Today’s NYT includes an overview of the kvetchfest that was yesterday’s first day of subscription ticket exchanges at the Met. La Cieca thinks it’s just so quaint that every public event in New York eventually degenerates into threats of coup d’état (“I was thinking of figuring out a way to organize this group to take action against Peter Gelb“). To be sure, the firebrand uttering these Dantonesque words was only of the Upper West Side by association, since she actually came in for the day from her native Philly.

Anyway, let no one say that La Cieca ignores the plight of the downtrodden and disenfranchised. Your doyenne is soliciting stories from those who managed to survive yesterday’s Queue of Tears.

Our first respondent writes:

Four different Met officials – with name tags and Met symbols around their necks – who walked around to assist the crowd, made – individually – the following four different statements:

1. New productions are not available for exchange.

2. New productions are not available for exchange and there are certain “exchange black-out dates”.

3. Four of the new productions are not available for exchange

4. New productions are available for exchange [but] only if a ticket for another new production is offered as a trade-in.

When I got to the box office after 5 hours and 5 minutes of waiting on line, none of the the above statements (policies?) were adhered to; I got everything I wanted.