Those of you fortunate enough to live in a decent-sized city (sorry, Baton Rouge) may be aware of the Apple retail store and it”s much-hyped “Genius Bar”. The Genius Bar is a place where Apple / iPod owners can drop in and get help and advice about their products.
I cozied up to the Genius Bar in Atlanta this morning for some help with a bum battery in my spanking-new 15″ PowerBook and quickly noticed the effect having the name “genius” in your job title/description can have on a person.
Talk about a know-it-all tool. Time with an Apple “genius” apparently comes with free attitude, and lots of it. Granted, when people come in with problems like “My Shuffle won”t play music” and “iTunes doesn”t show song titles and artist names when I import CDs” (these were the problems being had by the two losers in line before me. They were solved by trying - easily and successfully - to put a song on the Shuffle and play it and by explaining that the computer has to be on the Internet to get CD track data into iTunes, respectively), it”s got to be hard to not assume everybody”s an idiot.
But when the “genius” called my name and I told him I thought I had a bad battery, he really didn”t need to respond with “what makes you think that?” in a snide little “genius” tone. My own jackassedness - my response was “well, you can actually watch the little battery life percentage meter ticking down to zero” - seemed to at first infuriate the “genius”, as he decided to verify my claim that it loses 1% about every 20 seconds by timing it with his watch. But it didn”t take him long to figure out a) I knew what I was talking about and b) that I was right.
“Classic sign of battery failure” was his expert diagnosis. Excellent work, Kojak.
There is, however, an upside to “genius” arrogance. Since my PowerBook is the model that just came out a month ago, my machine is exactly the same age as the ones they have on display in the store. So instead of “doing things they way they”d want us to”, Mr. Genius decided to take charge and pull a good battery out of a store PowerBook and just give it to me.
By the time I left with my replacement battery, there were about a half-dozen Apple owners lined up to worship at the feet of the resident “genius”. I”m sure he felt quite superior by the time he walked down to Orange Julius for lunch.
[editor"s note: Yes, the Cap"n now has a PowerBook, which is the replacement machine for his stolen work laptop. It makes him happy.]
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