Dance Moms
I work in local theater, and we have a lot of rude, awful women from the nearby ballet schools come through our venue; they’re generally the mothers of the dancers so you know, those awful controlling dance moms you see on TV.
Once, this woman rang up wanting seats to an almost sold-out ballet performance that had been on sale for four months the day before the show. It did not go well.
She did nothing but scream at me for five minutes because she left buying them too late, whined about how she shouldn’t have to pay to see her kids, whined that we should get a bigger venue, then put me on hold while she rang three of her relatives to see if they wanted seats too.
She was positively horrific to me. The seats I was about to sell her were the only ones in the theater left, and they were actually good seats.
While I’m on hold, a grandma of one of the ballerinas comes to the desk and asks nicely if we have any seats left, as she’d been in hospital and couldn’t buy them earlier. She said she’d understand if we were booked out.
This awful woman still has me on hold, so I put the phone down and sold this old lady the last seats for the show, then gave her an invite to our next year’s dance season so she’d know exactly when all the important dates were coming.
She thanked me over and over, and she’s now one of our regulars and brings her grandkids to our shows. Meanwhile, this other lady…
Two minutes after the old lady leaves, the witch on the other end finally takes me off hold and says she wants the remaining seats that we have left, I tell her,
“Sorry, we’ve just sold out while you had me on hold I’m afraid, better luck next year, anything else I can help you with?” She was choking with rage on the other end of the phone, it was fantastic.