NEW YORK-Double dipping is one of the most egregious violations at any get-together with chips and salsa. However, Friday night at Madison Square Garden, we discovered the more sinister side of the term.
Let us first give you some back-story. As part of The Viking’s trip to New York City, we were scheduled to attend the world famous MSG to watch the Knicks slap around the Indiana Pacers. However, chaos ensued as we attempted to enter.
Big Spence, Kev and I were all given seats that had been sold twice over to two different parties.
Safe to say we were heated.
After the scanners gave the dreaded beep of rejection as they passed over our tickets, we were quickly corralled into a caged off area in which we were interrogated by a rather stout gentlemen with a thick (no pun intended) accent. Although there were no TSA-style full-body cavity searches, we were shoved aside as the rest of our colleagues marched on to see our hometown hero, Jeremy Lin, take the court.
Despite our best efforts at “puppy eyes,” we were categorized as criminals. After a stern talking to from the normally soft-spoken Ms. Thomas, the rather spherically built gentlemen allowed us through the pearly gates of MSG. We thought it was all cookies from then on, but boy were we wrong.
We reached our first impasse when the co-owners of the seats came calling at the start of the second quarter. At this point, we realized that we were on the butt end of “double dipping.” While it certainly has multiple meanings, in the arena of tickets, double dipping is the action of selling tickets twice. In essence, some conniving slickster picked up twice the dough for his tickets in the wake of Linsanity.
The situation caused quite the stir among not only The Viking staff, but also with the unfortunate father and his two sons that co-owned the highly sought after tickets.
If the evening taught us one thing it was that the only way to survive in life is to be able to adapt and thrive. Sometimes obstacles become naturally lodged in your path, and you will need to overcome them to move on with not only your day, but also your life. In these unfortunate instances, one must be accommodating, yet not too lenient and able to be trodden upon. In essence, one needs to pull some strings and break a few eggs to make an omelet, yet not burn the omelet in the process.
All throughout the evening we saw instances in which this relates. If the generously proportioned man hadn’t maneuvered his way to the side and let us in, we wouldn’t have witnessed Steve Novak “discount triple check” his way to the king of three-dom. Yet at the same time, if Ms. Thomas hadn’t worked a little bit of her austere magic, we may have been told to leave.
In the end, Ms. Austin’s astounding diplomacy with the father and pair of sons from Connecticut who co-owned our seats resulted in plans for a full refund of their tickets, and allowed us to watch Jeremy ball so hard. We’d like to take this moment to thank the gentlemen who so graciously allowed us to remain with our class. They say chivalry is dead, but you fellas are proof that it is alive and well.
Being persistent often gets things done; yet being a pest is clearly counterproductive. Walking the line between a stern attitude and excessive leniency is a task so formidable that even the agile Knicks City Dancers would have a difficult time competing. Call us, ladies.
