ticketslave

The recent "woke" Broadway production of the musical 1776 is going out on national tour, and as it's coming to our city that means I can easily indulge my desire to see it. (I wish, by the way, to help reclaim the word "woke" for its proud original meaning, which is "aware of racial and social injustices," and drown out the silly meaning of "whatever Republicans don't like.")

If I'd known what I'd have to go through, I might have changed my mind when I saw that the vendor was Ticketmaster. First I had to waste several minutes establishing that I already had a Ticketmaster account which wasn't in my password list because I hadn't used it for about eight years, since before establishing the list, and then I had to answer about five automated phone calls giving me numeric security codes I had to enter on-screen. And since they give you only seven minutes to complete the order, that meant it timed out before I was able to finish it, so I had to start again.

That was the easy part.

The hard part came after I finished the order and found that the ticket sheet they sent me by e-mail contained no ticket bar codes. I didn't even notice at first the instruction that said to load the Ticketmaster app on to your phone and download the tickets from there. Irrelevant, anyway, as my phone can't do things like that, and even if it did I'm not eager to load an app I'd only use once in eight years.

I established a chat link - it said they'd get back to you within four hours (!) but it actually took only about 25 minutes - and eventually found out that, no, there's no print at home option for these tickets, but you can have them transferred to will call. After spending an hour on this altogether, I had them do that, but I won't be surprised if I get to will call, show them my documentation, and then they say, "I've just sent your tickets to your phone."

And then ... and then I go out for lunch in a mildly upscale Palo Alto restaurant that I haven't been to in several years, and find a new wrinkle. The host pointed me to a card on the table and said I can order via a QR code on the card. I hastily replied that my phone can't do that. The host fortunately said that in that case they'd send a waiter, and did not direct me to what else it said on the card, which is that if you can't access the QR code, use their website. I didn't bring a laptop computer along with me either! And if they have wifi, it didn't say.

Fortunately I could order via human being, and pay too, instead of using the QR code for that also. But it was a narrow escape.