Needless to say, management frowns on such activity. However, we have to admit, this wasn’t the first altercation between a Pollstar.com employee and customer.

We don’t know why it happens. Our staff will be humming along, slamming in dates for bands like Steel Pulse and the Pixies, and artists like Gretchen Wilson, Tracy Chapman and James Taylor, when suddenly something happens. Maybe it’s an email pointing out an error in the John Heffron schedule. Or maybe it’s an Instant Message about a missing Rich Little date. No matter, because before you know it, one of our staffers tracks down the sender, and immediately tries to beat the living daylights out of him or her.

Sure, we’ve tried all the so-called preventive steps – anger management counseling, psychotherapy and Lithium in the corn flakes, but nothing seems to work. Furthermore, there are no signs when one of our employees is about to go off the deep end. They’re smiling one minute, entering dates for Avril Lavigne or Deftones, then the next minute they’re creaming some unlucky user in Ottawa. It defies reason.

Meanwhile the incidents keep piling up.

For example, last month an employee took a tire iron to a user in Omaha about remarks the user made about the Julio Iglesias schedule. Then last week an employee kicked, stabbed and bludgeoned a user in Bakersfield griping about not being able to understand the GWAR itinerary. Then there was that incident where one of our employees electrocuted a user in Seattle because the user wouldn’t stop harping about a typo in the Mindy Smith routing. Oh, won’t this insanity ever stop?

But don’t worry. We’re going to get to the bottom of this. We will not stand for this senseless violence and brutality perpetrated upon our users. We’re third-party tour-date specialists, and there is no room in this biz for viciousness, cruelty and violence when you’re entering dates for They Might Be Giants, Yanni and Van Halen. From this day forward we will not permit any acts of violence committed by our workers on unsuspecting users of our service. We love our users, and we will not stand for any more episodes of beatings, muggings, random dismemberment, decapitations or even chair throwing.

After all, it’s not like we’re Major League Baseball.