Heaven May Be A Place On Earth, But The Apple Store Is My Personal Hell

I’ve had to go to the nearest Apple store twice in one week.

Every time I go into an Apple store, my guts tie themselves in knots that will not return to normal until the entire ordeal is over.

Now, I love Apple products. I am typing this on a MacBook right now, and I have an iPod. I would use an iPhone if I could afford it. I have nothing against Apple products. (I still don’t really “get” the iPad, but … oh, well.)

But the Apple store is always a horrendous experience. The constant stimuli, the carelessly chic disorganization, and SO MUCH BRIGHT WHITE makes me feel about seventy years old whenever I walk inside. It makes me confused and crabby. I don’t get the culture, the setup, or the attitude surrounding the store and its products.

Besides all that, half the time I want to deliver a good punch in the face to the person who deigns to provide my customer service. And I do mean literally half the time. The woman who took care of me on my penultimate visit was great, as was the guy who fixed my computer at the Genius Bar almost a year ago. However, another time I was waiting for ages right next to a store employee, who proceeded to turn away from me without a word so he could fall over himself to help the two hotter girls who had just walked in. When he was done slobbering over them, he seemed offended that I dared to ask for help and didn’t already know the procedure for making an appointment to get help from the Genius Bar.

Pardon me, sonny, but I’m a senior citizen, apparently.

The thing is, I have nothing but sympathy and respect for most people working in customer service—only when they’re outright rude or incompetent do I fuss about it. I have worked in a restaurant, as a cashier, and as a receptionist. I know what crap they deal with, and I try to be the very best customer I can be, because I know they deal with idiots 99% of the time. You know how they say you can truly judge a person’s character by how they treat waitstaff? That has never worried me—I am not only a friggin’ sweetheart to servers, cashiers, and receptionists, I’m also a good tipper.

But as a diehard capitalist, and the stepdaughter of a business owner, I also realize what is at stake when customer-service workers do a crappy job. So I like to think I am both picky AND understanding to both sides.

And my latest Apple-store visit … sigh.

It all started this past Saturday, when I noticed that my computer’s power cord was looking a little shabby, so I ordered a half-price power-cord on Amazon. Go, me. A few hours later, however, my original power cord gave one last shuddering spark … and died. It was now utterly useless, days sooner than I had expected.

May I remind you that I work from home, and I NEED this computer? To—oh—EARN MY LIVING? And it was Saturday night—there was no way the battery was going to last until and through Monday, not for as long as I needed it.

ALSO: my checking account was dwindling at an alarming rate thanks to a few other necessary purchases (you know, like food), as my paycheck ambled its way through the mail.

ALSO: I’d already been having an emotionally awful weekend—a combination of family issues, a terrible dissatisfied-with-singleness phase, missing friends scattered across the country, and finding out that if I want a literary agency to accept my (now-finished) manuscript, I will need to trim it down … by half.

So a dead power cord and rapidly-dying computer were pretty much the icing on the crappy cake—a cake being baked in my own melodramatic mind.

It seemed like my only option was to go to the Apple store on Sunday after church and purchase a full-price power cord. For about $80. When I already spent $40+ for the first power cord I had purchased, which was already being shipped and therefore could not be canceled. Maybe, I thought, I could buy the one at the Apple store, and leave it unopened until the last possible moment. Maybe, just maybe, the half-price cord will actually arrive on Monday, before I need to open the full-price one.

Fortunately, when I reached the Apple store, the nice and helpful woman I had mentioned previously told me that I could even return it opened, within 14 days.

EXCELLENT!! A huge weight was off my shoulders—I could return it as soon as the half-priced one arrived! Awesome.

Which brings me to yesterday, when a half-priced and fully functional power cord arrived for me in the mail. I happily repacked the full-priced cord and headed up to the mall with the Apple store.

KEEP IN MIND all that was going through my head this past weekend. Keep in mind, also, that I was still walking into an Apple store, so my guts began to tighten, I began to age fifty years, and I was irrationally worried that maybe I hadn’t repacked it well enough and they wouldn’t return it after all.

I went up to what looked like the cashier stand (this is the Apple store, remember—NOTHING IS AS IT SEEMS) and waited, about 30 seconds, until a generically handsome but clearly bored guy wearing the store “uniform” (name-tag-lanyard and superior attitude) approached me and asked if I needed help. I set down the power cord, in its box, in the original store bag, on the counter.

“I just want to make a return,” I said.

“OK … and what are you returning?” he asked, pulling out whatever little portable machine the employees use instead of a cash register.

“A power cord,” I said, pulling the box out of the bag.

“Oh, we actually don’t return those here,” he said.

…

…

…

“Oh … ” I said.

It was all I could manage to say. I am sure I looked like a completely mindless bimbo, because immediately my expression went blank with disbelief while my brain began to operate in Damage Control Mode (my half-price power cord didn’t come with a packing slip…can I still return that? the Apple website didn’t say anything about this!!!), my heart rate increased, and my stomach plummeted. I opened my mouth to say “But … but … when I bought it a few days ago, she said I could return it here!”

Before I could say that, though …

“I’m just kidding,” the guy said, not even cracking a smile, but STILL WEARING THAT GOSHDAMN BORED EXPRESSION.

I don’t even remember what I said in response, since I was then recovering from whiplash, but I sure as heck did not laugh. I tried to be civil, but all I wanted to do was punch him in the face, or pull out a Swiss Army knife I didn’t have and turn him into the Joker (hey, he wouldn’t look bored anymore). After I left he probably went into the back room to tell his coworkers about this pathetically dumb girl who came into the store and didn’t realize he was joking. And I went out for coffee with friends that evening and told them about the jackhole with REALLY bad timing.

The thing is, any other time, I would have just had some fun with it. Only a few weeks ago, I pulled into Valvoline and asked for a basic oil change. The guy said “Sorry, I can’t do that,” and I was in a good mood, had time on my hands, and knew he was joking, so I played along. But not only was I miserable just because I had to be in an Apple store, I was already a miserable human being. And … yeah. Bad timing, dude.

Or in the words of Mr. Knightly, “Badly done, Apple-store employee! Badly done, indeed!”