Apple Geniuses to get even more douchey
Though an unapologetic Mac fanboy, I understand people who hate the unwarranted self-satisfaction of the hipster doofuses calling themselves "geniuses." I hate those Apple Store twats.
Never once have I had a conversation with one where I didn't find myself wanting to push my thumbs through the jelly of his or her eyes. One of my major dilemmas in buying Macs is actually helping to facilitate the employment of, oh, say, the Apple "Genius" who told me with infinite contempt that AppleCare didn't cover the laptops of smokers when I brought my MBP in for repair a few months ago, but he'd "try to push it through and hope the tech has a cold." God. Just go to hell, you self-righteous hippy prat.
There's a lot of things Apple Store employees could do to be more likable, the first of which would be to stop wearing their own o-rings as moist, elastic turtlenecks and realize that working for $10 an hour rebooting iPods for a living does not make you a member of the cultural elite. But it doesn't look like Apple's going to do encourage their employees to do that. In fact, it looks like they'll be doing everything in their power to make their employees even more smug, insufferable and loathsome. Now, each Apple Retail employee will wear a different uniform, and their shirt will have different "Punch Me Hard In The Face" slogans according to their position. These slogans are:
• Specialist: "I can talk about this stuff for hours"
• Concierge: "I know people"
• Creative: "All gain, no pain"
• Genius: "Not all heroes wear capes"
• Manager: "My house is yours"
• Back-of-house: "Some artists use a canvas, I use boxes"
Urge to waggle thumbs in gooey "Genius" brainpans... rising. You'd think a single shirt distributed to all employees reading "Douche" would do the same job at 1/6th the price.
Employee Clothing, Titles to be Tweaked [IFO Applestore]
the latest
latest episodes
angry! who tweaked your tail?
Do they have their own corporate songs? I'd love to make them sing their special departmental song while I complain that UNIX does the same thing as OS X in less memory space...
Going by my 10 years of customer service under my belt, I'm willing to bet that these Apple Store employees are only reciprocating with the same type asshatery you are exhibiting in thus post.
I worked for a summer in an Apple store when I first got out of college and moved down to NC. I've worked the night shift in a fire alarm factory in rural Maine and ridden on the back of a garbage truck and I've never hated a job more than that awful mall job. Sorry if I gave anyone attitude.
That is all.
http://www.velocitymicro.com/
Cmon... you know you wanna try some PC. All the cool kids are doing it y'know?
You want snotty? I worked in the Bang & Olufsen store one level up from Apple. We were louder too.
I was almost an apple genius, but I got a real job instead (thank the maker!).
I already had my fill of being a computer douche when I worked at Geek Squad.
Best Buy apparently spent a lot of money doing research to discover that people with computer problems don't like smug assholes, and they spent a lot time retraining Geek Squad to act as 'hero support'. Apparently, people respond better if they get help on the sly so that they, the computorially inepy, can take credit for the fix.
Who knew?
Of course, they aren't actually calling themselves geniuses, the company they work for is.
I just feel incredibly bad for them that they have to deal with like, well, you.
You're lucky they would even look at your nasty, tobacco-lung-juice-spattered MacBook. If it were me, I wouldn't get within ten yards of that thing without a hazmat suit. I bet they don't want to work on laptops soaked in urine, either. (there goes your social life)
The only cool Apple genius I've ever known never worked for Apple, as a genius or otherwise. He worked for an outsourced tech support company handling an Apple contract in the early nineties, and it was his insistence that I try a Mac that got me hooked - and I've never looked back.
This man may or may not have been able to fix the problem over the phone (most often he was); He still received - unsolicited - more customer appreciation letters than any other phone tech Apple had, in-house or out, in the ten+ years they'd existed.
He eventually became a free-lance Mac repair tech; Many of his clients considered him the "go-to" guy, and would pay ridiculous amounts of money for his services. Sadly for the Mac world, he has a regular gig now.
I hope Apple can find the chutzpah to get guys like him into stores as Geniuses.
While I have no experience with the genius bar tech support types at the apple store I have found their retail help to be some of the best in the business. As the one with the computer science degree in the family/friend group/office I get drafted into helping people choose/buy machines more often than I would like. I've found that the retail staff at their 59th street location gave as good or better advice than I would have, not pushing extra ram or upgrades on people and being pretty candid about the pros and cons of applecare. That said, Apple has been expanding their retail operations a lot lately so I would be unsurprised to learn that there was a corresponding decrease in the quality of help of late as well.
i was hoping for use of the word "asshattery". oh well....
To balance out a bit of the vitriol here, I'd like to mention that I've had entirely pleasant experience every time I've visited the genius bar (Chicago and San Francisco).
They've tested and repaired a few machines for me, helped me troubleshoot an iPhone issue and once kept the store open to help me resolve an OS problem.
While I have had to wait a bit, I'm consistently impressed with their patience and generally positive attitude. And I'm amazed at their ability to seamlessly shift from technical banter with me to a patient explanation of how a mouse works with a less experienced user.
It's not a perfect experience, but it's pretty damn good. Can you name a single electronics or computer retailer that offers better support?
You need to read this post from yesterday's consumerist:
http://consumerist.com/384443/7-confessions-of-an-apple-macintosh-specialist
Especially note no 1. rate them lower than a 6 on your online reciept survey and the store manager HAS TO call you to find out why.
I think it after every post of yours, John... and now I'm saying it again.
Decaf? :P
Apple store employees are going to get new T-shirts.
So, umm.... why is this on Boing Boing Gadgets, again? (Not really the happy celebration of gadgetdom I've grown to expect/love. No real content. Kinda feels like a 250-word excuse to call some college kid a douche)
Sorry, :(
You left out the part where all the cretins at the genius bar use Crisco to style their hair.
I'm really offended by this post. The word "hatred" is too easily used in a general, sweeping manner against a group of people where you only know a very few of them. You don't know each individual Apple store employee and throwing out words like "twat" "douche" and "loathsome" is easy to do online, but how about you call one of them these things to their face. I've worked jobs that were a facade where I had to be nice to all sorts of really annoying customers and it was hard work keeping my feelings to myself.
I concur wholeheartedly!! I just spent an hour last Thursday with one of these Mensa Graduates.... Emerville Location. Only to leave the store muttering a thanks for the condescension/ vapid smiles / back at square one with my effing laptop battery still disfunctional. Ugh..Is peeing on an enemy considered illegal??
APPLE SUX!
prob is ... MicroSoft sux harder .....
so - what are we gonna do with all this extra vacuum lying around?
@ #18: "Mensa Graduates"
How would one graduate from a club or society? It's not as if it's some sort of correspondence course. Of course, if you were eligible to be a member you would probably have taken that into account already...
I knew what #18 meant by Mensa graduates, and I enjoyed his rant. Brownlee's too, he makes me laugh.
What a snarky, sad post. I've had great experiences every time I've gone to an Apple store, with employees who generally seem thrilled to be there.
Brownlee: You can be very funny but your constant vitriol is quickly becoming tired. Generalized misanthropy and hatred is very un-BoingBoing-like.
Posts like this are making it really hard to like BBG. It's hateful, offensive, and provides no new information that hasn't already appeared (with much the same snarky, derisive tone) on other gadget blogs.
I've had good experiences and bad experiences in apple stores, but none of them were as awful as reading this post. It takes an impressive amount of crap writing to be more offensive online than a horrible salesperson in public.
I agree that the snark level is a bit excessive here -- and I'm no Apple fan. (I don't hate 'em either.) The right response to arrogance is not more arrogance; that just weakens your argument.
Maybe the problem is precisely that Apple users have adopted the brand being part of their self-image, so when the stores do something which -- I grant -- is slightly pathetic, Apple's customers feel embarrassed by it. If so... Get over it, folks. Apple makes mistakes too, including marketing mistakes. That doesn't imply anything bad about your beloved widget -- if it was right for you then it's still right for you now. It just means that you can't assume that Apple will always be perfect. Since you shouldn't have assumed that anyway, that shouldn't be a problem, right?
If this really bothers you, go into one of the stores (preferably one where you have a buying history) and tell the manager that you've heard about this campaign and would consider it a major turn-off, driving you to shop by mail rather than buying there. If they get enough negative reactions DIRECTLY TIED TO POTENTIAL SALES, they'll fix it.
If it's worth grumbling about, it's worth fixing. And if it's worth asking for help in fixing, it's worth phrasing that request in a form folks will actually enjoy reading. If you've gotta snark, do so more creatively and entertainingly, hm?
One wonders if Boing Boing knows their audience very well --- I bet there are a LOT of MAC 'geniuses' out there that love to read about Steam Punk, Pop Art, and Cory's latest self-promotion--again, and again, and again.
sounds like someone is insecure about their mac.
thanks for the mega burn #20 ttlly fl th crshng blw f yr ntllct (ltrlly)
Sue Grant is correct that it's not nice to make sweeping, negative generalizations. In that sense, perhaps this article is a bit over the top.
On the other hand, unless Brownlee patronizes the same Apple Store at University Village in Seattle that I went to, and talked to the same phone support tech at Apple that I did, we're not just talking about an isolated bad individual either.
A few months after buying my first Mac I'd owned since 20 years prior (professional circumstances prevented any previous justification for owning any others after my Mac II), I visited said Apple Store for service. I had called ahead, but no one had bothered to tell me that no one at the store would speak to me until I'd signed in with the "Concierge". And let's be honest, describing an automated appointment system as "Concierge" and your technical staff as "Genuis" just reeks of snobbery.
The earliest appointment that was available was more than two hours later. However, as the lone helpful person in the store (a retail assistant) explained to me, most people never are present when their name is called, so if I stuck around until the next appointment slot, I'd probably be able to get help as they worked their way through the list of names of no-shows. If that's not a great indicator of a lousy queuing system, I don't know what is.
Sure enough, a little later no one else who had signed up was actually there and I got someone to speak to me. Only to have them tell me that because one of the problems was caused by a liquid spill (which I was willing to pay for), the other problem was no longer eligible for warranty service (in spite of them readily admitting it was a warranty issue). The alternative presented to me was to pay nearly half the retail value of the computer (about $1000) to have it repaired.
Seriously. I wanted to punch the guy in the nose. And no, I wasn't being snarky to him. Up until the point where it was clear he wasn't going to provide any real assistance, I was extremely polite, and even after that I limited my comments to explaining that if this was how Apple managed their repair support, this was the last Apple product I'd ever own.
Fast-forward past various discussions with some other stores, including a local Mac Store whose staff also refused to provide any assistance but where another customer suggested, when he overheard my discussion, that I call Apple tech support directly. By this time I'd reviewed the warranty carefully and noted that the only exclusion for spills was of whatever damage was actually caused by the spill, so I was a bit better prepared than when I'd visited the so-called "Genuis Bar".
Of course, Apple's tech support person told me the exact same thing: "spills invalidate the warranty altogether". Complete B.S. I asked the guy to read to me the part of the warranty that said that. He read the "spill" section. I explained to him why the words he read did not say what he claimed they said. He finally gave up and got me his supervisor.
Ironically, after weeks of arguing with various Apple staff and technical support, this guy not only offered no resistance at all, he readily agreed that I had a valid warranty issue, arranged for service, and the actual service experience was fantastic. They overnighted a box, had my computer fixed the same day I'd left it with the shipper, and it was delivered back to me the following day. I was computerless for less than 48 hours.
Which is how it's supposed to work.
No doubt there are some good, professional, helpful people working for Apple. And it would be unfortunate to paint them with the same brush as the rest of the "douchebags" (to use Brownlee's term). But it's just as clear that there's some endemic anti-consumer practices going on at Apple, and inasmuch as Apple treats their customers with such derision and condescension, it's not terribly surprising an occasional "snarky" article turns up now and then.
It's not really all that far off the mark, either.
uhm, okay...
Chantix. Just sayin.
What I love about Brownlee's writing is how it draws good humor from those who get that it's a kind of surreal fiction. There's nothing wrong with some of these reactions; we're delighted to have an articulate tribe of commenters, and we'll be bringing you in more and more as time goes by--much is planned!
Nevertheless, it shouldn't take a Genius to know hyperbole when they see it.
RE: comments that amount to "Why can't you be more like other gadget blogs and just provide information?" The best answer, I think, is because they're already there!
Douche: a vaginal cleansing wash.
Twat: slang for vagina.
This is degradingly sexist language. It also shows a level of immaturity in language skills. First these techs are vaginal washes, then they are vaginas. Make up your mind. Besides, isn't a nice clean vagina something desireable? I know guys keep trying to get into mine!
You're also being unfair to the men and woman who put up with some of the nastiest asshattery in the business.
Grow up, John.
I'm not feeling spiteful, or offended (#31's Douche/Twat observation aside, I find it hard to see how this post could actually offend somebody).
It's just [incoming cliche] I've been reading BB/BBg for a loong time now, and this kinda random annoyed rant.. hyperbole or no.. I just don't know what it's doing here.
It's Boing Boing. Show me something Wonderful.
Wow......how much more insulting can you get John?? Or do you think it's funny??
I've got the same technical certs (Apple Certified Support Professional, Apple Certified Portable/Desktop Technician), as well as the advanced certs. Maybe it's because I'm an Apple Tech as well, but I've never encountered a person at the Genius Bar that was anything other than helpful, friendly, and professional. Sometimes I knew more than they did - and sometimes they taught me a trick or two.
And I've heard the horror stories of asshat customers from them. After reading your little rant, I have no doubt you're one of said asshats.
Your article was juvenile and stupid. And pretty damn insulting as well. Grow up.
Re: #30, Wow, I didn't know that Teresa was hanging out in BBG. I am one of those unfortunate few who can't easily read disemvowelled text. So I'll have to go back and give it some serious look-see.
Be that as it may, I thought Brownlee's original post was informative and funny, yeah a little mean maybe, but in the spirit of someone like Don Rickles (I'm dating myself there). It was sarcastic but humorous.
I've only had one experience with an Apple store (we're mostly a PC household), to get a warranty repair on my wife's iphone. It went fairly well, but the place did seem a bit on the pretentious side. Really, where do they get off calling these people behind the desk "geniuses" anyway? I thought we reserved that term for guys like Leonardo, Newton and Einstein.
I wish people would lighten up a little bit around here.
#32: Bingo.
#31: Drifting offtopic, but: Many humorists have pointed out that (a) most of the common English "curse words" really shouldn't be particularly shocking or insulting, and (b) we have, alas, completely lost the art of the _creative_ insult, replacing it with unthinking repetition of those few words.
Those T-shirt designs offer fine opportunities for creative comebacks, if you really need to rant. I don't claim these are good, I'm just suggesting them as a better response to the provocation.
• Specialist: "I can talk about this stuff for hours"
But what this customer needs to know can be said in minutes. Can you do that? Didn't think so...
• Concierge: "I know people"
Fine. Have your people call my people and they'll do lunch. Meanwhile, can someone help me?
• Creative: "All gain, no pain"
Off your diet and back on the happy-pills again?
• Genius: "Not all heroes wear capes"
Not all villains do either. Your point?
(I'm gonna be kind to the back-of-house folks and not even try to ding them. They take enough flack already, and they're less likely than the others to cop an attitude.)
Brownlee,
Pretty weak directing all this spew towards free tech support.
@22 "Generalized misanthropy and hatred is very un-BoingBoing-like."
Going to have to disagree with that. Take a look at any of Cory's vitriol, or most of what Rob Beschizza writes.
#30: Problem is, when interpreted as "surreal fiction" this piece just isn't up to BoingBoing's usual writing standards. It's cheap-shot offensiveness-trying-to-be-humor at best.
If what you've got to say today isn't worth posting, skip a day.
Hey, Downpressor, that's not fair. I'm not at all misanthropic! I can be vitriolic about terrible technology, sure. And often am. Every day.
Rob @ 37 - Congrats on your successful reemvowelment. :) Seriously, I don't understand why people are taking so much offense at this post. Apple is not ALL that great, computer repair and support people CAN be pretentious jerks (I know, I was one for a few years). If you don't like words like douche or whatever, there's always net-nanny.
Doesn't it seem that John is upset he's not an Apple Genius?
And I bet Apple Retail employees love him guessing about their wages while he disses policies and procedures they had no hand in making.
I would not call this a class act.
Technogeek, I think it's a shame that some are content to condemn it like this. Perhaps it's useless to try and hammer home that it's a deliberately over-the-top screed -- a format that Brownlee's been rightly lauded as a master of, and which is certainly not cheap-shot material.
(It's certainly been hard to convince him that people will enjoy that style of writing away from his usual haunts, covering culture, sci-fi and the like)
What upsets me most is that few of those calling him out here notice when the same extravagant style is applied in praise rather than pejoratively--they would not be so assumptive and personal about their complaints if they had.
"I don't understand why people are taking so much offense at this post."
Maybe it's because they think Joel, John and I are three normal, intelligent young men with sincere, considered, earnest beliefs about the subject matter at hand. This leads them to take us seriously--a most vulgar error--even when we tell them to buy UMPCs and other weird, useless, expensive gadgets.
You know, after creating an account just to make this one comment here, I finally understand what Microsoft was trying to do with Passport. Like I really need fifty goddamned accounts just to post a few sentences on some blogs now and then. Thanks, Internet!
Anyway, I've worked tech support too. And sure, sometimes you have good techs who know policy back and forth and who follow it perfectly, like the supervisor Harvey eventually reached. But much more common is the asshole who thinks he knows everything and just parrots whatever nonsense the people he works with have said, regardless of if it's written policy or not. Like, take the smoking thing. Read Apple's warranty (or download the PDF from the website and then use the search function, which is what I did.) There's not a single mention of smoke, smoking, tar, or nicotine.
And as a chain smoker with tons of electronic equipment, there's not a pieace of gear in my house that ever has been effected by smoke. And honestly, I'd have to wonder what the tech would have said if someone else had brought in the laptop. I mean, my clothing reeks of cigarette smoke, but my cell phone doesn't. My LCD doesn't.
Anyway, fuck that Apple guy.
Eh, their lameness, if it's there, (I've had decent experiences with them, pretty neutral) is probably more the company's policy's fault than their individual faults.
Frankly, I have always felt that the twats and various douchery present, indeed, at the apple meccas, are simply reflecting the exact same attitude that starts at the top of the company, with Mr Jobs' remarkable and well-documented maniacal, asshat-alicious arrogance and management style, and flows on down and out the pyramid. It's the same BS that I've always despised in Mac fanboys, honestly.
Pretty much, the exact same attitude.
In fact, if you're under 35 and just LOVE Apple, you're probably an asshat. think about it. they're just a pc company that has a great design department, and a lot of attitude.
Re 42: Rob, I don't mind over-the-top if it's creative. Building up or ripping down.
I do object when it's badly written, rudeness lazily trying to be clever and failing. Which this, alas, was. Or so it reads to me; others may see it differently, and de gustibus non disputandum est.
If a joke needs this much defending, it has failed.
Like I said: We know you can do better, and we believe you want to. If we didn't, we wouldn't be spending the time trying to help you do so.
This word, "asshat," I am about three sightings of it away from creating an MT comment plugin that replaces it with the name of a random vegetable.
Well, as an avowed Apple advocate, I found the post hilarious... Then again, I deliberately hang out with chronic complainers. Nothing like a well written rant to get me chuckling.
I suspect that what you're running into here is the fact that your post is coming off sounding like a hyperaggressive, digg/fark jerk: something a lot of the demographic here hates with a passion.
Face it, BB is a hipster blog (or at least it used to be). It's (mostly) run by hipsters, about hipster subjects, with hipster regulars. Myself included.
And then this post comes in with one of those fratboy white hats on, and starts calling the macstore people (semi-admired fellow hipsters) douches, complete with fratboy threats of violence. How original.
...and you are surprised that we don't just lick it up?
Some horrible alchemy is occurring. The juxtaposition of the words moist, elastic, and o-ring with the image of the black-clad Applechik is fermenting into a new genre of technopron, if only in my mind.
@ #51: My comments were specifically and exclusively referring to the post, not the person who wrote it. I am criticizing the tone of the post, nothing more.
I 100% agree with John's article. They are snobs, and douchey, and perhaps full of even a bit of twatitry.
This comment thread blows my mind. People are talking about what the hell boing boing is in essence, and whether 'douche' is a sexist slang? WHAT THE FUCK? It's so laughable. I'm lol. that's a slang for laughing out loud in case any of you douc... sophisticated internet socialites missed that.
And for the record... a lot of hipsters smoke, MortalKombatUltra... OOOO!!!!!
(Troll feeding nomnomnom)
#38: If what you've got to say today isn't worth posting, skip a day.
If you don't find something worth reading, skip a post.
Considering you read the post and at least one of the comments (but I'm guessing you didn't just randomly decide to start at Post #30) then you have nothing to complain about.
I found his rant entirely funny. Well worth the read. To be honest I also found people's angry/upset rants about how offensive the post was to be funny. Maybe I'm an asshole.
...and even some of us non-hipsters enjoy a good rant, even a violent one. Mark Twain and S.J. Perelman never stopped to worry about who they offended. Few have replied to his point - Apple is using a stylized discourtesy in dress and attitude to achieve what? Instant familiarity? If I let him insult me he must be my friend...
I've had mixed experiences with people who work at the Apple store. Most attempt to be helpful and some are exceptionally knowledgeable.
What's annoying to me is the checkout system, which can be summarized as "stand around looking ready to check out." There's no place to line up, and no clear way to indicate that you're in fact ready to hand over money.
When I went to buy my iPhone, I made eye contact with another guy who was in the same predicament - ready to check out, but having no idea what to do but look helpless. We discussed the absurdity of our situation briefly and tried to get the attention of one of the wireless checkout-thing guys.
Fortunately, it eventually worked, and we both got our cards swiped and purchases stickered within a few minutes.
RE: #28 posted by HarveyBoing
You spill your drink into your expensive Mac laptop and you get mad at... Apple?
Projection will get you nowhere.
Odd, I spilled my douche on my Apple laptop and they amazingly had no problem with it. Next time..tell them it's douche. *nods*
Up until a couple of days ago I'd never visited the Genius Bar, but whilst I'll agree that the name is in itself somewhat fatuous I found the "genius" to be nothing but helpful; the battery on my MBP had crapped out (about 80 cycles, but held less than 50% of its original charge) and he replaced it with no quibbles. Whilst we waited for it to be brought up from the stock room he chided me gently for smoking whilst using the machine, gave it a clean for me, and the whole experience was both swift and pleasant.
Whist I was there the other geniuses seemed to be equally pleasant and helpful to the other customers, and in terms of dealing with tech support it was at least nine gajillion times better than any other company that I've had to deal with -- they didn't try and fob me off, they solved my problem, and they obviously enjoyed their jobs. Not sure why you have such a problem with them, John, other than perhaps being an inverted snob or some kind of reactionary asshat yourself?
@#2:
OSX is a UNIX. www.apple.com/macosx/technology/unix.html
And while I do think most of what Apple does is substantially and fundamentally better than its competitors, moreover in no small part due to the nature of its cultish corporate culture, I also empathize with the annoyance its enthusiasts tend to engender. We've got one guy at work with the appelation "Apple Evangelist" in his email sig and he basically makes me want to force-feed him his own kidneys. If only he had more than two...
Just take a minute and think about how we feel, being forced to wear this shit, ya know?
Just want to point out that you probably went into the store with the same antagonistic attitude you are showing in your writing. Anyone dealing with you would be put off. Also, each different team in the apple store has always had their own shirts. Only one or two incidents where they were all the same. At times they were the same color with different phrases, but either way this is nothing new. I don't think that Apple employees are all of a sudden thinking "we must now wear the shackles of oppression known as colored T-shirts. If only we had a hero of change to defend us, someone like that ultra positive chap, John Brownlee." If you were unfairly of course that is a bummer, but you can't blanket the whole company.
I have had many Apple Store Douche encounters, Some of the guys are nice but some of them don't know what they are talking about. I have received some way off answers to questions like: "You will need a special iPod for Windows machines" "The warranty goes from date of purchase so if you wait 89 days you aren't gaining anything" "I've never had anyone complain about the logic board, The G3 Laptops never have logic board issues"
But sometimes you can turn an asshole Genius into a Nice genius, you just engage them and be nice, they tend to loosen up.
Yeah.
I've never really been into an Apple Store for anything other than peripherals. I got my PowerBook from a reseller before the advent of the Apple retail end. I go back to the reseller for problems.
And I manage to avoid whatever unpleasantness that may lurk at the mall.
#64: "You will need a special iPod for Windows machines"
Well, depending on when you asked it, this actually used to be true.
Whatever his writing style may be, I happen to know Brownlee. Sorry to damage the image, but he is unfailing polite to all people involved in customer service. He did it himself at one time, and knows how obnoxious a customer can be. So he does all he can to make sure he doesn't get the "Ass of the Day" award. That carries over with old ladies, cashiers, waiters and salespeople.
I've also dealt with young "tech" geniuses, and many have been patronizing, rude, and overbearing when dealing with those they may perceive as not being their peers. To be clear I'm not talking about the Apple genius in particular but about the mindset in general. It presents itself as much in the business venue as it does in the retail mall.
Just to be fully open: JMudder is my saintly, aged mother, so she may well have a better opinion of me than the average Apple store employee who encounters me standing on top of their display desks urinating on a MacBook Air while pumping my fist in the air and screaming "ATTICA!"
THIS IS JOHN'S FATHER. YOU PEOPLE BETTER STOP THIS RIGHT NOW OR BY IKE I'LL HAVE YOUR GUTS FOR GARTERS.
DAD?!?! WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE? HAVE YOU BEEN DRINKING AGAIN?
Quick, someone explain to me what an O-ring is. I'm picturing something, and I think I must be wrong.
Smokers HATE being snarked on for the smoky mess they leave on stuff... no response for it, so go for the jugular of the bestard who snarked! Die, hippy! You'll pry this cigarette from my cold, dead lips! What's that? You probably will? Die hippy die! Better yet, I will blog about you and your Greenpeace friends! Bwahahahhahah!
You could stop smoking...
So let me get this straight John… the reasons you don’t like Apple staff are as follows:
-incompetence
-the fact that Apple call their in-house support staff Geniuses, which you then seem attribute to the staff – like they actually voted on their title.
-they have new t-shirts. Let me repeat. They. Have. New. T-shirts.
Someone stop the presses! (or the tubes!)
Now I can see an issue with the first. Some find Apple geniuses helpful, some don’t. Fine. Acceptable. We can site good and bad experiences all the live long day. Let’s just put this in the ‘they are just like everyone else on the planet in the service industry - sometimes good, some not’ *yawn, old news*
The second point you can’t really hold against the staff. That’s the name the company gives them, much like Wal-Mart greeters and such. Not their fault. They didn’t call themselves geniuses. *more yawn*
On the last point, and the one that seems to have been the instigation for the whole rant, is that they are getting new t-shirts. Wow. Epic. How the hate must swell inside you day after day with the only outlet being to punish the crime of wearing fresh cotton poly-blend with a Bladerunner stile eye squishing!
On the less inflammatory side, they probably replace their t-shirt line often, so ex employees don’t waltz in and nab stuff while wearing their old shirts. It’s more practical than anything. I’m sure you can sleep well tonight knowing that Apple was not trying to drive you over the edge with a t-shirt line designed to over-douche or out-twat your brain.
But really… over 300 words to say: Apple staff get new shirts that I don’t like?
I never really go to BB Gadgets, but today I thought I'd check it out.
I really found this post off-putting. It lacked the sober, informative tone that I've come to enjoy at BB. As an editorial, it was neither funny, nor well-written.
John and Rob's responses were limp, defensive and ill-conceived.
Note to the bosses at BB central, your sub-site is sub-standard.
Anyway, you lost me.
POT: "Yo Kettle! You sure are black"
As a former PC/Apple salesman from a store known for tech-savy salespeople and dedicated tech-support staff, just TRY working their job: 8+ hours of (90% of the time) people coming in with problems a 5 year old could solve. No wonder the tech-support staff has a big turn-over rate.
You may scoff at their "genius" title, but you (the patrons) are the ones who need their help.
O.K., Chipslug, Bye! Thanks for reading! It's a shame you registered just to say that.
I don't know why everybody's pants are so twisted up over this - and it seems to me to be more a criticism of Apple's retail practices than a slam on individuals there. Apple's titles are pretentiously, over-the-top hip, and often it seems they care more about projecting an image than actually serving the customer.
I know I was pretty pissed when I bought my MacBook - they were upgraded the next day, and I had specifically asked about anticipated upgrades to the line. They told me straight-faced that there was no way to know, while I'm sure the new, fancier laptops were sitting in the back ready to be pulled out. I got screwed out of a faster processor, bigger hard drive, and a GB of ram. I understand these people were just following orders from above, but seriously, their return policies are draconian and the general attitude I got was that I should thank the gods that I was considered privileged enough to enter the store, much less expect any kind of customer service competitive with every other manufacturer out there.
I love OSX and the capabilities of my Apple, but I think they are somewhat full of themselves, and a little hyperbolic rant is well-deserved and appropriate in my book.
re #75
I registered months ago.
How many times can you be wrong here, rob?
Keep 'em coming!
@#57 "You spill your drink into your expensive Mac laptop and you get mad at... Apple?"
Read much? Obviously not.
I very clearly said I had no problem paying for repairs related to the spill (a sticky mouse button), and I had made that very clear to Apple's representatives.
My anger at the so-called "genius" and, by association, Apple was because of their attempt to use that issue as justification for rejecting an otherwise valid warranty claim (a different and entirely unrelated problem that by the "genius"'s own admission was a valid claim). Finding this practice to be insitutionalized (i.e. repeated by the phone support technician) made it that much more offensive (in other words, it wasn't just some random idiot at the Apple Store...it's apparently official Apple policy to lie and misrepresent their own warranty).
I hope you invest more reading comprehension effort in things that actually matter. I admit, whether you properly understood my comment or not probably isn't important. But hopefully you're not as knee-jerk in the rest of your life.
re #75
I registered months ago.
How many times can you be wrong here, rob?
Keep 'em coming!
Chipslug, I'm dismayed by your adversarial tone. It was your first comment here, and I apologize for assuming you had, therefore, registered just beforehand.
But, good news! You obviously changed your mind about not returning, and I hope you decide to hang around and, perhaps, find something to comment positively on.
@36
@22 "Generalized misanthropy and hatred is very un-BoingBoing-like."
Going to have to disagree with that. Take a look at any of Cory's vitriol, or most of what Rob Beschizza writes.
Can't speak to Rob's writing one way or the other since I don't know it all that well (yet). But I'll STRONGLY disagree with you about Cory. Cory's not at all misanthropic. He seems to love people and "wonderful things" and he generally reserves his wrath for those who severely abuse the public trust by violating civil liberties or human rights, or the evil "douches" who use their positions of power to take advantage of the weak and disadvantaged.
Brownlee's post attacks an entire group of working folks just because he had some bad experience somewhere. He makes it personal and says he'd like to do violence against every one of them. Yeah, it's supposed to be satire, but satire should be aimed at the powerful and privileged, not people who work in retail trying to be helpful.
@#81
Its ever so kind of you to depict Mr. Doctorow as the champion of the weak and disadvantaged, but my opinion stands. I was perhaps a bit too harsh on Rob though.
YMMV.
@#81
I guess it depends on who you classify as "evil “douches” who use their positions of power to take advantage of the weak and disadvantaged".
However, Doctorow is (or should be) well-known for his general abusive description of any software developer that should happen to displease him. He consistently pursues the anti-Microsoft theme, regularly using the phrase "crapware" to describe IE, Windows, and any other Microsoft software that he's upset with at the moment, as well as commonly characterizing Microsoft employees in no uncertain negative terms.
I admit, given the BB demographic, many people reading this comment will wonder "well, what's wrong with that?" But suffice to say, it's the same sort of blanket generalizing the people are criticizing Brownlee here for. If anything, it's worse because at least Brownless has had personal, first-hand experience with at least one of these supposed "douches", whereas I think it's highly unlikely that Doctorow has ever had a first-hand personal interaction with any of the Microsoft employees who are personally responsible for implementing any of the software Doctorow spends so much time criticizing.
In truth, both Apple and Microsoft deserve some criticism for some of their behavior. Both of those companies' involvement in DRM is a clear violation of "do no evil", for example, and neither has ever released any software that's truly bug-free.
But in the same vein, neither are truly deserving of blanket generalizations. At least with Brownlee's article, there's a strong hint of intentional hyperbole that justifies the writing as "engaging" and "thought-provoking" whereas with Doctorow's tirades I always get the feeling that he really genuinely means every word he says and is just trying to be mean.
I have never had a positive experience at the Columbus Ohio Apple Store Genius Bar. They are unhelpful and make comments that would result in termination at my multi unit food service chain. I have had the multiple logic board iBook problems as well as a few dead ipods. The iBook comment I loved the most was: "Why didn't you back it up?" It's a laptop that we back up twice a week but it died while my wife was using it to study for the bar exam at a coffeehouse. I love macs but the folks at the Genius bar are terrible. Regular store employees have been great. I don't understand the disconnect.
Chipslug:
"John and Rob's responses were limp, defensive and ill-conceived"
What a bizarre little comment. I haven't defended myself. The only time I commented was to point out that my MOTHER had just defended me, just to point out she might be biased. There's nothing to defend myself against: responses are split down the middle between people who may disagree but see where I'm coming from, and those simply eager to evacuate their bladders by being "offended." The latter sort of people are a dime a dozen. This is hardly a contentious post for reasonable people: "Apple's marketing is insufferably hip and its reps sometimes act like jerks." And I said that as an Apple FAN. It's not like I just denied the Holocaust or something.
You guys who want BBG to have the same tone as BB are going to be perpetually disappointed, so you may as well make your exit now, because things are only going to get more different. This is our warm-up month. No one was unaware of my style, or Joel's style, or Rob's style when we were hired: it was why we were hired. Aping the same tone, being the same kind of site as Boing Boing was not what we were hired to do, nor is BBG meant to reach out to the exact same readers. It is a different site entirely, and you can either accept that, or move on. You've chosen to move on. Sorry to see you go, but we're not losing any sleep over it.
I did a brief stint as a helldesk 1st line support for Apple. We had some sample calls sent over for 'training' so we could be good tech-support drones. Never have I heard such unbelievably rude, obstructive and genuinely racist people working the phones 'professionally'. Also, Apple's employee relations suck.
@ #85 POSTED BY JOHN BROWNLEE
You guys who want BBG to have the same tone as BB are going to be perpetually disappointed, so you may as well make your exit now, because things are only going to get more different. ... Aping the same tone, being the same kind of site as Boing Boing was not what we were hired to do, nor is BBG meant to reach out to the exact same readers. It is a different site entirely, and you can either accept that, or move on. You've chosen to move on. Sorry to see you go, but we're not losing any sleep over it.
Whatever the tone is, the hostility—void of real criticism—of the original post combined with the defensiveness of your criticism doesn't sit well at all.
I don't think people come to BBG to get another version of BB, but we also don't come here to read nonsensical rants against something as hack a subject as Apple Store "Geniuses". Jokes, slams and comments against them appeared years ago when they first appeared. And when you distill it to it's core it's simply the same old "Those people at the repairshop know nothing..." premise. You can say the same thing about contractors, garage mechanics and others. Customer service rants (pro or con) are not new and it's tiresome.
Please, rise above the tech blog crowd. Don't sink below.
Speak for yourself. :p Some of “we” come here for just that, and don't even necessarily find the rants “nonsensical”.
Yet, Apple persists in keeping them timely. Odd. But that's Apple's fault, not the pundit's. Until Apple gets the hint, their “geniuses” are fair game.If you distill the writing to its semantic essence, sure. You're left with just the semantics and you've lost the art of the author. So, don't distill it!
You can get drunk on pure ethanol or on a nice aged whiskey. If you distill the latter, you get the former. That doesn't mean that there's no point in the latter.
So is "HARVEYBOING" a sock-puppet of a Boing Boing staffer? Because said commenter has only posted 3 comments. All of them here.
If you must know...
No, it's just that this was the first article since the new commenting system was rolled out that struck a nerve so strongly that I felt motivated to bother registering to make a comment.
By the way, this is my fifth comment. :p
lolumad?
All I invisioned while reading this post was an angry child pumping his fists and trying to create an opinion on something he doesn't understand.
I hope you piss a genius off someday so they can delete your partition and dink your notebook so they can say you need to reinstall the OS and you're not covered under AppleCare anymore... douche.