The Kindness of Strangers

It could have been any other evening. Janelle and I were enjoying dinner at Parsley, excited to be seeing Trans Siberian Orchestra at DeVos Hall. We double checked the tickets to confirm the 7:30 p.m. start time. Janelle tucked them back in her purse, we cleared the table and walked off down Monroe Center to the concert. Upon arrival, we discovered the last thing we expected - our tickets were gone. Emptying out Janelle's purse in the lobby of the Hall confirmed it. No tickets.

While we re-traced our steps, Janelle called Parsley. The employee who answered checked the area we were sitting in and talked other customers to see if any one had seen the tickets, but no luck. We arrived back at the restaurant to find employees willingly digging through the trash cans in search of our tickets. They helped us look in any corner of the restaurant the tickets could have possibly landed. We thanked them for their help but left disappointed. No tickets.

Not giving up, Janelle called the DeVos Hall Box Office and told them our story. They told us to return to the Hall and they'd see what they could do. I had never heard of anyone losing concert tickets and still getting in. I was slowly and sadly resigning myself to a night without the Trans Siberian Orchestra.

At the Box Office, we told our story to the man behind the glass. Janelle had bought the tickets so she handed over her ID plus any credit card she thought she may have used for the purchase. He called over to another worker and the two began searching the system, but nothing was coming up. "Do you know what day you bought them on?" The exact date? No. We guessed at a range of dates. All were wrong.

Janelle and I bank at the same place, so I pulled up the bank's web site on my phone and asked her if she was comfortable entering her online banking information. She was and a few minutes of searching later we not only had the exact date of purchase, but had discovered that she had used a check and the bank's online system had made a digital copy of that check available. Showing it to the Box Office worker, we asked if that was helpful. Passing my phone under the glass to him, he handed it to the woman helping with the search. Her eyes lit up as she told us to wait and headed back to her computer. Minutes later we were handed back the phone, ID and credit cards and told to keep waiting. Then Arnie, the hero of our night, appeared with two tickets in her hand. She had found our purchase and reissued our tickets! We had tickets!

We were ten minutes late to the concert, but we made it in before it started. The helpfulness of the workers at Parsley and the determination of Arnie and the gentleman at the DeVos Hall Box Office was remarkable. No one ever told us no, had a bad attitude or refused to help. And at any point they certainly could have. After all, the entire situation was our fault.

It could have been any other evening. But it wasn't. It was the evening that five strangers helped rescue our nearly-disappointing night with a level of kindness and customer service that I won't soon forget.