Of the literally hundreds of concerts I have atten...

Of the literally hundreds of concerts I have attended in my lifetime, I have never seen a venue so poorly organized and poorly staffed as this one. It was truly befuddling. It was not the tours/bands either, because I have seen these particular two bands each about 10 times before (I'm a concert junkie). First of all, for the VIP experience, they had us line up outside, took us inside to watch the sound check/meet the bands (were rudely pushed through the line by the venue staff), then made to go back outside to wait for the VIP experience for the second band. Rinse and repeat, and we had to go back outside for a 3rd time to wait for the actual show. This is Wisconsin: do they force people outside in the winter too?? While waiting in the lines outside, we were confused and asked several staff what was going on/where we should be, and were repeatedly met with "I don't know." Not "I'm not sure, but let me help you with that"; just blank stares. Because we had VIP tickets, we were first sent down 2 blocks to the end of the general admission line, then pulled from that line to a second early admission line, then pulled from that line to a third VIP line. This was not a mistake; this was their actual process to make people move from line to line outside. It's terribly inefficient and not good customer service, especially because they were all very snippy about it. Once we got inside, we were met with more staff who didn't have the answers to the following questions: where our seats were, whether or not we could sit in the balcony, whether or not we could leave the venue and come back in, and whether there was food available elsewhere in the building (they don't even know the building they're working in??). Then when we went to get food, the staff person handled both food and money with his bare hands and ignored my mom who was asking to order as well. The whole experience almost ruined seeing two of our favorite bands. The show itself was spectacular, but the experience in the venue made me almost wish I hadn't gone, and certain I won't go back to The Orpheum.