THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 6, 1996 TAG: 9610020046
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: MY JOB
SOURCE: BY KATHRYN DARLING, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 92 lines
RICKY WHITAKER is the man to talk to if you want to see the hottest events on the East Coast.
As a telesales agent for Ticketmaster, Whitaker can get you a seat at a KISS concert, a ``Phantom of the Opera'' production, a Boston Celtics game, even a World Wide Wrestling event.
For five hours a day, Whitaker takes ticket orders in a cubicle at the Virginia Beach Ticketmaster office.
But he's not a slick salesman out to sell you the moon. Or the best seats in the house. Unless you want them. If it's the cheapest seats you want, you got 'em.
Whitaker can answer just about any question you could ask about an event.
Scrolling through the data in his computer terminal, Whitaker can tell you if a 1-year-old child needs a ticket for Sesame Street Live 123 Imagine (no, a 1-year old can sit on the parent's lap) or if 15 ``really good'' seats can be found ``together'' at ``Phantom of the Opera'' (yes, but they have to be purchased at the box office.)
Most people appreciate the help you give them, says Whitaker, but some don't. No matter how obnoxious or rude the caller might be, ``the agent is supposed to dictate the tone of the conversation throughout the whole order,'' he says.
``Consistency. That's how I keep control.''
Even with the irate customers upset about the added convenience, handling and facilities charges or sold-out concerts, Whitaker maintains the polite but firm mood in his voice.
``Information has to be presented in an orderly manner,'' he says. He lets them know ``I'm going to control the conversation in this order.''
Whitaker, 41, speaks with the voice of experience, but it doesn't come from a background in sales or customer service.
He's an ex-con. A former street survivor. And this is his first job.
Oh, he's had work here and there. When he was a teen, he worked for a month or so packing furniture for a transfer and storage company. And another month he worked as a sheet-metal worker installing duct work for heating and cooling vents. And three or four days a month, when he wasn't in prison, he would try to pick up longshoreman work, loading and unloading cargo. But Whitaker was incarcerated five times.
He never had a job that he went to every morning. He never had the routine of a rush-hour commute with a cup of coffee perched on the dash.
Whitaker made his money on the streets. He sold drugs. He shoplifted from stores and sold the goods on the streets.
``I did what I had to do to survive,'' he says.
``I didn't have the skills to get a regular job and didn't necessarily want one,'' he says.
In 1988, Whitaker was shot by two men he says he didn't know at the time.
``I was paralyzed when I hit the ground. I wasn't moving. They thought I was dead.''
Permanently paralyzed from the chest down, he entered rehab, where he could have pursued job training and work placement. But he wasn't interested in rehabilitating his life.
``Once I got to where I could move, I was motivated to get back onto the street to get revenge.''
His primary thought when he woke up in the morning was to steal, shoplifting from his wheelchair, so he could pay for his drugs, he says.
In 1992, Whitaker was back in the Norfolk City Jail, this time ``in a double state of confinement - in a chair and behind bars,'' he says.
It was there that he experienced God and the beginnings of change. ``God revealed to me that there is life - even from the chair - and more abundantly.''
After he got out of jail, Whitaker pursued what he had passed up before. With the help of a counselor from the Department of Rehabilitative Services, he was given work adjustment training. At Goodwill Industries, he was trained in Telecommunications. Last December he graduated and this summer he was named 1996 Goodwill graduate of the year.
With the help of IAM CARES, an organization that helps place people with disabilities, Whitaker started at Ticketmaster in January. Five days a week, he commutes from his parents' home in Norfolk for his shift, which starts at 8:30 a.m.
Since his injury, Whitaker had relied on public transportation, but his first day of work it made him 20 minutes late, he says.
He wanted to succeed, so he found a car he could afford, an '89 Nissan that could be fitted for hand controls. It not only gets him to work, but to Tidewater Community College where he started classes this summer.
He got a car loan with payments only $12 more than the $120 he had been spending a month on bus fare.
But before he could get a driver's license he had to deal with an unpaid 1987 out-of-state speeding ticket.
By now, Whitaker is used to cleaning up things from his previous life. ``You can't go into the future until you step out of the past,'' he says. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
MORT FRYMAN/The Virginian-Pilot
Even when dealing with irate customers, Ricky Whitaker maintains a
polite but firm tone as a telesales agent for Ticketmaster. by CNB