# How would you handle this situation?



## gafftaper

Here's a little twist on the usual Question of the day...

We had a serious screw up tonight on the part of house management. It's a 200 seat black box theater. Our max occupancy is actually 400, but we only have 200 of the nice theater seats. Our computer system only allows 200 tickets to be printed. It's not possible to over sell. We had a dance studio using the theater today. Three shows in one day, all sold out. The two early shows however both had a few empty seats. The evening show, we had about 225 people with tickets. Apparently our ushers were not checking the time of performance printed on the tickets and we had a bunch of people with tickets from the morning shows get in to the evening show. All tickets look the same without careful inspection. So, 10 minutes prior to curtain we had every seat full and 25 people with paid tickets standing in the aisles waiting to sit.

No matter what you do someone is going to be angry. What would you do and why? 

I'll tell you later what our house management decided to do.


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## express

I would go through, and make sure all of the people with the correct time had seats first. If there were more, you give those to the people with the wrong time. The other wrong timers would get tixs to another show, OR, if there wasn't one, they get refunded,or they're just S.O.L


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## josh88

its unfortunate, but the people who had tickets to the early show weren't at the right show. Assuming they were aware they were buying tickets for a certain time they missed their show. At the nicest I may refund their tickets to keep them from being angry but if you look at it as they are renting their seat for the length of the show, their lease had run out and they were now sitting in someone elses seat. That said we've had similar experiences where max capacity was higher than the actual number of seats and instead there was just a mad dash to find folding chairs and any other kind of seats to add to the space to accommodate the extra people.


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## kiwitechgirl

I agree with Express and Josh - those who had turned up at the correct show have the right to those seats. Those people who had misread their tickets and turned up for a later show can't blame the theatre or the box office for that - they needed to read more carefully; maybe refund their tickets as a gesture of goodwill (although I don't think there would be any requirement to do so) but if you've missed your show through no-one's fault but your own, too bad.


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## cpf

The folding chairs seem to be the way to go, coupled with an explanation of what went wrong to the people bumped from their assigned (or was it rush?) seats. We've had similar issues, but simply due to a mixup in the ticketing (rush seating), not the fault of the patron or door people, and to be honest I think the people who got moved to temporary seating were happier than the rest because they actually got legroom!


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## SteveB

We had a Haitain producer for a Carib concert decide to raffle off a new Mercedes. The ticket for the show was also the raffle ticket and you had to show up at the concert to win the raffle. 10,000 some odd raffle tickets sold. 2500 seat theater. Cluster F.....


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## len

I'd figure out a way to print tickets that are more obvious. Either that or get more diligent ushers.


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## chausman

I would find the people that don't know what time they were supposed to be there for the show, and make them sit in the "not As nice" theater seats. Or say "so sorry, you missed your show" and not let them be seated until everyone who paid for that show had been seated. And, I'm guessing that your ushers just had the "extra people" who got there after someone else was in there seat, sit on the floor in the aisles.


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## MarshallPope

My response would be to seat the people who had the correct ticket, and then offer anyone else a folding chair if available. It seems like that is more than they should get, so they should (in theory) be happy. Though, you never can please some audience members.


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## cdcarter

Add folding chairs for the 25 that didn't get seated, and offer them refunds if they desire. Don't unseat people that are already seated, and don't go running around trying to find people with the wrong time on their ticket. Resolve the situation as quickly and happily as possible, let the show start on time.

Then, train your ushers to do their job, and also put some house holds in your ticketing system. Not a full 25, but maybe 10 or so, for situations like this (and for when the chair of your board shows up at the theater and needs 5 seats to a sold out show).


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## gafftaper

So for those of you who want to kick out the people without a proper ticket. You already have 225 people inside a room with 200 seats. How do you go about finding and removing the people with the wrong ticket? You already have a PR nightmare on your hands thanks to those inattentive ushers. Will going through the house one by one and marching out everyone who doesn't have a ticket improve or hurt your overall PR situation? What do you do if someone absolutely refuses to leave?


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## shiben

gafftaper said:


> So for those of you who want to kick out the people without a proper ticket. You already have 225 people inside a room with 200 seats. How do you go about finding and removing the people with the wrong ticket? You already have a PR nightmare on your hands thanks to those inattentive ushers. Will going through the house one by one and marching out everyone who doesn't have a ticket improve or hurt your overall PR situation? What do you do if someone absolutely refuses to leave?


 
Well the government provides men with guns to remove people who are really not wanting to leave if they should... They also have tasers, clubs, and pepper spray. Obviously, this is not what you want to have happen, its a PR nightmare. If you really have room for 200 more people in the area but are just out of seats, give the 25 more people seats, and politelly tell them what happened (that you accidently over sold the show, not what really happened), and offer them half price tix on another show.


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## MrsFooter

Also, what happens if you don't have anywhere to put 25 chairs? Our house holds 980, and when we say 980, we mean 980. There's nowhere to set up chairs that won't create a fire hazard. Plus, 25 chairs is a LOT; our handicap section is only 15 chairs, and that takes up a pretty big chunk of real estate.

Just something to think about to keep the conversation interesting!

(Also, as to what _I _would do in this situation? I would go tell the Front of House Manager. Blessedly, that's one problem that will never be mine!)


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## DuckJordan

This actually happens every year at the local high schools small pro space. They have roughly 60 seats and since the way the director orders tickets he doesn't just run out of tickets for the night. What generally happens is we seat people in the isles who are able to move their chair if it requires. He notoriously over sells by about 10-15 so its nothing new in our world. We just find them seats as best we can if we can't we refund their ticket and if its not final show offer them reserves for the next show. if its the final night we offer them comp tickets for the next show.


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## cpf

MrsFooter said:


> Also, what happens if you don't have anywhere to put 25 chairs? Our house holds 980, and when we say 980, we mean 980. There's nowhere to set up chairs that won't create a fire hazard. Plus, 25 chairs is a LOT; our handicap section is only 15 chairs, and that takes up a pretty big chunk of real estate.
> 
> Just something to think about to keep the conversation interesting!
> 
> (Also, as to what _I _would do in this situation? I would go tell the Front of House Manager. Blessedly, that's one problem that will never be mine!)


With temp chairs out of the picture, I think the best way would just be to turn away the extra people and give them free tickets/cash on the spot, since going over the PA and saying "OK guys, I want everyone to pull out their tickets and check the bottom right-hand corner..." is pretty much the same as announcing to the entire audience that your theatre/company is too amateur to handle simple arithmetic, let alone a complex performance. 

The obvious solution is to have the date & time be the largest text on the ticket, or if you just found that hidden room in the building filled with gold bars, electronic admission and barcoded tickets.


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## shiben

DuckJordan said:


> This actually happens every year at the local high schools small pro space. They have roughly 60 seats and since the way the director orders tickets he doesn't just run out of tickets for the night. What generally happens is we seat people in the isles who are able to move their chair if it requires. He notoriously over sells by about 10-15 so its nothing new in our world. We just find them seats as best we can if we can't we refund their ticket and if its not final show offer them reserves for the next show. if its the final night we offer them comp tickets for the next show.



What Isles? Most Isles are not really a place for extra seating for a central United States performance.


cpf said:


> With temp chairs out of the picture, I think the best way would just be to turn away the extra people and give them free tickets/cash on the spot, since going over the PA and saying "OK guys, I want everyone to pull out their tickets and check the bottom right-hand corner..." is pretty much the same as announcing to the entire audience that your theatre/company is too amateur to handle simple arithmetic, let alone a complex performance.
> 
> The obvious solution is to have the date & time be the largest text on the ticket, or if you just found that hidden room in the building filled with gold bars, electronic admission and barcoded tickets.


 
We got barcoded tickets. See if the people who run basketball games at your college can help you out. They tend to be able to afford such things.


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## cdcarter

MrsFooter said:


> Also, what happens if you don't have anywhere to put 25 chairs? Our house holds 980, and when we say 980, we mean 980. There's nowhere to set up chairs that won't create a fire hazard. Plus, 25 chairs is a LOT; our handicap section is only 15 chairs, and that takes up a pretty big chunk of real estate.


 
Well, per the way the original post read, adding seats shouldn't have been an issue. But, if it is, you just can't seat the last 25. Refund their tickets, and offer comps to the next performance (of that show, of the next thing that's interesting at the venue). Always get the problem out of the house as soon as possible. You want to get it away from other patrons, and also away from ushers and other members of the FOH staff who would love to help but won't make the right call or don't have the authority to.


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## Chris15

How might the fact that GT identified that the hirer was a dance studio affect this?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that to me reads kids dance school and that means the audience would have been almost entirely mums, dads, aunties, grandmas and others who are there to see their little darling perform...


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## Tex

-Comp the 25 extra people and apologize for over selling. Tell them they are welcome to see the show from standing room.
or...
-Find a place for 25 folders.
or...
-Announce to your audience that there was a mistake. Check all the tickets and ask the people who have tickets for a previous show to move to standing room, giving the 25 extras seats.

There's really no good solution. Trying to hide the fact that the box office made a mistake just makes it worse. Admit it, apologize and move on.


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## museav

I think it is important that it does not seem to be a matter of the event being oversold and that there was apparently other seating available.

How would the Ushers have responded to those with tickets for a different time if they had caught the discrepancy? It's not like they could have told them to come back at the right time since this was apparently the last performance, so it seems that the best they could have done was to identify that the patrons had come at the wrong time and offer them 'overflow' seating if they wanted it. With it affecting just 25 people it seems like it would be practical to seat the people who had tickets for that show in their rightful seats and offer those who made the mistake of coming to the wrong show the option of any open seating after everyone with a ticket for that show had been seated.

I'd be worried that offering refunds would not only be more difficult with it being a third party user but it could also set an undesired precedent that if you miss a show for which you have tickets you can simply show up later and either get a seat for that show or a refund.


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## gafftaper

Still haven't heard a plan for how you would sort out the people with the wrong tickets and kick them out of the show. Would you march the house management staff through the audience one row at a time to check tickets? Would you march the whole audience out into the lobby and send them back in a second time? How do you handle this without a riot? 


Chris15 said:


> How might the fact that GT identified that the hirer was a dance studio affect this?
> 
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but that to me reads kids dance school and that means the audience would have been almost entirely mums, dads, aunties, grandmas and others who are there to see their little darling perform...


 
Yes it's a dance school. The 25 extra people are Grandma and Aunt Thelma who drove 150 miles to watch 4 year old Suzy dance in a tutu. They have no interest in getting their money back and are VERY angry at the suggestion that they have done something wrong.


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## josh88

assuming the seating isn't assigned you can't pinpoint the people who aren't actually supposed to be there. The best option is to apologize to the extra people and get them into other seats as long as space isn't an issue. If you absolutely can't get more seats you have to turn them away. offer the refund even if they don't want it, looking at the upside if they are from 150 miles away their anger doesn't affect too much after they leave. 

if there was assigned seating, then yes I have seen the house manager march through and check the tickets in question and remove people one by one if their ticket was wrong. No easy way to go about it, and any decision will make people mad.


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## chausman

Well, the 25 extra peoples will have someone else in their seat, so the seats where two people are trying to sit there should be the only seats I would worry about. I would then ask the people who didnt remember what time they paid for get standing room or foldable chairs in the back.


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## gafftaper

Sorry Chausman, the seats are not assigned so that wouldn't work. 

So our house management's solution was, as many of you have already landed on, to dig out some extra chairs. Since it's a black box, we just added a new front row. This made the people who thought they were in the front row mad, but oh well, at least we got everyone in. Unfortunately, the people in the front row were now "on stage" and lit throughout the performance. But what can you do? At least everyone got in and there was no riot.


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## sdauditorium

cdcarter said:


> Add folding chairs for the 25 that didn't get seated, and offer them refunds if they desire. Don't unseat people that are already seated, and don't go running around trying to find people with the wrong time on their ticket. Resolve the situation as quickly and happily as possible, let the show start on time.
> 
> Then, train your ushers to do their job, and also put some house holds in your ticketing system. Not a full 25, but maybe 10 or so, for situations like this (and for when the chair of your board shows up at the theater and needs 5 seats to a sold out show).


 
+1. It creates as little hassle as could be expected considering the situation. As long as whoever the FOH manager is explains the situation to those individuals as politely and apologetically as possible, I feel it alleviates the bad PR on the theater itself. Along with offering folding chairs and possible discounted tickets on another future show, most of those displaced individuals would be understanding and accept that without further issues.

For any ticket holders that didn't accept that it was an honest mistake and the theater attempted to do everything practical within its means to find a viable solution, any "acting out" on their part would likely be seen as childish and irrational.

If they get too crazy, you can always call the gun-toting backup if need be...


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## museav

Is sitting in the added chairs in front of the existing seating the only option you offered those who had tickets for that performance? That seems like effectively penalizing those who had tickets for that performance, and especially those who got there early, in order to avoid having to deal with those who had made a mistake and that it was apparently assumed would not readily admit to it.

Since you don't have assigned seating then as soon as you realized there was any conflict I would have made an announcement asking people to please verify that their tickets are for that performance. Hopefully most, if not all, would admit to this honest mistake and you could then offer them seats behind or to the sides of the other seating. If that did not clear up all the conflicts then you could ask those who did have tickets for that show if any of them minded sitting in temporary seating.

Or you could take the approach most other businesses take and charge a 'change fee' for anyone who missed the performance for which they had tickets and attended a different performance.


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## wolf825

*

gafftaper said:



Still haven't heard a plan for how you would sort out the people with the wrong tickets and kick them out of the show. Would you march the house management staff through the audience one row at a time to check tickets? Would you march the whole audience out into the lobby and send them back in a second time? How do you handle this without a riot?

Click to expand...

 
*

Have "someone" accidentally trip the fire alarm..?  

j/k of course..but it does have its own sense of 'hey--that would work'.... 



-w


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## len

One more thing, mildly tangential:

Can those who are in the theatrical industry take the time to learn the difference between isle and aisle. If you don't think it makes a difference, consider these two sentences:

Let's go eat, Virginia.

Let's go eat Virginia.


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## gafftaper

museav said:


> Is sitting in the added chairs in front of the existing seating the only option you offered those who had tickets for that performance? That seems like effectively penalizing those who had tickets for that performance, and especially those who got there early, in order to avoid having to deal with those who had made a mistake and that it was apparently assumed would not readily admit to it.
> 
> Since you don't have assigned seating then as soon as you realized there was any conflict I would have made an announcement asking people to please verify that their tickets are for that performance. Hopefully most, if not all, would admit to this honest mistake and you could then offer them seats behind or to the sides of the other seating. If that did not clear up all the conflicts then you could ask those who did have tickets for that show if any of them minded sitting in temporary seating.
> 
> Or you could take the approach most other businesses take and charge a 'change fee' for anyone who missed the performance for which they had tickets and attended a different performance.



Again, unfortunately this was the last performance of a dance studio's rental. It was really clear that the audience didn't care about tickets to future events. They didn't care about being polite. They didn't care about doing the right thing and admitting they didn't have a valid ticket to that performance. They wanted to see 3 year old Suzy dance in a tutu. So although offering a return of money or giving a discount to a future show would be a nice gesture that should be considered, in this case it was pretty much pointless. 

There were people upset about us putting out a new front row of chairs but at that point our house management staff really only had the choice of that or to go through every person one at at time checking tickets and kicking out people. Which I think would have made a bad situation much worse. 

As Mrs. Footer said, I'm glad this wasn't my problem. I got to kick back, eat my popcorn, and watch the show from the booth.


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## CrazyTechie

As I type this, also on our closing night performance, our box office staff has turned our black box into pretty much standing room only. Our solution was to have people who really wanted to sit on the floor in front of the regular audience seating. We were supposed to start fifteen minutes ago and just barely started our show.


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## cpf

gafftaper said:


> As Mrs. Footer said, I'm glad this wasn't my problem. I got to kick back, eat my popcorn, and watch the show from the booth.



The best way this situation can unfold


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## ruinexplorer

shiben said:


> What Isles? Most Isles are not really a place for extra seating for a central United States performance.


 

len said:


> One more thing, mildly tangential:
> 
> Can those who are in the theatrical industry take the time to learn the difference between isle and aisle. If you don't think it makes a difference, consider these two sentences:
> 
> Let's go eat, Virginia.
> 
> Let's go eat Virginia.


 
I think the tongue in cheek approach by shiben pointed out that some of us do know the difference. Of course this is a homophone and not punctuation error as in the Virginia example. 

In any case, you cannot allow seating in the aisles. This could get your facility shut down quickly, especially if they find that this is being intentionally done by your staff and not just the staff being neglectful in stopping patrons from doing this on their own. This is part of the basic operation of a public assembly space, along with proper aisle and exit lighting.

The nice thing with a black box space is that it is flexible. As long as you are within the occupancy limit of the room, you can often add the seating. With the black box that I had managed, the AHJ had set different occupancy limits depending on which configuration we set the room, since the risers could effectively limit certain egress pathways. That would have hindered us in this situation from adding additional seating.


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## mstaylor

> As Mrs. Footer said, I'm glad this wasn't my problem. I got to kick back, eat my popcorn, and watch the show from the booth.


We did a beach concert years ago with the Beach Boys. The seats were beach chairs with event name printed on it. As part of the ticket price you took the chair with you. It was the first event that they had gone with a national ticketing company, double sold the front row, all VIPs. I got to stay on stage and watch the scramble.


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## PeterBuchin

The dance school owner should go to the stage and apologize for the late start and explain the situation.

Then they should ask for volunteers to give up their seat. Aunt Martha may well want to see Suzy dance, but Uncle Edgar might just as soon sit in the lobby and read the paper. The same goes for teenage siblings who got dragged along. After that, if there are just a few folks to go, the dance school owner should offer to host a dinner for whoever volunteers to leave. 

The lessons here are:
1.) Think through what might go wrong in advance.
2.) Never be afraid to offer a creative solution. The worst anyone might say is No, but if they accept your solution it's another feather in your cap.


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## museav

PeterBuchin said:


> The dance school owner should go to the stage and apologize for the late start and explain the situation.


If they were the ones that provided the ushers that did not catch the show time when they seated people then I agree, however if it was venue staff that was at fault, and Gaff said "our ushers", then I would not ask or expect a Client to do this.


PeterBuchin said:


> Then they should ask for volunteers to give up their seat. Aunt Martha may well want to see Suzy dance, but Uncle Edgar might just as soon sit in the lobby and read the paper. The same goes for teenage siblings who got dragged along.


Good point.


PeterBuchin said:


> After that, if there are just a few folks to go, the dance school owner should offer to host a dinner for whoever volunteers to leave.


If some patrons made a mistake and came at the wrong time and some of the venue staff/representatives made a mistake in not checking the time on the tickets, then why should the dance school owner pay for those mistakes? In fact while the patrons may end up directing their anger or dismay at the dance school, it sounds like the venue ushers were most at fault and perhaps it should be the venue compensating the dance school. I don't understand putting the responsibility for the results of the actions of those who made mistakes on to the one party that seemed to not have made a mistake.

I completely understand the desire to arrive at an amicable solution and avoid conflict, I also think it makes sense to not try to 'punish' those who made an honest mistake. But it is not right to ask those who made no mistake to suffer for the actions of those that did. If you ask people to check their tickets and somebody admits they came to the wrong performance then you try to work with them to find some acceptable arrangement. However, if someone is made aware that this is penalizing someone else and still chooses to not admit they are there at the wrong performance, then they have made a conscious choice and their action is no longer an honest mistake. I don't see going out of the way to reward people who won't take responsibility for their mistakes especially if they are aware that it negatively affects others who made no such mistake.


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## dancarden

which isles would you have people sat in. the british isles maybe or some other isles somewhere else in the world. it would probably be easier if you sat the extra people in the aisles thus avoiding any expensive plane tickets and foreign accommodation.


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## MaddMaxx

Especially for a dance recital, there will be lots of very young siblings in the audience. I have had situations similar to this, and have had small cushions for little tykes to sit on the floor in front of the first row. All the adult patrons were very appreciative of this solution.


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## Timothy A. Samuelson

Absolutely hate this situation, yet my FOH staff always seems to mess up. Their new solution is to only sell a percentage of tickets online ahead of time and sell another percentage at the door, leaving a few hold seats for board members, family, etc. Pre-bought tickets get seated at 6:45, tickets from the door at 7:00, then the waiting list begins... the remaining seats are seated at 7:20, curtain at 7:30. If you hear the music and you're still in the lobby, then you didn't get seated and get to head home. 

Keep in mind, that's a 62 seat theater. 

We are thankfully moving into a new space in June. 150 seats for sold tickets, then we have a large balcony with a slightly impeded view for over-sales, special guests, etc.


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