Karening at the Apple Store
On customer service
I got a new computer on Wednesday. My MacBook was kicking the bucket, whirring its fans like crazy when I opened Photoshop the way an old man wheezes after climbing the stairs. Its senior moments were becoming too common. It fell asleep at inappropriate and inopportune times. I could get emotional, get on my knees and beseech God to give the old boy just one more month, week, day! Or I could accept that with life comes death, take my MacBook behind the shed, wipe the crumbs from its keyboard, gently close it one last time, and put two .30-06 bullets square through its space bar. From the ashes of a cobalt mine in the Congo, the MacBook is born, and in the ashes of an electronics recycling facility in New Jersey, the MacBook is laid to rest.
I was home for Rosh Hashanah, so I went to the Apple Store in the new mall near my hometown. (“The new mall.” It has a beautiful pre-NAFTA ring to it.) I went with my mom and grandma, who can’t resist a visit to the mall due to subconscious neurogenetic orientation systems which guide them toward Nordstrom’s. Going to the Apple Store in the mall is great. The aromas wafting out of Bath & Body Works anoint me like frankincense and myrrh. The beautiful women in the Aerie window display call to me like sirens. The linoleum is my red carpet and the halogen bulbs my stadium lights. I’m a customer at the mall, the lead actor in the last American play! And then, it appears, like Kubrick’s Discovery One floating up over the horizon on an alien terra, all glass, straight lines, and Danish modern veneer. Big long tables, long enough for a Viking feast or Le Pain Quotidien. A sleek, perfect, and blemish-free store, a FaceTuned, CoolSculpted store, a store wearing Skims, full of thin, light, edgeless gizmos as smooth as a river-turned pebble that set my brain on fire.
I walked into the store. I usually don’t have any questions in the Apple Store, because I do my research. I read articles and watch videos made by “tech nerds,” who 25 years ago might have been the type to tinker with electronics or build their own, but due to non-repairability and the monopolization of the marketplace are content to simply fawn over Apple’s new products the way Carrie Bradshaw discusses a Manolo Blahink collection. But this time I had a question. (What’s the difference between the upgraded Air and the base Pro since it only costs $50 less? Fellas, sound off in the comments!)
Ideally, I would have asked the most disinterested, aloof, unfriendly teenage Genius for help, since they are the most likely to know the answer. Instead, I was headed off by a British man in his late 30s with a Bruno Mars-style flat brim fedora. Strike 1.
I asked him my question. He asked what I do for a living to see what I need it for. He said he used to be a stand-up comedian himself. Strike 2.
But not a very good one, har har. He asked if I do clubs. And if I do festivals. And if I was looking for representation. He had a friend who used to fill a gasoline canister with water and dump it on his head and then take out a lighter and that’s how he’d start the show, can you believe it? Wow, ok, that’s very deranged and concerning and I’m glad you feel you can share that stuff with me, but what’s the difference between the Pro and the Air? Well, do I edit videos, he asked. And how long are they, he asked. Yeah, either one should be fine, he said. But you need AppleCare, because what if you’re in a comedy club and someone spills a drink on your computer? It’s the liquids that do it. It’s really the liquids that do it. It’s not so much the falls, but the liquids. In a coffee shop, if someone nudges or knocks, the table tilts or topples, well there you go… You’ll be glad you got the AppleCare. Because of the liquids…
So I chose. And then he charged me for the wrong laptop. And then he tried to return the money on a gift card instead of back to the credit card. And then he called up another computer, and I noticed this was also the wrong one. And then I noticed that some of the computers have two ports and some have four, and he never mentioned that as a difference. And I asked him why some have two and some have four and whether the one I chose has two or four. And he didn’t know, but it didn’t matter because I had chosen the right computer, but I had really better get AppleCare. Because of the liquids…
But I still wanted to know about the ports. So he called over a woman and a man. And the woman said “There’s too many questions here” and went back to her side of the table. And the man pulled out his iPad and pushed his glasses up his nose and furrowed his brow and said “I know. I’m looking it up.” And while they did that, I went on the demo computer and found the answer. And I asked if they could set the new computer up for me, and the failed stand-up comedian in the Bruno Mars flatdora said, “No, you should do that at home. Our WiFi is very slow here.” There’s too many questions here. I know. I’m looking it up. Because of the liquids… You should do that at home. Our WiFi is very slow here. I know. Because of the liquids… There’s too many questions here.
So we left.
Grandma had gone to sit down in a chair sometime during that interaction. I assumed it was because her legs don’t work so good no more and because she couldn’t follow the discussion of gigs and ports and cooling fans. But she said it was because, had she stayed, she would have yelled. The anti-Karen movement can count that as a victory. Grandma, who gets angry at service workers as if it were -- because it is -- an American pastime, had not gotten angry. She knew there was nothing to be done. She chastised me for apologizing to the workers, even as they inconvenienced me. “At no point did you say ‘You have not answered one of my questions,’” she said. “You don’t have to apologize if you’re not happy. They want you to give them $1500.” She’s right.
Mom proposed writing a review on Yelp. Grandma said she would write a letter. “Dear Mr. Tim Cook,” she would write. Then Grandma realized she didn’t get their names and what good is a complaint without the names? So nobody wrote or did or said anything. And as we pulled the car out of the giant parking lot of the new mall, the choppy surf of our consumer sentiment crystalized into one discrete, thumbs-down emotion: sadness.
Because the Apple Store is the last good store at the last good mall. If the Geniuses don’t know anything, then nobody knows anything. If you don’t feel good shopping at the Apple Store, you won’t feel good shopping anywhere. We could all feel it in the car: customer service is a thing of the past. I had grown up amid its gasping death rattle. But Grandma had lived through its long, slow, agonizing decline. The neighborhood stores with committed owners and friendly people she grew up with have long disappeared. What did we expect? We made workers feel like shit, so now we all feel like shit.
But if cheerfulness and warmth are impossible to find, at least the Apple Store was cold and consistent. They knew the answers, got your item out quickly, and set it up for you. The Apple Store was always an anomaly to me -- the one store that didn’t completely suck. But now, it sucks too. The stores which once looked so modern have not changed in fifteen years. My new computer is barely different from the one I got from six years ago, save for a glass bar that makes it easier to add emojis. See? 🙂🙂
And Grandma grew up in a time where you could write a letter and get an answer. Now I’ll just blog about it, into the wind.