July 14th, 2010

On Sunday I absolutely destroyed my ankle playing ball hockey. When I felt my joints reverberate in a very distinguishable crunch, I quickly hobbled back to the player’s bench certain the pain would be only temporary.

Nope. Very not temporary, in fact.

By the time I got home I was using the railing to slowly scale the stair case in a painfully long effort to reach the comfort of my living room couch. I grabbed a sandwich bag, chucked some ice into it, and applied it to my very swollen ankle.

Why am I tell you this? You don’t care about my whiny ankle pain. Well, hang on, I’m going somewhere with this, you impatient dick.

The next morning I awoke to the same sad, helpless trudge up to the living room; I now felt my basement bedroom annoyingly inconvenient. I stared at my coffee table for a second noticing the make-shift ice bag I left there last night, only now it was sitting in a large pool of water. Sandwich bags, as it turns out, are not waterproof.

After soaking the water up with a towel and admiring the soggy, peeling varnish left behind, I picked up my iPhone, which had also sat on the coffee table all night, to check for messages.

Curiously, my iPhone did not turn on; or rather it did turn on, but I couldn’t see anything. The LCD’s backlight was not doing any backlighting. Under a bright light I desperately leafed through the phone’s various settings but none managed to bring the screen back to life.

Fuck.

I could see in the tiny camera lens some condensation had formed, meaning the source of the problem was likely water damage. No company warranties water damage, meaning I could be horribly screwed.

I hopped on iChat the next day to talk to my friend Ryan, who manages an independent Apple store.

Me: “Help! My iPhone is broke! I can’t Twitter from the toilet anymore! People won’t know I’m on the toilet!”

Ryan: “Not seeing the negative here.”

Me: “Fine, just tell me what to do, okay?”

Apparently all iPhones have a white indicator that signals pink when water contact occurs. I hit a stroke of luck, the indicators were still white.

Ryan advised me to make an appointment with one of the official Apple retail outlets. It’s important to make an appointment, he said, otherwise I’d be standing around for a good while; which is kind of what happened anyway.

Apple’s service and support system is as glossy and simple as you would expect from an Apple product. Online appointment booking is quick and easy, allowing customers to pick the most convenient time to chat with an “Apple Genius.”

Genius. That’s a lot to live up to as an employee. I hate it when co-workers introduce me to customers saying something like “Gregg knows everything there is to know about camcorders,” cause I don’t. They are setting me up to fail.

Apple implies that every employee is a genius employee, who would want to have to live up to that every day?

When I got to the Genius Bar (where you can’t get a vodka-seven, so don’t ask) I could see my name up on the big, crisp displays behind it. This was impressive, I booked the appointment just hours ago, and there was my name, already automatically in the cue.

Okay, I’m on the board, so now what? Do I stand and wait for them to call my name? I don’t hear any names being called. Every employee seems to be fluttering about with no real purpose, should I wait for someone to ask if I need help?

Eventually a tall fellow in jeans and a baseball cap asked if he could help. I explained I was waiting for an appointment.

“Has anyone signed you in?” he asked.

Oh, okay, I need to be signed in. Great, this is progress.

Baseball Cap punched me into the computer and said “someone will be right with you.” Who? Who will be right with me? Everyone is just walking around aimlessly, how will they know who I am?

The whole system looks organized, but feels quite the opposite. There’s no clear indication where you should stand in line or who you should be talking to. All the counters are the same waist-high blond wood, none are marked with any label.

Somehow a dude I’ve never seen emerges from the back, walks straight up to me and asks “are you Gregg?”

Who am I to argue, I guess, the system works.

The tech was a really nice guy, so I felt bad lying through my teeth explaining the problem.

“Oh yeah, I just woke up and suddenly my phone wasn’t working, like it just decided it’s had enough with powering the backlight. Weird, right?” He told me that 90% of the time this issue was as a result of water damage.

“What?! Are people that reckless with their belongings? Who would be so ridiculously stupid as to leave their valuable iPhone overnight next to a sandwich bag full of water…for example? Whoever would do such a thing is likely not too bright; but they are probably still wickedly handsome and cool, I bet.”

I watched nervously as the tech inspected the water indicators, waiting to be karma’d into a pricy repair bill. Thankfully he could see no evidenced of water damage.

“Yeah, a friend told me about those, I checked them this morning” I said.

“Might as well be sure, right?” he replied. The best deception is the one that plays closest to the truth.

Thankfully my phone is functioning properly again and I can get back to dangerously texting my friends while driving. Thanks, Apple!

Update: I corrected a bunch of spelling and other mistakes. I’m a terrible proof-reader.

Filed under: General by Gregg |