Wherever you have high-demand tickets in limited supply, you’ll find scalpers.
That’s true of popular concerts, major sporting events and, as it turns out, hamburger stands.
Sadly, news that Cruise-In organizers have decided to limit the number of tickets an individual person can buy for a coveted In-N-Out burger this year is more disappointing than surprising.
Last year, it seems, at least two people (and probably more) together purchased more than 50 tickets for the coveted burgers, waited until the rest had sold out and began offering them to disappointed patrons at wildly inflated prices.
Yes, these were the same people who would have been able to get their meal tickets at face value, had a small group of opportunists not swooped in and scooped them up.
The most frustrating thing about scalpers is they can make huge profits doing practically nothing — all while contributing absolutely nothing to the economy or society in general.
Instead, they create disappointment among those who could only afford to pay face value for something — had they been given an opportunity — but have had that option stripped away.
If there is one up side, it’s that most scalpers will get the occasional bite in the butt from karma, when they end up holding a bunch of tickets — bought and paid for — that nobody wants.
That’s unlikely to happen in this case.
As long as the alternatives are a trip to the Southwest United States or waiting another year for In-N-Out’s return, people are going to pay up.
They shouldn’t, but they will.
So organizers have done the only thing they can under the circumstances.
People with larger families will have to make arrangements to have more than one member stand on line. It won’t be convenient for parents, for example, who planned to have one get tickets while the other watches the brood. But if the new measures take even a small bite out of would-be scalpers’ profits, that’s OK by us.