaret doesn't love you anymore. She loves Tom. They've been at it for months. She resents you. You and that stupid vasectomy you had. Margaret wants a fucking family, Gerald! Anyway, this old dame. Her legs are like twice as long as her torso, and rippling with youthful muscle and sheen. It's quite disconcerting. I need to stop staring.
16:54 The home stretch. We can almost taste freedom. That's why the final 5 minutes of the day are so dangerous. You're nearly safe, but you know that, statistically speaking this is the time you are most likely to get a really difficult and annoyingly convoluted call to deal with*.
*citation needed
16:56 Checked in with Flounder. She hit her head against an open cabinet, and tripped over a ladder, but she's alive.
17:00 Slide my chair on over to the computer that controls our phone system, pray the floppy disk drive doesn't crash and shut it down. Home time! And tomorrow, we do it all over again.
Time killed mostly with: Reading football transfer gossip.
Total ticket sales
Cinderella: 4
Flounder: 2
Deebs: 1
Pocahontas: 1
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