Faith restored in the Apple Store

Faith in humanity is in flux. If you get cut off on the interstate or have bad service in a restaurant, the entire human race is painted poorly. It's how we are. At least when something good happens, we should give it the same positive response.

This morning I had a task. It was a critical task for me and far less important to others. My iPod petered out a few months ago. I could get no more than the Apple logo to appear on the screen. A simple solution was to borrow my wife's rarely used model. She had the next generation Nano, which had a radio tuner, an external speaker, and the annoying habit of randomly switching to a song when it barely moved in my pocket. I could tell that even though she didn't use it much, there was a bit of resentment that I was taking it to work every day. I left it at home a couple of days this week as a compromise and a reminder to get my machine checked out.

I got to the mall at 10. There was a line outside. If there's a positive bubble in the economic downturn, it's at an Apple store. At 10 a.m. I was able to get an appointment at the "Genius Bar" at 11:15. Say what you want about Apple, they know how to name stuff. I made a short side trip to Trader Joe's and thought I might be able to sneak in early. No chance. The store has at least 30 employees and each one is constantly busy. There have to be hundreds of people there. Even the huge anchor department stores may not have that kind of traffic.

I did get in a few minutes early. After explaining my situation, the attendant attempted to download new software to my machine. It downloaded really slowly. I attempted a dial-up joke but this guy might not have been born when AOL was in its heyday. He told me that if this didn't work I could get a replacement machine for $79. Ugh. I really didn't want to spend any money. We sat and waited while I used my inferior Blackberry. The software loaded. All that was left was to restore my machine and I would be out of the store for no cost other than my melted groceries in the car.

The restoration failed. Crap. Oh well, this iPod had a good year and a half life. It served me well. It allowed me to isolate myself from society just a little more. This was the turning point. The guy told me to get the Apple Care extended warranty the next time I bought an iPod. He then extracted another model exactly like mine, brand new, and put my broken Pod in the packaging. I signed my name a couple of times and left the store before he changed his mind.

How about that. A random act of kindness. It makes me more likely to want to go the extra mile and take the extra step for others. It makes me less likely to get more upset than I should about relatively small things like LeBron, politics, or the scattered details of my life. We can all use an act like this when we're so easily put down by random acts of ignorance.