OK so going to Apple store was a strange experience and not a little annoying.
So I'll admit with 'brand new broken headphones', I wasn't in the best mood to sample the 'Apple Experience'.
You walk into the place, which is bright and full of lots of stands on which you can try out all there lovely tech, trying to work out where to go to get help. The are absolutely no signs to point you in the right direction.
I guess the idea is to talk to one of the assistants wearing the bright t-shirts (all the colours you get in smarties but the looks of it) but they were all already talking to customers. So I headed to the tills figuring that was the best place.
This was a mistake, after a lot of waiting I got to talk to someone at the till wearing blue and this 'Blue Smartie' said I had to go upstairs and talk to someone wearing an orange t-shirt.
OK so upstairs I go...Excuse ME! I say to the first Orange Smartie and explain about the headphones. 'Sorry Sir you want the orange shirts over there' he says point across the room. 'OK', breath deeply. across to a group of Orange Smarties behind a counter who are doing there best to ignore the customers about them. I explain again to one of the girls and the others disappear quickly.
She has a listen to the headphones and my phone and it is at this point I start thinking she might have some sort of hearing problem. She turns the sound right up to max so I can hear the music clearly from two foot away!
'I don't hear it' She says
I think I may have gone momentarily cross eyed at this point.
'OK turn it down a bit and try 'All you need is love'' I say taking the phone back and trying to find the Beatles track (Beatles to the rescue as they have lots of stuff happening in one speaker or the other). Except of course itunes made a right hash of it when importing the songs and it takes me an age to find it listed under 'Various Artist'.
So now she sort of agrees with me and asks me what I want to do.
'Can I have some working headphones? or get them fixed?'
'Er I'll see' and off she goes to look in the draws behind the counter. It's at this point I start to take in the rest of the things on this floor. I'm stood by a stand of accessories for the iPhone including about 500 pairs of headphones. Surreally down the far end of the floor there appears to be a lecture going on and about 50 people are listening to the Author/Comedian Charlie Higson talk about, I think, James Bond.
So Orange Smartie comes back and says 'Sorry we don't seem to have any headphones in stock".
I look at her, She looks at me. I look at the 500 headphones, She looks at the 500 headphones.
'oh'
Taking a pack we walk back to the till and she tries to ring it up on the till. I thinking this is now sorted and I'll soon be out of here.
No, she's not allowed to put the transaction through and we have to go downstairs and find a Blue Smartie. This takes some time as Orange Smartie won't interrupt any of the Blue Smarties that are talking to customers, ie all of them. When we finally get a Blue Smartie but he's not senior enough either and they both disappear out the back of the shop.
After a bit Orange Smartie comes back with a Black Smartie (and I thought they were a myth!) and Black Smartie has the special secret wrist movement or possibly key card to complete the transaction.
Done it! Orange gives me the headphones and as I head for the door says to be careful with them. Fortunately I've been in the store for half and hour at this stage, I'm too tired to get angry and just leave.
In their defence they didn't argue about the headphone and did just replace them but there is a little invention called a customer service desk that they might find useful.
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