Shorts: Assumptions at the Ballet

I want to talk quickly about an experience I had at the theater Thursday evening. I was attending a ballet performance in Chelsea with a lovely couple I know, both members are Caucasian (this is important), one of which I work with. I am a young, African-American female FYI. At the door to the theater, the spouse of my coworker hands over her phone to have the tickets for the performance scanned so we can go find our seats, etc. The ticket-scanner, an older African-American man, scans her phone, but only for two tickets. There are three of us in total. It is obvious to me, an constant observer, that he is unaware I am in the same party with this lovely Caucasian couple. He thinks I am by myself or with another party. No questions asked. By this point I’m just waiting to see what happens. My coworker, also an observer, notices what’s happened and politely asks, “Did you get the third ticket? There are three of us. They let me come with them!” and saves the day from a potentially awkward mix-up. The ticket-scanner then kindly apologized and scanned the third ticket, all of us walking inside to enjoy the performance. While I admired my coworker’s saving the situation, I will admit I had been interested to see the alternate conclusion of that vignette.

The following are my short commentary and the things that could’ve gone differently:

1. The spouse (and ticket-holder) could have said from the beginning, “there are three of us in our party.“ I’ve been in a similar situation before and that’s what I did. Easy peezy.
2. The ticket-scanner could have asked how many were in his party once he saw there were multiple tickets on her phone to avoid confusion instead of simply assuming there were only 2 of them because they “matched”. What if there had been 5 in our party? Then what?

I don’t by any means post this to point fingers or in an accusatory manner. It’s simply something I noticed that resonated with me after the fact.

In closing, don’t make unfounded assumptions about people or groups of people based on appearance. There’s a high chance you could be incorrect.

The ballet itself was beyond exceptional