a while ago, my office organised a gala music and dance performance, and just before curtains up i was summoned by the usher to a fracas in the stalls. four members of the audience arrived holding tickets for seats in which a vip and his family were seated, and the newcomers were demanding those seats. i don't know how the mistake came about- did we accidentally print duplicate tickets, which we sent to two different groups? or perhaps the vip was supposed to pick up his ticket at the door, but got ushered through directly and his tickets at the reception desk were mistakenly added to the pile of standby tickets and given out to the newcomers? whichever the case, i apologised immediately to the four and admitted it was our fault for the mix up, but asked if i could reaccommodate them in different seats. these seats i was offering them were 5 rows further back, but they were still within the stalls and right at the centre of the row (the seats they insisted on were to the side) so i wouldn't consider they were a bad trade.

i should say right from the start that this performance was by invitation only and the tickets were all complimentary, because i think this does make a difference to the story that follows. even very early on, although i didn't have the seating plan with me (and of course we didn't list every single seat in the theatre) it was clear to me that those four seats could not have been intended for these women. they were, you see, in the section designated for a particular category of invited guests, so why would we have given those out? however they came by these tickets, their intended places were almost certainly elsewhere. (as it happens, when i had a chance to check the official name list and seating plan afterwards, those particular seats were indeed marked for the earlier arrivals. probably there was a simple clerical error, and his tickets were put into the wrong envelope and sent to these women.)

however, the four women refused flat out to be seated elsewhere. and i'm sorry to say that they made themselves very unpleasant about it -- aggressive body language and outraged tone of voice and really ugly expressions. their basic position was:

a) they had the tickets, so the other people should move, not them.
b) since we made the mistake in the first place, any offence we cause to those other guests as a result of moving them is our problem.
c)the seats i was offering to them were further back than the seats they had tickets for, so why should they give up their rightful seats for worse seats.

by the end though, i think what was really pissing me off was the way they kept saying, "No, YOU made the mistake, YOU have to move the other people, why should we sit somewhere else?" in those very words and with the repeated emphasis on YOU. (in the end, to prevent a scene, i got four colleagues who themselves had seats further front to exchange seats)

i simply can't understand their behaviour. were they ungracious, or am i in my anger? would not most people have said, ok lah, and just took the other seats? the performance was going to start, the alternative seats really did give a decent view, why not settle down and enjoy the performance? must they be so insistent on their right to those particular seats? (and let's face it, was there very much else i could have done? the earlier occupant is one of our own personally invited guests, and he was seated together with the rest of the people of his professional body. IF those had indeed not his assigned seats, i might have apologised to him and tried to move him, to another vip section seat, and try to disguise it as a sort of "upgrade." but they were his seats, and if, as these women implied, i had to be responsible for causing offence to one set of guests because the mistake was ours in the first place, by that logic should i have happily caused offence to them and said sorry there is nothing i can do for you?)

i suppose you could say for them it was the principle of the thing, they had the tickets and therefore their right was incontrovertible. i mean who hasn't gone into a cinema and showed their ticket stub and got whoever it was on their seat to move? the ticket stub is the proof of that right, but there again the premise is not exactly the same: behind the indignation of most people in a similar situation would have been that they had chosen and bought tickets for a particular seat and then were asked to sit somewhere else -- in other words, what you got was not what you paid for.what is understood is that the right was by purchase. and yes, if this had been a public performance and they had bought tickets for those seats, and i had refused to move someone sitting there simply because of the interloper's special social status or powerful position i could see they would be angry because we would be saying that rank or power trumped a basic right. but the performance was by invitation only, the tickets were complimentary, and none of the seats were chosen. in what amounted to in a ticket lottery, their seats could have been anywhere at all, so why was the sense of entitlement to those precise 4 seats so strong that they would not even consider moving? what pleasure did they get out of making a scene? and consider that they accepted alternative seats in the end (by displacing four different legitimate ticket holders from their seats) so clearly the issue was not that they had to have seats they held tickets for. instead, it had to do with perception of the comparative desirablity of the alternative seating and what it means is that for them it came down to the question of whether they were entitled to be compensated, and that again makes me angry. why must i compensate them? an invitation-only performance puts us in a guest-host relationship, not a monetary transaction. though the error was ours, the understanding of the guest-host context should i thought have elicited some graciousnessness.

what would you have done, had you been there?