So who else is pissed off at Christmas Ball?

[Glasgow]

I am fully aware that in the greater scheme of things this is going to sound like a petty rant but I feel I need to get it out of my system.
Christmas Ball tickets....aaaaaaaargh!
Queued for 2 and a half hours on Monday, beginning at 11 (which I now realise was an obvious mistake), no tickets. SO, today I begin prepared at 9.30am, the queue is counted at about 10am, and I'm assured that Im at about the 600 ticket mark so tickets are definate. So then by 1pm the tickets are sold out and im not even at the door to the Barron Theatre yet.
The reasons for this seem to be that St Andrews students in general are rude fucks who don't mind queue jumping en masse (thanks guys hope you have a great time at the ball, I had multiple oppertunities to jump in with people but decided that wasn't very fair, Im not martyring myself, just being honest)
AND the fact that commitee starting their 'policing' of the queue about 2 hours too late.
Also, when they knew the queue was capacity at around 10/10.30 am, then why not just start selling the tickets instead of making everyone wait 3 hours or so.
Thanks guys, Im sincerely distraught and probably on my way to being very ill, but Im sure I'll be able to find a ticket for about £90 0n facebook or the sinner. GREAT.

[starsandsparkles]

I did manage to get tickets, but was still pretty annoyed with the queue. At 10am we were told we were about 80th in the line. By 11am there were easily 150 people in front of us, if not more.

Once the queue started moving, more people started pushing in, making the "swap in, swap out" system entirely useless. Bleh.

[What?]

I didn't go for tickets so have no complaint to make about this event. But in general I think more can be done to prevent queue jumping. As soon as a queue forms someone could ask those in the queue how many tickets they want to buy, write the number on an official card and only those with cards get tickets. The person would only go down the queue once and thus any jumpers wouldn't have the right to buy a ticket. If this was done early enough and the card giver outer person stood at the increasing back of the queue I can't see how the system would fail.

Though any improvements to this plan would be welcome.

Of course I am hugely disappointed that queue jumping takes place. It is so un-British.

[Colleen]

I queued from 8.30am and was pretty much slap bang at the front of the queue and therefore got tickets; still can't feel my feet or hands or indeed nose, mind. Was still affected by queue jumpers, though; it's really, really not fair to 'save a place' for a friend and then both of you buy four tickets each, or just sidle in as I spotted more than a few people do.

[Haunted]

Queue jumping needs to be more socially unacceptable.
I think we should upgrade it from impolite to vulgar.

[orudge]

Also, when they knew the queue was capacity at around 10/10.30 am, then why not just start selling the tickets instead of making everyone wait 3 hours or so.

That does indeed seem rather silly. I queued for an hour having turned up at 11am - on a few occasions, people came to tell us that we almost certainly wouldn't get tickets (but I figured I'd stand around for an hour or so anyway - it was only when I saw just how long the queue was outside the Barron itself that I decided it'd make more sense to go and have lunch!), but I do have to wonder why they didn't just start selling the tickets earlier on, and then we wouldn't have had to queue for so many hours for nothing. Of course, it also didn't help that people kept jumping in ahead, and getting their friends to get them a couple of extra tickets.

Perhaps it would have been a lot easier (and a lot less cold) just to sell tickets online, and have people collect them in person?

[Z]

As the guy who was out in the cold (just like everyone else) from 9AM trying to manage the queue, I can tell you we did everything we could to keep it under control. We didn't sell the tickets early for this reason: We said the tickets would be on sale at 12PM, and if we'd released them early (regardless of the fact people who turned up later weren't going to get tickets anyway) it would have given them a reason to complain about the deviation on the grounds of "if I knew that I would have come even earlier". Unfortunately, no matter what sort of system is in place not everyone is going to be happy. If you were that desperate for a ticket you should have planned in advance.

As far as the queue-jumping is concerned, as soon as I became aware of it I positioned an number of people at all the entrances to the queue and regulated the best I could. We were trying, but no one is perfect and there's little any small group of people can do when a crowd of students in the mindset of entitlement tries to get what it wants. If it was that blatant, every single person waiting had the opportunity to speak up and defend their places. Responsibility can be equally shared.

Ultimately I think everyone on the committee should be highly commended for keeping things reasonably under control when swamped with a crowd of over 800 people. That said, we will consider this concern when putting tickets on sale next year. I'm sure there will be unexpected difficulties then too, but the system gets better every year and this one was no exception. Bearing that in mind, you should remember that we've volunteered massive amounts of our time to give as many people as possible the best Christmas experience we can. We've worked incredibly hard to make the ticket process and the ball itself as successful as possible, and the worst that could have happened to you this morning is that you spent a few hours out in the cold. It's a wonderful event I'm proud to be involved with, but at the end of the day it's only on evening that can be spent just as well in the company of good friends and good cheer.

That's all I will say on the matter, and if you have any further questions or complaints you can direct them to me at: (caz2)

Cheers,

Chris Zegel
President, Mermaids
The University of St Andrews Theatre Fund

[Bizarre Atheist]

I'm not pissed off at the Christmas Ball, not even slightly. It's probably the best ball of the year and the mad rush for tickets is an excellent measure of how brilliant it is. So you didn't get a ticket? Sorry about that, but it's hardly Mermaids' fault that their ball is so popular. Better luck next year.

[Person]

I have to say that St Andrews is without question the worst place I've ever had to queue in. In all my days, and wherever I've been, I've never witnessed so much constant and unabashed queue-jumping or plain old cutting. Americans may be fairly criticized for a number of things, but at least we know how to wait in a line! It's pretty indicative of the sense of entitlement and priority a lot of people seem to have around here (St Andrews, not necessarily the UK in general) - maybe at the start of first year the University should schedule mandatory kindergarten lessons for everyone so we can all learn how to share and respect each other like adults.

[Freaker]

As far as selling tickets for large and popular events go, this was probably one of the better-organised approaches, and well-done to the society for spreading the sale over two days, trying to give people a chance to buy on both days. Looking back, maybe one day would have made it easier - it would have meant there'd be a massive queue, but probably not as much of a pressure to turn up hours in advance to make sure you'd get a ticket.

How about this for a bit of a twist next time - Mermaids meets Geopursuit - a clue will be released at one central time via the internet, or even via text messages, about where tickets will be sold, and it is up to the brightest, fastest and most creative of this university's fine students to have the honour of being first in line ......

[starsandsparkles]

Chris Zegel
President, Mermaids
The University of St Andrews Theatre Fund

Just to clarify, my post wasn't criticising the committee, but just other people waiting in line. The committee were good banter.

[Zanbato]

Did anyone actually accost the queue jumpers?

I do sympathise, but if you sat in silence watching people cut in, then you have to expect them to keep trying it. If no-one ever gets an ear full (or worse) when they break the rules, then there's no incentive to stick to them. Of course, you could view this as social commentary on the world at large these days...

I will post here however that I did not queue and am not representing queue jumpers; they suck. If someone had jumped in front of myself, they would get an earful at lthe very least.

[Garnet]

No one cut in directly in front of me, had someone cut in front of me I would have said something. That is something that annoys me, if you are in a queue and up ahead someone cuts in but the people there don't say anything. Then again I think the reason the queue in front of me was swelling so much was because one person would save a place for about 5 people and then friends of theirs would come and join etc etc.

[irish200]

This town is filled with rude idiots, simple really. It was the same last year and it is the same again now, people never learn. As orudge says, sell the bloody things online and save everyone, including yourselves all this hassle and disappointment.

[Frank]

Queue jumping annoys the hell out of me, but I do understand why folks do it and why folks are reluctant to shout about it, which then annoys me (in a 'damn, there's almost nothing I can do about that!' way) even more.

I did speak up against folks queue jumping in Empire though, didn't go very well and was horribly awkward. If 'saving a place' was no longer acceptable, that'd be great. Similarly if folks would harrangue/heckle queue jumpers, that'd be awesome too. But I doubt we will. Certainly, in St Andrews in probably be alright. But in the rest of the world I'm sure it's viewed as a sure-fire way to get stabbed.


EDIT: Good to see the folks weren't selling tickets early, I'm not a fan of that. If it said on sale at 2PM, they'd better be on sale from 2PM, not before!

[Al]

I'm sure that it is possible to introduce some sort of token scheme. Each person in the queue at a certain time could be given a numbered token - even if it's just a raffle ticket. They then hand these over when buying their tickets. It wouldn't stop people pushing in before, as it were, the doors open, but it would stop people turning up late and then pushing in.

[abc123]

The thing that pissed me off was the fact that unless you have no classes or dont care about classes you can't get a ticket since you can't afford to queue for several hours on weekdays! It would have been much fairer to have at least one "selling day" at the weekend! I'd be interested to know the Arts: Science student ratio attending the ball this year!

[Haunted]

It may also be interesting to know of the Art:Science ratio of the committee...

[irish200]

It may also be interesting to know of the Art:Science ratio of the committee...

Why exactly?

[Garnet]

EDIT: Good to see the folks weren't selling tickets early, I'm not a fan of that. If it said on sale at 2PM, they'd better be on sale from 2PM, not before!

Why? I could understand them doing it on Monday because i thought the reasoning would be that it would encourage people on Wednesday to queue really early, but what waiting around for extra hours did was to allow more people to skip the queue. Also it allowed for people to queue for hours and then they ended up not getting a ticket. I guess though people would have complained if they had gone on sale earlier and they turned up at 12pm and didn't get one however what it would have done was to save them queuing to find out they are all sold out.