areyoulistening

My ipod frooze last week and I did that special thing where you lay it on a flat surface, press two buttons for ten seconds and reset the whole thing. Monday morning I go to take it out of the charger and instead of the Apple logo on the screen, there is a picture of a sick cartoon ipod with an X over each of it’s eyes and a big frown on his face.  Apparently they hired Acme to pick out what the icon for “Your ipod is totally fucked” would be.

I did get the sick cartoon ipod to go away after awhile of screwing around with it. I hit a few buttons and the Super Mario Bros. chased him around and they cornered him with help of Ms. Pac Man and one of the monsters from Rampage. I thought I was all set…no dice. It skiped songs, made crazy sounds and wouldn’t do anything I told it do. Kind of like taking a really long car trip with one of your cousins that grew up upstate somewhere.

So yesterday, I made an appointment with the “Genius Bar” to have one of the eggheads fix my shit up. First of all, I had no idea you needed an appointment to see of these guys. I only found out after going on their website and it warned me that I will need to do so. It was at this time that I began to get myself ready to pull a real life”John O’Connell” and put on a show at a store if I don’t get exactly what I needed…no matter how crazy the request. I went over the stuff my father always did in these situations: I wanted to be sure you to use the old “Oh, I’m sorry I thought you worked here?” when a question was unable to be answered to my satisfaction and the good for all purposes, “You guys have to, have to be fucking me here?” 

Today was the big day and I went to the Apple store on 14th and 9th (You can use hopstop.com if you’re not sure how to get there). The outside of the store is totally glass and it was more of the same once you stepped through the doors. There was a glass staircase on the left, glass tables with shiny new Apple products and all the employees wore orange or teal shirts depending on how fucking smart they looked. The whole place looked like something those little guys from Fraggle Rock would have built if the Fraggles didn’t love to eat the glass that they built with. I was told by some real friendly son of a bitch that the Genius Bar is on the third floor.

I made my way up the glass staircase and begin to practice my “Well, aren’t you the fucking Mutts Nuts?” tone of voice. I was met by another employee that worked there and he had a computer in his hand. He said:

“How can you help you, sir?” 

“I have, uh, a thing to see a genius at 1:15.”

“Great and your name?”

“It’s Sean….Sean O’Co…”

“Yes, Sean O’Connell at 1:15. Come this way, Sean.”

Now earlier in the day I was talking to Tracey about what to expect and he told me that they would laugh at me because I was bringing in an ipod that they stopped making 4 years ago to get fixed. So I was pretty ashamed to even take this thing out of my pocket and my defense for this was going to be to act like a dick.

I walk up to the genius bar and my genius looks like a decent guy. I still hesitate to take this fucking artifact out of my pocket so I warn the guy:

“Listen, I got an old ipod here and if you even look at my sideways for a split motherfucking second…I will fucking…”

I didn’t say that shit. I said:

“Look I got an old ipod and it won’t do shit anymore. Is there anything you can do or do I have to get a new one?”

He grimaced and I kind of went to snuff him, but stopped myself and smiled instead. He looked at the screen (which is cracked) turned it on and scanned through my songs and said:

“Damn bro, you like some gay shit.”

He didn’t say that shit. He said:

“There really isn’t much we can do for an ipod this old. You might be able to go to Tekserve (or some shit) and they might be able to do something. We can’t do anything for you man, I’m sorry. There is a swap discount we can give you if you buy a new one.”

So, of course, that is what I did. I bought a new ipod because the one I had was too old to fix.

In the end, they were all pretty nice people over there at Apple. I’ll be honest, I thought I was going to have to leave a bloody trail of Apple employees in my wake. That was not the case at all; they were nice about the fact that I like to take care of things. I don’t think a person that has the ability to take care of something should be punished for it. I guess I kind of was. I mean, I did have to spend $180 dollars today. At their core, the people that work at Apple are a smart bunch.

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