The tour is full, the rain is horizontal, and you came a long way for this. Time to talk your way in.
It's a filthy wet Saturday in a city you're visiting, and the City Museum has landed the exhibition of the decade: Ancient Egypt, real mummies, the lot. You've wanted to stand in front of a pharaoh since you were about seven.
You shake out your umbrella, join the queue at the ticket desk, and do the maths: you need two tickets, a place on the guided tour, and some inside knowledge — and judging by the queue, half the city has had exactly the same idea. Getting what you want today won't be about asking. It'll be about how you ask.
Behind the desk: a clerk who has heard every question, every excuse and every sob story a thousand times — dry-witted, unhurried, and, if you play it right, quietly on your side.
Charming, slightly damp, quietly determined. You want tickets, the mummy room and a place on the tour — and you're not above a little gentle persuasion.
Seen it all, surprised by nothing. Knows exactly how full every tour is — and exactly which rules will bend for someone who asks nicely.
Here's your toolkit. You don't need to memorise it. Read each phrase, say it out loud once, and pick the ones that sound like you. You'll have it open while you practise.
Draw a card and say what you'd say, out loud, in one or two sentences. Use your own words or the toolkit. Then peek at one possible answer.
Done a few rounds? Try again with the toolkit covered. When it flows, you're ready to hear them in a real conversation.
Read it out loud, one role each, then swap. Spot as many phrases from your toolkit as you can. Listen for the softeners, the hedges, and the moment "no" quietly becomes "well, maybe".
1. "I was afraid you'd ask that." What's the news about the two o'clock tour — and what does that little sentence tell you about how the clerk feels delivering it?
2. The visitor hears the word "full" but still leaves the desk with TWO separate routes onto a tour. What are they — and which of the visitor's questions unlocked each one?
3. "By three you'll be admiring the back of someone's anorak instead of a pharaoh." What is the clerk actually advising — and why say it that way rather than simply "it gets crowded"?
No script this time. You'll have a real conversation with a real person. They have their own mind, and you have a goal.
Say each step once, out loud, in your own words. No writing, no peeking at the phrases.
Pick your situation. Your partner plays the other person.
🏆 You win when you get into the tour, or a good second choice, and the clerk is glad to help.
Start the scene first. Partway through, draw a card. Whatever it says, it just happened.
Now you're on the other side. Your partner takes your old part.
Draw another twist whenever you like.
Tick what you actually did, in either seat.
Run it one more time. Draw a twist before you start, and try to reach a good result faster than before.
In 1922, a man named Howard Carter made a small hole in a sealed door, held up a candle, and saw "wonderful things" — the untouched tomb of Tutankhamun. Within months, people were queuing around the block to see anything Egyptian.
A century later, here you are at a ticket desk, asking if the mummy room is open. You're standing in a very old queue: people have lined up to stare at wonders since the pharaohs built them.
The boy king waited 3,000 years to be famous. You only have to wait until the four o'clock tour.