Work

So, I figure that since I am still employed I’m not really at liberty to trash talk work too much. However, this has been such a horrible week that I feel inclined to say SOMETHING at least.

About 2 years ago I was hired to help Live Nation start their own ticketing company using a German platform called CTS. We stopped selling our tickets via Ticketmaster and took everything in-house. I would be lying if I didn’t say that the last two years have been rough. We all worked long hours and poured a lot (no, I mean A LOT.) in to this ticketing company only to realize that it would never really be what we dreamed it would be. The software just wasn’t...well, I think I’m man enough to admit that what we were all thinking was that it just wasn’t Ticketmaster. But shit, we gave it our best and I was at least mildly proud of the product. Or maybe I was proud that we took this software that was ENTIRELY in GERMAN when we got it and figured out how the hell to use it here in America.

One month after we launched Live Nation Ticketing D Day came – Live Nation and Ticketmaster announced that they wanted to merge the two companies. Doh. That was a big punch in the gut. Thanks for your hard work guys, I know you haven’t had a personal life for quite some time but now we want to back track. So, ok, fine. We moved on and held our heads up and finished out the year still enhancing our system while the Department of Justice investigated if this merger was anti competitive. It took them a year but this past Monday they finally ruled that it was not anti competitive and allowed the merger to go through with relatively few concessions from either side. I do not think I will ever understand the decision that they made since it seemed so obvious to most people that the combined entity would have extreme power over the entire music industry. But, I will try to let that go and tell myself that I’m not a politician or a corporate minded individual at all so maybe this is just something I can not understand.

To top things off once the merger was approved and the ink was dry on all of the paperwork we were told that our ticketing company that we have worked so hard on for the past two years is just going to go away. I think we all assumed it would be a slow fade out, a gradual transition away from the software. But nope…it’s BAM completely over. Pack up those user manuals because the CTS train is official leaving the station. It was fun while it lasted (no, actually it wasn’t) but the party has to end at some point, right?

Here we all are 2 years later. When I started there were 2 people working exclusively on the ticketing system, me and one other girl. There was a small customer service team in Crozet – Max, another guy and some part time employees. Slowly but surely the team increased in size until we find ourselves today with 50 employees on the customer service team, 10 people with my same job, 14 or so programmers and probably 10 various other people in operations, etc. I guess we could all look back over the past two years and feel lucky that in this economy we all had jobs in what felt like a thriving company. Or, we could feel bitter for our company building this all up under us only to yank the rug out so soon and after so much hard work.

Now we are all faced with the prospect of either being laid off or being placed somewhere in this new merged company. I feel lucky to be one of the people that was not told flat out that I would be laid off. I feel so sad for those people that were told that. A lot of good, hard workers are going to go through some pretty tough times over the next couple of months. Our team might be displaced across the country – fit in to jobs in other cities. I’m not quite sure what is going to happen with me just yet. Currently, I feel sad. Maybe things will start looking up next week. Maybe not.