American Horror Story seems so unique and new to me. After 3 ½ season, I’m still excited to watch
it each week. I’m not the only one either. As we lined up for the signing,
dozens of people were lining up for the ‘standby’ line. The booth workers were spending a lot of energy
shooing them away but like flies they just came back.
The reason the booth workers needed to shoo them away was
the signing was late. A lot of people were
gravitating to the signing line. You start to worry that someone might cut in. You worry the line might get broken up and you
are left with empty hands. Naturally all of us were getting grouchy after a long
day.
As we waited, people offered to buy or sell their raffle
tickets. It happens. One young man was very willing to sell but had no
takers. I mentioned if he dropped his
price and he might make some money. He forcefully told me I didn’t have a clue
about scalping and he did this for a living.
I could see that he did make a living the way he did it. Barely.
I could also see him making more money long term by lowering his price. At the
end of it all, he sold one ticket for a smaller amount than he wanted but if he
sold at the price I suggested, he could have sold both tickets and made more
money.
This just started of the irritation. We waited
some more. We saw the cast file in. Our
line moved…a little. That’s almost worse
than not moving. Your adrenaline spikes and then it falls. You start to remember
how much her feet hurt or the ache in your back is sharper than before. You can see the finish line but just can’t get
there.
From our queue we can see the signing start on the TV monitors. We saw part of the line move. Yet we still weren’t
moving. We then saw the actors get up
and leave. I pointed that out to my friends.
I mentioned that to the line monitor. You
saw the panic in his eyes. He rushed off
to get someone.
In reality, I know it’s
over. There are no guarantees. You pretend to hope they just took a break and
will come back but you know there is no chance.
You have missed out.
A few minutes later a young woman comes over. She had 2
large security types with her. By now,
the whole line knows the cast left. The line was angry. Not quite a mob but not
exactly a group that will disperse easily.
Nerd Rage comes to mind. Since she does have 2 large men with her, I’m
not too concerned for her safety. However, I acknowledge it took some
courage. She could have ignored us or sent
someone else over or just had the police come by and shoo us away. She didn’t.
She listened. She talked. Then she promised she would help
us tomorrow.
She asked us to wait. She left. She came back with some
swag. As we handed over our winning
ticket, she gave us a piece of swag. She told us that at 8 AM tomorrow she would
meet us at the Fox raffle line. We would exchange that piece of swag for any autograph
held later that day. It was a very friendly thing to do.
While I was disappointed about American Horror Story, this
did relive some stress on Sunday…if she showed up.
At 8AM the next day, she was true to her word. She showed
and had winning tickets for everyone. We queued. She asked what we wanted and
she handed them the ticket.
I must be part Loki. I told her I wanted American Horror Story.
The panic in her eyes was priceless. Shame on me for teasing her like that. But
it was funny.
I did tell her what she did was classy. I told her I thought
it was going the extra mile. So often we focus on the negative and ignore the positive. The booth
really had no obligation to do this. I have
a feeling she did this on her own accord. Ideally, this is the way things are supposed to
work then plans go awry. This should be the auto-response and not what occurs because
people yelled, screamed, and threatened.
Thank you Fox for doing the right thing.
AH
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