Promiscuous Marketing

So the place I currently work, a regional theatre, has a lot of problems. Poor organization, departmental bitchery and pandering to the blue-haired patrons. Okay, so I can't really fault them for playing to the old folks who come to the theatre to see, be seen, and relive their childhoods. It pays their bills, and they throw in a little daring material every season to inject some fresh life to a place that otherwise would begin to reek of mothballs and gerital. As for the interdepartmental turf war, well, I work in a theatre. People spend almost as much time convincing themselves that they're hot shit as they do convincing other people.

Oh, and I work in Inside Sales. Other people would call what I do telemarketing. (Don't hate. I gotta eat too.)

What really pisses me off, (besides the nature of my work) is the Gift Shop. The gift shop, a place to buy cute little SJ Rep themed trinkets, is ridiculous. Really ridiculous. They had a sale recently, and I stuck my head in. There was a dress standing in the shop, a white Edwardian style dress that I thought would make a perfect back up wedding dress. I've bought old costumes off theatres before, they're not prohibitively expensive, (compared to the cost of a wedding dress.) They won't sell it. At all. "That's display only." Could you check? "That's not for sale. It's just for display." Fine. Assholes. You only have, what hundreds of costumes from previous shows? But okay, you display a selection of beautiful costumes and set pieces to draw people in. What are you actually selling?

Journals. Puppets. Stuffed bears. Wine glasses. Journals in a certain romantic, vintage style? No. Just normal, ruled paper journals with vinyl covers. Puppets like the ones featured in a show, or made to look like famous characters? No. Fucking wooly mammoth puppets. I didn't take too close a look at the stuffed bears or other ridiculous trinkets.

The theatre's gift shop stocks any old thing. Despite the fact that people come to the gift shop from the theatre, the amount of theatre related merchandise actually for sale is severely limited. Rather than being a classy high priced whore like the theatre is supposed to be, the gift shop spreads it's legs for anyone with five bucks in their pocket. Rather than take a couple hundred out of my pocket for a second hand costume gathering dust in a corner, they'd rather I shell out $35 for a creepy mastodon I can stick my hand up and make talk.

Ridiculous. If you're gonna slap your name on something, have some care what you slap it on. That gift shop is an ambassador for you, one your patrons carry home with them, and give away for Christmas. Would you rather be the place to go for lavish costumes and sets, beautiful soundtracks, and stunning visuals that scale nicely to postcards, or the place to go for creepy, expensive puppets of extinct animals?
Dumbasses.