Then and Now: Buying Tickets to Shows

Now:

I wake up and look at my phone. There’s a reminder to buy tickets to a show I want to go to at 10 this morning. I get on the group chat and write that it’s the day to attempt purchasing billets to our concert. My friends ignore me and post pictures of their cats. They are, admittedly, pretty cute cats.

I arrive at work and set several alarms on my phone to remind myself to be at my desk before the sale goes live. I get a coffee and start heading over around 9:45. My friend, the intern, approaches my desk and I joke with him before promptly and rudely telling him I have serious person work to do. He doesn’t believe me but leaves anyway. I log onto Ticketmaster. There is a ten-minute countdown. I scroll through a food critic’s Twitter feed and respond to emails in the interim.

My alarm goes off again five minutes before 10. I silence it. I write more emails. I have written forty emails this morning.

It’s 10:02. Darn. I refresh the page. You are 2,547th in line for Michelle Obama tickets. Fuck. I start doing the math to determine the likelihood of getting three seats together in a large arena being the 2547th person in line. My friends text the group chat and are experiencing the same issues. We don’t refresh our pages in case we lose our spots. Another friend texts me about her place in line. Her friend managed to buy two single seats that aren’t next to each other. Success.

After twenty minutes of slowly inching closer to number 2540, the page refreshes itself to an empty screen. They’ve sold out. But they’re sorry. I text my friends who have received these messages sooner than I have. We’ve lost and won’t be able to go to this show now. I read Becoming again. It’s still perfect.

A week later I get an email from Bands In Town saying Lizzo is playing in town this summer. Two separate friends text me about going to see this concert. The cogs in my brain start to turn as we all look up three different presale codes: Live Nation, Spotify and American Express. My one friend with an American Express card taps in and the other who pays for her Spotify account has agreed to only listen to Lizzo on repeat for the next two weeks so her algorithm is updated to becoming a super Lizzo fan or something. I opt for just googling “Lizzo Live Nation presale codes, please!!!” and adding myself to Lizzo’s mailing list until I find something that could possibly be this code then lose interest and call my parents instead. They remind me of a time when you had to buy concert tickets over the phone with Ticketmaster. Lol.

Two weeks later, my Spotify friend has received an email with the code given to people who managed to trick the system. I send this code to my other friend who wanted to go. We all buy GA tickets and celebrate in our group chats.

Then:

I’d just buy them.