Thank you for visiting the Apple store. What would you like to provide feedback about today?
I don’t know if the man that set my 16GB iPhone 6 back to factory settings to make room for the iOS update I didn’t have the space to install no matter how many apps and family photos I deleted counts as a “genius.” We weren’t even sitting at the Genius Bar, and he mispronounced my common name, saying it over and over again as I sat before him blissfully unaware that this butchery meant I was being summoned. Once I dissected the syllables enough to realize this was my genius, he was visibly frustrated that I did not answer to the wrong name. To improve my visit the next time Apple issues an update that is too large for phones a few years old to handle, may I suggest calling out all of my siblings’ names as well as my aunt’s name before mine? My mom has done this my whole life and I’ve never failed to respond to Za-Phoebe-Suzie-whatever your name is.
Rate your satisfaction with the following areas: The store employees were friendly and made me feel welcome.
If homeboy giving me some serious sass about the name fiasco wasn’t enough, his mansplaining that a 16 GB phone was waaay too out of date to handle the large amount of data that passes through our phones today set me over the edge. Since when did Apple decide a three-year-old phone was the new woman over 35 with no kids? Now that a phone costs as much as a computer, I’d like it to age in turtle years, please. I get it, we all think three years back was sooo long ago because we were still in our Obama years, but I refuse to give into the idea that you need a new phone every 18 months. You can check the “Employee badgering you into a phone upgrade box” off the list, but not his commission for getting me to give in to Apple’s demands. This girl’s going to keep this iPhone 6 for another three years even if it. Kills. Me.
And while we’re on the topic of age, let’s give his age and phone usage estimator a 1 out of 10 for trying to explain data to me by talking about the young girls like me using Snapchat. Snapchat?! Let me walk into the Claire’s across the mall to hit up the 10 things for $10 sale while he’s “fixing” my phone (re: trying to reprogram me into a die-hard Apple fan who thinks an update as large as the phone is sooo cool and not shady at all)! My hormonal acne may be slightly noticeable today, but I walked in here with a briefcase, not a backpack. Which I pull my geriatric phone out of and make the duck face in the camera for grown-ass woman conference calls, NOT dumb selfies that disappear in 10 seconds! I get it, I look like the teenagers you see on TV. But that’s because they’re actually played by people my age to get around child labor laws.
Rate your satisfaction with the following areas—I was given the personal attention I wanted.
Installing the update took longer than expected, so I was forced to make small talk with your employee named after a brand of toy trucks. Please tell me how someone can mansplain and highly recommend Sex and the City in the same conversation? If the show is supposedly so good, then why are thrift stores always lined with Sex and the City videos, spotted at the same frequency as those free Jesus videos mailed to every household in the Midwest? Are Apple and HBO also trying mass evangelism with this sassy mansplainer? What if I told him that Sex and the City is actually a few years old and the new HBO show to nonstop talk about is Game of Thrones? I digress.
How likely are you to recommend the Apple Store to a friend?
Does a conglomeration that hit the $1 trillion value mark really need that sort of recommendation? No one is asking for my opinion on getting your blood pressure taken at the doctor. I’m not sure Apple even cares about improving their customer experience. Soon the Apple Store will be a place like the BMV, where everyone has to go once a year and the employees make a game of seeing how rude they can be because they’ll never lose customers. We’ll all be lining up to the chopping block to hand over our right arm to pay for the new iPhone, because Portrait Mode.