When I walked in I was astonished at how many people were in there, I was certain I had missed some big announcement about a newly minted ibot or something. Within moments I was surrounded by, what I have now termed, smurfs, as they were all adorned in matching blue t-shirts and all scurried over, milliseconds upon my arrival to see how they could assist me.
I told Papa Smurf, the official looking one at the front of the pack with his headset on, that I was looking for an i- (pause pause pause... while I tried to remember if it was the pod or pad I needed to say) pod touch. He snapped his fingers (or mumbled something into his headset), and the pod smurf quickly emerged from the pack, leading me through the fray.
He started in on the sales pitch, but they all looked the same to me... and let's be honest, a difference of 8Gb vs. 32Gb amounts to a pile a beans to me. I have no idea how big songs, movies, pictures translate to in the Gb world... so I went with the 8Gb, and then just double checked on the return policy so if my resident techie needed 32Gb's I could exchange it.
He left me there amongst the throngs of people playing with all the demo's to grab my ipod, and when he returned I asked if something had recently launched, bringing all the customers in. He replied that it's always like this... people just come in and will stay for hours checking their facebook, playing with the apps, etc... I looked at him a bit incredulous... thinking so this is the 2011 vs. of the roller rink then huh? "Hey mom, can you drop me off at the Apple store, I wanna play Angry Birds with Susie".... Weird.
Then it really got weird.
He took his own Ipod touch off his hip and scanned my ipod... I felt violated.
Me: "What are you doing?"
"Checking you out".... (again violated... ;)... just kidding)
"How?"
Instead of a responding to that answer he asked for my credit card... I stared at him slightly dumbfounded, but a quick glance around the store quickly indicated there was no 'check out counter', so I fished it out of my purse and handed over my card.
Me: "What are you doing?"
"Running your card"
"How?"
Again... Instead of answering he holds his phone up to me and asks me to sign his screen with my fingernail?!? A bit leery that I was giving him full access to my bank account or something, I follow up with, "Does that thing give me a receipt too?"
"Sure does"
"How is this possible? I guess its fairly obvious this is my first time in an Apple store huh?"
He responds with "Welcome to the future"... which felt very appropriate since I certainly felt I'd been through some sort of time warp.
He handed me my receipt, and my newly purchased Ipod... and then gave me a slightly perplexed look.
Smurf: "To activate this product you are going to have to connect it to a computer."
Me: "Yes, I realize I haven't instilled much confidence in you that I'm not gonna run home to milk Besse and churn some butter for the evening meal... but this is for my husband, and he's more than capable at figuring all this out."
The clouds cleared from his face, he smiled, thanked me for coming in, congratulated me on my purchase, and I headed out to my car... somewhat ashamed at how thankful I was to still only have to manage the CD player in my car to listen to my favorite tunes!
It is quite an experience. Glad you made it out with your sense of humor quite intact. Congrats on the new gift, but be careful they grow on you. We started with one iPod Nano years ago and now are both on our second sets of iPhones thinking about adding an Apple TV.
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