The man on the phone wanted to talk to the “boy with the tie” about his ticket issue. No solution offered by the ticketing professional was good enough. The man wanted the decision-maker who could grant his request.
That’s when Maureen Andersen realized it’s not about who sits in the chair, but how you behave when you sit in the big chair.
Currently CEO of INTIX, she was running the ticket office at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts at the time. It was 1992.
“We had some big show, a Christmas show, possibly the ‘King and I’ with Juliette Prowse.
One of my staffers came to me and said ‘Maureen, I have a guy on the phone and he’s not taking any solution I’ve offered. Nothing works for him. And he said he wanted to talk to the boy in the tie.’”
“Okay, Bruce, put him through.”
Bruce does the transfer: “Sir, like you asked, I’d like to introduce you to the boy in the tie and her name is Maureen.”
The man on the other line was struck dumb. They quoted his words and it turned out the buck stopped with a woman. His presumption was that the big boss had to be the guy in the tie.
Maureen’s staff made her a poster, her picture all glittered up, and the legend: “I am the boy with the tie.”
“I watched it happen at the windows. Disgruntled customers would come up to the window and they would always walk up to the guy in the tie. And those guys would always have to defer over to me,” Andersen said.
The lesson learned is that how women in authority behave in those situations becomes paramount. “Do I want to teach him a lesson or actually help him as a customer despite his effrontery?” Andersen asked herself.
Of course, she took the high road and helped him despite his misconceptions, even biases. That is who she is. It has served her well.
Andersen, named a 2019 VenuesNow Woman of Influence, has always refused to be defined by anyone else’s view of the world. — Based on a true story as told to Linda Deckard
(Photo: A young Maureen in ticketing; Maureen Andersen, Jane Kleinberger, Donna Dowless, all VenuesNow Women of Influence, today.)