Day Off

It was my day off today and I decided to take the opportunity to get some much needed exercise by going for a little hike. I was sorry that I didn’t bring my camera with me because I found more than a few kodak moments. As a treat to myself I decided that I would go check out the Apple section of a certain campus store not too far uphill. After much huffing and puffing up the hill I arrived at the store and went to the Apple section to see if they had any floor models of the new 24″ iMacs. I really just wanted to see what the footprint was like. After browsing for a bit I noticed that they didn’t have any… in fact all they had was what looked like an older 17″ iMac. I turned my face away from the iMac and went to look at the Macbooks (wanted to see if they had any of the new ones). I couldn’t get there coz this young man was all over this black Macbook (the one I was interested in looking at). He was asking the salesperson a lot of questions and I found myself answering a bunch of them on her behalf. I got a little irritated actually coz here I was my day off, just wanting a bit of eye-candy and I was Mac-evangelizing to this kid who was trying his best to get one (he couldn’t get over how small and cute the computer was). They of course didn’t have any of the new ones in stock and the young man wanted to get one today coz he didn’t have a computer at all. It turns out that he dropped his previous Macbook more than a few times and it doesn’t work anymore. He was hot to buy and they told this kid he had to wait two weeks. He also had some legitimate questions about the Macbook vs. the Macbook Pro vs. a Thinkpad which his friend was looking at. After the salesperson got a bit stumped on the specs and such I found myself answering this kid’s questions once again. Salesperson #2 came over and I decided that I would just walk away and let them do their jobs instead of doing it for them. Since they didn’t have the new Macbooks anyway, it wasn’t worth it for me so I just plugged my iPod back in my ear walked out of the store and continued back down the hill towards home. The whole thing left me wondering three things (1) Maybe I should get a job in that store I seem to know more about the product than the salespeople there- The hours wouldn’t work for me though since I already have another job (2) The salespeople at the store didn’t know the products very well which can affect sales big time especially when there are competing products around (3) Why does it take 2 weeks for someone to get a new computer? I realize that the new models just came out earlier this week but still 2 weeks seems a bit long to wait. On the Apple store the estimated shipping date says 1-3 business days but the salesperson told this kid 2 weeks. I’m wondering how often this type of misinformation gets communicated back to customers… Its funny on my way up the hill I was wondering why Apple has stores to sell their wares and why we don’t see more Apple computers at Best Buy and places like that. I think that after my little experience in the store today I’ve answered my own question.