Shopwork, eh? Oh I've got whines about that... For those of you not quite as obsessed with me as I am, I work in the computer game/ electronics end of a large toyshop. I have Sunday off this week, and I think I'll use it to plant a bomb at Apple headquarters. I'll tell you why.
Today I had a woman scream abuse at me because American PSPs aren't under European warranties. I had to phone fifty people or more to tell them the Pink PS2 is delayed, several of whom were almost equally abusive. I served junkies who were literally foaming at the mouth. I had to pricecheck forty five new items in three rival shops discreetly enough not to get kicked out by their security. I had to serve three of our eight Crazy Regulars (tm). I had to clear up several newbie messes because they all hate our manager so much they won't ask her. I found out the guy who spent last Christmas sexually harrassing every single member of staff has gotten his job back this Christmas and starts back next week. I wasn't paid for last week due to a clerical error, and have sixty euro to live off for the next seven days. This Thursday we start opening until eleven at night, which means fourteen hour shifts at least once a week until Christmas.
I can honestly say, Apple iPods easily still trump as the single most frustrating element of my work week. They make my job suck single handedly, even though I don't actually sell all that many of them. Every single step of dealing with them, from the actual selling of the iPod to it's inevitable return, is an ordeal. There is nothing that isn't unnecessarily complicated or infuriatingly pointless or otherwise spectacularly ill-conceived.
Why Apple are Satan:
1. Apple offered an online training course for till monkeys like me. First person to complete the course in every store won a Nano. Except the website doesn't work.
2. So we were instructed by a rep to send them an email to resolve this, and did. Three months ago. No response.
3. We did, however, get a snotty letter telling us they'd sanction us if we didn't complete the training. The training they won't let us do.
4. The new Nano doesn't come with the software you need to use it on your computer because... they wanted the box to look cute. So they just didn't bother packaging any software with it. You have to download it, and to do so you need Broadband. There are third world countries with more Broadband access than Ireland. Most of the nanos I sell are gifts bought by the technologically illiterate or the elderly. They don't even know what Broadband is, and Apple's return policy is so dementedly obtuse they can't bring it back if they find out they don't have it. See below.
5. So we give out home-made software discs on CD-Rs, which sort of defeats the purpose of the aesthetics of the box. So finally you have a working iPod, but then you're stuck with iTunes. Which is in many ways worse than having nothing, because it gleefully eats up your computer's IQ and leaves it running like Bovril.
6. The Apple iPod 30gb is a total Jonah. Three hundred and thirty euro, and about 1 in 3, maybe 1 in 4, need to be repaired or replaced. If the battery doesn't fail, in which case you can't replace it yourself of course, the screen just freezes and tells you to check Apple's support website...
7. ...Which doesn't work either.
8. Our return policy used to work thus: Every broken iPod - of which there was plenty - needed to be tested and put through a reset procedure, which takes f*cking ages. Then we had to obtain a case number for it from Apple so we could return it. We rang Apple, or rather the New Delhi Apple call centre, they'd put us on hold for between thirty minutes to an hour and a half while an angry, angry customer and a murderous queue glowered at us across the counter. Then we'd get talking to the Apple rep. Either, bizarrely, a baffled Scottish guy who had no idea what we were talking about ("Case ID number?") and somehow never sounded any less baffled, or a New Delhi dude who seemed to understand what we were saying but couldn't speak English well enough to respond. Eventually, we might get a Case ID number. Then we have to fill in a few more forms and send the iPod away. Four hundred years later, we get the iPod sent back to us and we pass it on to the customer. Or not, if they took a dislike to the way we filled in forms or decided the iPod wasn't as broken as it should be, they'd just fling it back at us. We had to do this about three or four times a day. Once, we actually met an Apple rep and almost murdered the unfortunate wretch, so a new return procedure was devised.
9. Our new return policy goes thus: We log on to the Apple Support network, using the user ID we were supposed to get when we signed up for the Training we can't do, and then fill out the forms online. This is even more complicated than the phone system. So we got hold of an ID. Except the website doesn't work. Surprise!
10. So we just... can't return iPods. We're one of the biggest suppliers of iPods in Dublin, and we have no way of returning an iPod or even just getting one repaired.
Apple are simply uncontactable. Customers hate me because I sold them this unreturnable sh*tbox in the first place. And I, in turn, hate Apple.
I hate the company. I hate their products. I hate the people who design for them, and I hate the people who promote them, and in fact, I hate anyone else who works for them right down the line. I hate them.
Individually, and profoundly, and in a very real way, I hate everybody who works for Apple. I hate every one of them, because they are complicit. There is too much wrong with this company for it to be the responsibility of a single person, or even a group of people. It's all of them. They are all responsible, and so I hate them all. When the reckoning comes, it will not be enough to say they were only doing their job. It will not suffice as excuse nor explanation, and even were they repentant, their failure to act would be damning in itself.
I hate their parents for raising them so they can work for Apple. I hate their friends for letting them be part of Apple. I hate their societies for tolerating Apple within their midst. I hate their significant others for not deserting them immediately on discovering their association with Apple. I hate their neighbours for abiding them in their communities. I hate their religious leaders for letting this continue.
Metric, yes, I hate that you were ever involved with them.
And all of you out there who own Apple iPods, you too are suspect. Were you blindly drawn in? Was it the curvy corners or shiny back, or the swishy ads, or the nifty menu system? Perhaps you were blissfully ignorant. Perhaps. But if you knew, if you knew and you understood, then you too are complicit.
And that should not, and must not, be overlooked, forgotten or ever forgiven.
Just buy a Creative.
