Steve Roberts Interview: Dealing with the General Public & Seating Complaints
Title
Steve Roberts Interview: Dealing with the General Public & Seating Complaints
Date
4 October 2018
Description
Oral history interview with Steve Roberts, Deputy Box Office Manager at the Theatre Royal & Royal Concert Hall and a long-serving member of staff since 1999.
What's the story?
Having previously worked in Nottingham’s lace industry, Steve Roberts first joined the Theatre Royal in 1999 as a Box Office Clerk and where he has since progressed to the role of Deputy Box Office Manager.
This role involves over-seeing all the box office staff, as well putting all the shows onto the computerised ticketing system, in order for staff to sell the tickets.
Throughout his time at the venue Steve has been directly involved in some of the biggest changes in how people purchase their tickets for shows at the Theatre Royal.
In this interview Steve talks about some of the challenges when dealing with the general public, as well as some seating issues related to the Theatre Royal, particularly in terms of its Victorian sight-lines:
Some of the favourite sayings that people have got, you know, they want two tickets facing the stage. So we’ve often thought, well, today’s special offer you’re going to sit with your back to the stage and things like that. And a lot of it is they’ll come and say two tickets “together”. Oh no, we don’t give you seats together, we like to separate you! It is challenging and some of them are lovely and some of them can be awful, really. And that surprised me when I came from the lace trade, working in a factory to the general public. They’re coming for entertainment purposes, but they can be so awful and nasty to you. It does shock us and even to this day there can be some awkward customers. I had one of the staff the other day came into me the other day and she was quite upset because he wouldn’t give his name, he wouldn’t leave an address or anything. He just wanted a ticket “I’ve come to buy a ticket, I don’t want you to take my name, I don’t want you to know where I live”.
We get quite a few complaints about the seats. We get quite a few, especially with the Theatre Royal with the seating because, as you know, it’s an old Victorian theatre and seats are round the corners and it dips, but we try and put as much information as we can, even when people book online, this is a restricted view, this is a partial view, this is a side view, which they do pick up and we try and put it on the tickets as well. But obviously people, when booking online, tend to miss information. I don’t know whether they don’t read it, or they’re watching television as they’re doing it and then they’ll say “It didn’t say…” and you have to say “Well, it did actually say it was a restricted view”. They come back to us writing through the feedback form. Normally, if it’s the Theatre Royal, we just explain than it’s an old Victorian theatre, things have changed over the years, we don’t always know what the sets are like until it’s actually on stage. It might have speakers down the side. It might have walls down the side. And we do point out to them that if they booked online there were things on there to say it was a restricted view. If they booked over the phone or in person, our staff are trained to tell the customer that this is a restricted view, which they do all the time.
This role involves over-seeing all the box office staff, as well putting all the shows onto the computerised ticketing system, in order for staff to sell the tickets.
Throughout his time at the venue Steve has been directly involved in some of the biggest changes in how people purchase their tickets for shows at the Theatre Royal.
In this interview Steve talks about some of the challenges when dealing with the general public, as well as some seating issues related to the Theatre Royal, particularly in terms of its Victorian sight-lines:
Some of the favourite sayings that people have got, you know, they want two tickets facing the stage. So we’ve often thought, well, today’s special offer you’re going to sit with your back to the stage and things like that. And a lot of it is they’ll come and say two tickets “together”. Oh no, we don’t give you seats together, we like to separate you! It is challenging and some of them are lovely and some of them can be awful, really. And that surprised me when I came from the lace trade, working in a factory to the general public. They’re coming for entertainment purposes, but they can be so awful and nasty to you. It does shock us and even to this day there can be some awkward customers. I had one of the staff the other day came into me the other day and she was quite upset because he wouldn’t give his name, he wouldn’t leave an address or anything. He just wanted a ticket “I’ve come to buy a ticket, I don’t want you to take my name, I don’t want you to know where I live”.
We get quite a few complaints about the seats. We get quite a few, especially with the Theatre Royal with the seating because, as you know, it’s an old Victorian theatre and seats are round the corners and it dips, but we try and put as much information as we can, even when people book online, this is a restricted view, this is a partial view, this is a side view, which they do pick up and we try and put it on the tickets as well. But obviously people, when booking online, tend to miss information. I don’t know whether they don’t read it, or they’re watching television as they’re doing it and then they’ll say “It didn’t say…” and you have to say “Well, it did actually say it was a restricted view”. They come back to us writing through the feedback form. Normally, if it’s the Theatre Royal, we just explain than it’s an old Victorian theatre, things have changed over the years, we don’t always know what the sets are like until it’s actually on stage. It might have speakers down the side. It might have walls down the side. And we do point out to them that if they booked online there were things on there to say it was a restricted view. If they booked over the phone or in person, our staff are trained to tell the customer that this is a restricted view, which they do all the time.
Type
Oral interview
Location of item
Theatre Royal & Royal Concert Hall Nottingham
Rights
Theatre Royal & Royal Concert Hall Nottingham
Contributor
Interviewers: Andrew Breakwell & Julia Holmes
Transcriber: David Chilton
Transcriber: David Chilton
