First of all, for the record, I love technology. I make the core of my living off of technology. That being said I tend to become even more frustrated than your average Joe over the failure of technology to work correctly.
Last night I finished working in my office and decided to go watch a bit of TV before turning in for the night. I pressed the round command button located on the face of my IPhone 4S to wake the phone up. Nothing – completely black. I did it again. Nothing. I pressed the power button in. Nothing. Like the proverbial monkey on a keyboard, I pressed every button in every combination multiple times, gaining in the intensity by which I pressed upon each circuit of button pressing. Finally, I speculated that some evil app had drained the battery dry. I plugged it into the charger. Button pushing resumed to no avail. I knew that there was an AT&T store about 1 mile from my house. I went to check the AT&T website for store hours and it showed that the store opened at 9 AM. Before turning in for the night I thought another healthy round of IPhone button pressing was in order.
This morning immediately upon waking I indulged myself with another round of button pressing, since I thought that possibly all the IPhone needed was a good night’s sleep. I jacked my schedule around this morning so that I could arrive at the AT&T store right at 9 AM. It was dark inside. There on the door were the store hours – OPEN – 10:00 AM. Lovely! I returned to my domicile in my usual carefree manner, feeling nothing but love for my fellow man, as I always do when having made a useless trip. I checked the website again for store hours – OPEN – 9:00 AM. Lovely. I checked the website and found an actual company store as opposed to a retail outlet. Guess what time they opened? 9:00 AM. Not to be fooled a second time, I called.
“Hello AT&T”
“Hi, I was just calling to make sure you were open.”
No response – apparently she felt her issuance of a “Hello” not only performed its original task but satisfied my query.
Feeling awkward with silence I felt compelled to explain, “I just wanted to make sure you were open before I drove there because the website said the other store was supposed to open at nine, but the hours listed on the door said ten.
No response – dead silence.
“Hello, are you still there?”
“Yes Sir, how can I help you?”
Finally, some sign of life, so I said, “Well my IPhone apparently died last night and I need to see if you can either bring it back to life or if I am going to need to get a new one or what I need to do.”
Nothing – dead silence.
“Okay, so I guess I will head that way.”
“Okay Sir, thank you for calling AT&T”
So after concluding my conversation with this master of oral communication, I proceeded down into Moore to the store.
“Hello, welcome to AT&T, how may I help you?”
“I called about my IPhone. It quit working on me last night and I need to see if you guys can fix it or what the deal is.”
“We don’t work on phones here.”
“So you can’t check my phone out and see if the battery is bad or anything?”
“No Sir, we just sell IPhones here.”
I had already perceived that they sold phones there by the large number of phones displayed on the walls. It was not my belief that they were merely using them for insulation.
“But on the phone a moment ago I told you I wanted you to check it out for me.”
“I can’t check it out for you, but I can sell you a new one, if you like.”
What I would have liked at that moment involved her checking out my phone by use of her colon, once I shoved the phone up her ass.
“So if you can’t check out my phone, who can?”
“Apple. That’s an Apple phone, so they can check it out for you.”
Apparently her opinion of me was as low as mine of her, for she deemed that I was the only person on the planet who was unaware of the fact that the IPhone was manufactured by Apple. The rest of our stimulating conversation was brief and equally pointless.
As I had something to do this morning that would prevent me from now driving all the way to Penn Square Mall, I returned home. I had heard that the Apple store there was closed, so I thought I would check it out on the web in the hope that Apple did a better job of maintaining their website that AT&T.
I called the number listed for the Apple store and it took me to a corporate system which was answered by an automated voice. I know it was an automated voice, because for one – it sounded like an automated voice, and secondly because it felt the need to tell me that it was an automated voice.
“I am capable of comprehending simple sentences (I thought this was already an improvement over the woman at the AT&T store). Please state the purpose of your call.”
“My IPhone is broken.”
“You will need to check our website for the Apple store nearest you. You can then easily arrange an appointment with one of our technicians on the Genius Bar. (How big of an egoistical dickhead company do you have to be to proclaim your bunch of phone monkeys to be a ‘Genius Bar’?) Is there anything else I can help you with?
Now I will tell you that at this point I was quite impressed with whoever programmed the word recognition software on this automated voice. They had apparently prepared for every contingency because when I replied “Eat shit and die”, it responded, “I am sorry you were displeased with your service. Let me get someone to assist you.” So remember that phrase from now on whenever you are doing battle with an automated voice. In a moment a woman came on the phone.
“Hello this is Trina, how may I help you?”
I explained my problem.
“Okay, let’s try doing a hard reboot of your phone. (Pay attention IPhone 4S owners) I want you to press in the power button and the command button at the same time and hold for ten seconds. Let me know if after ten seconds or so, you see the white apple icon appear. ”
I did as instructed and the phone booted up.
“Well, it looks like it lives. Thanks.”
“Great, is there anything else I can help you with?”
“Well yeah, I mean is that it? Is my phone all healed or what?”
“Yes Sir, that is it.”
“But is my phone dying or what? I mean, do I need to start looking for another phone?”
“No Sir, it should be fine.”
“But what if it does it again?”
“Well, just boot it up again.”
“But wait, what caused it to do that? I mean, it was just sitting there and died. What happened?”
Now I am not making this up – this is what she actually said.
“Well, we don’t really know, Sir. Sometimes it just does that. The technology is so complex that sometimes it just shuts down, but we don’t know why.”
My only thought at that moment was I am never getting on an Apple airplane! I can just hear the woman on the phone saying – “We don’t really know what happens, sometimes the son of a bitches just fall out of the sky!”
