Experience: The secret life of a ticket rep

I like money. Money is good. Especially when you’re a broke student who survives mainly on Tesco reduced sandwiches and redbull. So when you’re offered an easy way to make a potentially limitless amount of money…well, what line do I sign on?

Ticket repping when you live in halls works very simply: some guy drives round (inevitably at the most inconvenient moments and almost undoubtedly past midnight) and delivers you a pack of ticket booklets. This guy probably never sleeps and always looks half-dazed. Or maybe that’s related to the suspicious smell drifting out of his car window…

But anyway. You take your colour-coded booklets and sell them onto your party-happy neighbours, keeping at least a quid of every sale. How much you make depends entirely on how well you sell. I know of one guy (at another uni) who could make upwards of a hundred a week. I was making about enough to pay my grocery bill.

So far, so good. Get tickets, sell tickets as fast as you can manage. At least until you get a slightly nervous text to ‘stop selling please’ because the latest Freshers night is way oversold. Sorry ’bout that queue guys!

There are downsides though. Downsides like being woken up at all hours by a barrage of Facebook messages asking if you have any Fabric tickets left. Downsides like having to wait around before a night out because some guy hasn’t yet finished pre-drinks and arrived to pick up the ticket he made you promise to reserve for him. Damn students are so flaky.

They’ll always be people asking days (nay – weeks) in advance for tickets then deciding on the day that they don’t need them anymore. They’ll be the one person who never gives you the extra quid they didn’t have on them at the time. The one who never comes back for change (just think of it as a tip). The one who gets lost every time on the way to your floor, leaving you to search the halls.

They’ll also be the group of drunk guys ready for a night out who come to get tickets then invite themselves into your room, determined to have a bonding chat with you at 2am. Oh it’s a glamorous life we lead.

But did I mention I get as many tickets as I want? For free? Plus drinks?