“You look beat. Hard day at the ticket outlet?”

“You bet. HE came in again.”

“Oh, no. You want to tell me about it?”

“I don’t know what it is with this guy. First of all, when he walked in, I already had a full house. Heck, some people had been standing in line for a half an hour waiting to buy their tickets for Bette Midler or Supergrass. So, what does he do? He walks right up to the counter, cuts in front of the first person in line, and demands that I drop everything and wait on him immediately.”

“Some nerve.”

“You ain’t kidding.”

“Then what did he do?”

“Well, he started complaining. He said that the tickets he wanted were much more important than the tickets the other people wanted to buy. He said that I should take care of him first before I waited on the guy who had been standing in line for 20 minutes to buy Cursive tickets, or the lady who had stood in line for 30 minutes to buy tickets for The Four Freshmen. He said any ticket clerk with ‘half a brain,’ could see that he was giving me a ‘clear alternative.'”

“Sheesh… Some people. Then what happened?”

“Well, I told him that it was first come, first served, that he would have to wait in line like everyone else, and that he would have to do what everyone else has to do when they buy tickets.”

“I’ll bet he didn’t like that.”

“That’s an understatement. That’s when he started yelling that he was ‘special,’ and that he shouldn’t have to go through the same hassle that everyone else had to. He said that tickets for Les Savy Fav or Craig Chaquico or whichever tickets everyone else had been waiting in line to buy were all the same and that their choices couldn’t be half as important as the tickets he wanted to buy.”

“Whoa! Talk about an inflated ego.”

“To the max. Anyway, that’s when the other people in line started telling me that I should go ahead and sell him his tickets. Just to get him out of the store.”

“And?”

“So I punched in his selection. But the seats weren’t good enough for him. He said that he deserved front row, center.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Believe it. I looked him in the eyes and told him that the fans had already bought those tickets. That some of them had camped out in front of my store the night before the tickets went on sale to buy seats only half as good as what he wanted. But did he care? Heck no. He kept yelling about how he was ‘special,’ that he was better than everyone else, and that his purchase was the only one that represented a ‘clear choice.'”

“So, what did you do?”

“The only thing I could do. I sold him the tickets I was holding onto for ourselves. Sorry, honey, but all his ranting and raving was starting to affect sales. He was driving all my other customers away to the outlet across the street to buy their tickets for Van Halen and The String Cheese Incident.”

“That’s okay, dear. I understand. These things happen.”

“Yeah, I know, but sometimes…”

“Sometimes… What?”

“Sometimes I just wish that Ralph Nader wasn’t so full of himself.”