I kept the op short because I was really just curious about the likelihood winning for the cost of both tickets.
It was not a date, or there was no romantic interest or intent of either of our parts, though some people insist on calling it a date either way. The fact that we planned on going together was kind of a coincidence. I had not talked to her for 6 months because she was difficult to work with, so I never planned on speaking with her again when she got a promotion to a job across the (very large) floor. She started IMing me out of the blue asking about my marathons and triathlons. She wanted to do a mud run so she asked me do one with her. She said she had left her husband not too long before that, and I really just chalked up her past behavior to someone who was in a miserable marriage and gave her the benefit of the doubt. We were talking about doing open water training swims in the local lakes, and other exercise related stuff when I found out Phantom of the Opera was playing at the opera house. I am a huge fan to say the least. I brought it up. She said she always wanted to see it so we made plans to go.
Another part of the “long story short” is a few others things she pulled on me before she left that were really crummy, but don’t have any monetary damages. I will have to admit that this is probably as much about justice(in whatever pitiful sense I’m using it here) as it is about the money.
I have a text/email/IM for everything about the money. Her telling me to buy the tickets and she will pay me. Me telling her I was going to buy the good tickets and her saying yes, just tell me how much. Me texting her a few hours before with parking instructions and her saying she got them. Afterward her telling me multiple times she would pay me the 300.
And the part about me being able to use my ticket…I guess that’s logically possible. But how many people would really do that? If I have plans to meet someone 20 minutes before a show and they are running late for some reason, just say screw you and go in anyway? I honestly thought she was just running late and figured we would just go in late together. Of course I didn’t realize she never had plans to show up…
And that’s what makes it more complicated. She never planned on showing up and never intended to pay a penny for anything, whether the tickets were $50 or $150. She just didn’t show up and never said anything about it until I brought it up to her a few days later, which was extremely odd.
She is actually still with the same huge bank, works in the same city, but a lot further away. I can still communicate with her through company email and IM, though I don’t do that. Not sure how HR would feel about using those for debt collection. I have no interest in communicating with this person other than that, which is the situation I was in before she started IMing me out of the blue. If I do this and win a judgement I’m going to call HR. I’m assuming as a bank they take debt paying seriously.
And one more thing that makes this interesting, she is management level, and was when this happened. I never thought she would balk at the price of the tickets because she makes significantly more money than I do. Of course if she did balk at the price I could have asked what she expected and figured out a reasonable amount from there. But, as I said earlier, she never intended to pay me anything at all, so we never had that conversation.
Oh, and I don’t have her address and can’t find it online. She’s had three names since I have known her, two are extremely common and one just very common.