Some of you who have been reading the blog for a while may have deduced by now that going to Chicago Symphony Orchestra concerts is one of the few pre-planned events in the life of this happy gay couple. Mostly we operate out of habit or on the spur of the moment, which is sometimes frustrating for a planner like me but also leads to unexpected bliss from time to time.
Now I understand how my other half feels about being pestered to make plans, though. For two months or more, the CSO has been calling me, trying to get me to commit to a subscription package for 2007-2008. While there is a series we both think looks reasonably good (Saturday C, for those of you who are interested), we're not ready to pull the trigger--and may never be.
But telling the CSO rep that is nigh-on impossible. Believe me--I tried. She'd ask if she should call back in a week. "No, I don't think we'll have time to make a decision by then," I'd say. "Two weeks?" she'd brightly respond, but that question mark at the end was strictly for grammar--she'd be calling whether I wanted her to or not.
Through it all, what has annoyed me the most is that she persistently refers to my other half as "your wife." From the first time I said "We need time to discuss it," that's been her line: "Have you and your wife had a chance to decide which concerts you'd like to attend?" Tonight, finally, enough was too much. When she asked that question to open our call, I said, "First, my 'wife' is a man. Second, we still haven't had a chance to decide what to do; he works long hours." She was clearly a bit flummoxed, but give the gal credit; within two seconds she was asking--without any pause to apologize for her ongoing mis-assumption, mind you--"Should I call you back in a week?"
I said no, by the way. We can order our tickets online. On our timetable.
2 comments:
If you're not getting enough annoying calls, I can send the school loan companies over to you. They just don't seem to believe when I say, I've already consolidated what I'm going to and am happy just the way I am.
The Seattle Symphony tries to get me to commit to become a subscriber all of the time. I used to be able to just avoid their calls completely. This spring, each time they called I ended up locking my keys in my car. To me a subscription means too much compromise. There are invariably concerts in any package that I would never hear nor want to hear. Even though I understand tickets can be swapped out, I am not so sure its as easy as they make it sound. In fact, I asked the woman trying to sell me tickets if once I subscribed if I could immediately change my tickets and she said I couldn't. Bah. In any case, I prefer the flexibility of just picking (ala carte) what I want to hear. After the season subscribers have done their thing, the SSO offers up 3 concert packages for $99.00 with preferred orchestra seating. James and I have done that and it works okay.
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