The 10 Types of People Who Visit the Apple Store

Image via Complex Original

Any Apple Store is going to have their fair share of overworked, underpaid personal assistants running around. Look toward the accessories section of any Apple location and you'll see a group of harried twenty-somethings frantically searching for this or that cable. They invariably have two items in their hands: a list with demands more impossible than a ransom note and their boss's credit card, which we can't take if their employer isn't present. When you inform these poor souls that we do not have forty 85-watt chargers to sell them right now, and if we did, we wouldn't be able to charge them to a credit card that isn't theirs, these once peaceful creatures go into fight or flight mode. The next tactic for the personal assistant is to shout about just how important their boss is and how much Hell there will be to pay if we can't fulfill their demands. If you are reading this and realize that you are one of these people, here's a tip, retail employees don't negotiate with terrorists. No matter how much power your boss has over you, the only way your specialist is getting fired is if they steal something. Ask to speak to a manager and they'll tell you "No" again, just with a bigger smile.

"I don't have any time. I'm really in a hurry. What computer should I get?" Okay, American Psycho, if you don't have time to buy a computer, why did you come in here today? Are all the computers over at Goldman Sachs being subpoenaed by the SEC, so you don't have Internet access? Even though this kind of customer reeks of  expensive cologne and insurance fraud, we would try to help them as quickly as possible. Of course after answering their half-dozen initial questions rapid fire, because, remember, they had no time, they are ready to spend a half-hour discussing the finer points of hard drive selection. When they leave the store an hour later, after getting a call on all three of their Blackberry's, they shove past women and children to get through the glass doors as fast as they can, because, like they said, they are in a hurry and don't have any time.

We're all pretty familiar with the concept of a trophy wife. She is young and hot. He buys her whatever she wants. The absurdity of this relationship is never so pronounced as it is at a technology store. After demanding a round of fur coats and stilettos at the high-fashion shops that line Fifth Avenue, or your city's equivalent, the Trophy Wife often ends up at the Apple Store. She applies the same principles to her technology demands that she does to her fashion demands: only the best will do. The problem is that while you can take one look at a necklace and know how expensive it is, the same is not true of a computer. I would try to explain to these charming couples that "best" is a relative term and that a 2TB solid state drive and top of the line processor is not essential for playing bullshit Facebook games and organizing afternoon flings with the pool boy. The tycoon, speaking on his lady's behalf, would repeat that he only wants the best, at which point I would gladly charge $7,000 of computer to his Black AmEx.

Abandon hope, all ye tech employees who happen upon this customer. At any time of day, at any Apple Store in America you can spot an elderly person pacing around, confused, as the staff do their best not to make eye contact. I can hear all of you gasping in self-righteous anger at our ageist cruelty, but you haven't dealt with it, so I don't want to hear it.

The conversation starts off simply enough. The elderly customer wants some help "making her iPod work" or "doing the Internet." You quickly learn that it is nearly impossible to help someone who has no idea what they actually want to do. Teaching a grandparent about the Internet is like teaching them a new language. Though some teachers are forced to work at the Apple Store thanks to our collective disdain for education in America, most Apple employees are not educators. Many of these interactions end with the customer leaving more confused than they were when they came in, following a three-hour impromptu seminar. It is customary for those who know they are going to be quitting soon to intercept the elderly, so that the workers who are trying to get promoted can actually do their job.

Nothing delights the technophile more than to prove you wrong. This type of customer exists in every retail environment. At Home Depot, it's the guy hanging out near the power tools to lecture the beleaguered orange aprons. At Whole Foods, there is the hippie who wants to tell everyone what brands are really organic. At the Apple Store, there is always a guy who wants to tell you that another company makes better products. He (it is almost always a he) is hoping that you'll defend Apple tooth and nail, so you can get into to some Gizmodo-sanctioned techie debate. Most seasoned employee don't care enough to give him the satisfaction. Would you go to bat for FedEx's shipping practices or TGIFriday's mozerella sticks? No. It's a job, dude.

When the technophile can't get the debate he wants, he resorts to testing employee product knowledge and giving customers unsolicited advice. I'll never forget the best way I ever saw this play out. One of these guys tried to tell a customer what computer to buy while a co-worker was helping them. My co-worker looks him in the eye and says, "Hey man, you want to sell them the computer, feel free. Let me know when she's ready and I'll ring her up." Then he walked away. You'll be shocked to hear that this co-worker didn't work there much longer.

Shattered screens and tales of woe are a large part of the job at Apple. We actually went through training on how to comfort people who lost their phones in a cab or dropped them in their fourth pitcher of beer. There are two tactics that the newly phoneless tend to take in hopes of getting a new thousand dollar computer that fits in your pocket for free. They either turn on the waterworks or turn on the charm. Of course, I preferred it if a girl tried to flirt her way to a new phone rather than attempt to tug at my heartstrings. Unfortunately for them, I didn't work at the Genius Bar, so even a promise to casually date me wasn't going to get them a new phone. There was a time that Geniuses could hand out free phones in order to "surprise and delight" deserving, loyal customers. When the powers that be noticed that the people getting surprised and delighted tended to be buxom co-eds, they put a stop to that program pretty quick.

Few times have I felt like more of a failure in life than I did when working with these kids. These well-intentioned tweens would come in hoping for answers to complex questions that were far beyond my technical acumen. "So I was coding the other day ..." they would begin and I would do my best not to stop my eyes from glazing over. In instances like this, my life would flash before my eyes. I would imagine myself as a doddering, confused old man. I saw my eighty year-old self wandering into the Google Store and trying to get some poor kid to explain the basic concepts of 4-D without hating me and my entire luddite generation. "That's a great question," I would respond whenever the precocious child would finish speaking and I floated back to the present, "why don't we look it up?"

There were never any customers quite as irritating as Apple fan boys. These people love nothing more than to regale you with tales of how they owned one of the original iPods. Once they're done talking about their 1997 iMac, they run their hands along the sleek metal casings of the products and murmur to themselves, "don't you love the design." Yeah, dude, I like the design of IKEA products too, but I won't be crying when founder Ingvar Kamprad bites the dust (yes, I had to Google that.) I really saw customers cry after Steve Jobs died; honest to God, a man walked in, looked me in the eyes and embraced me, wracked with grief. Employees had access to an on-site grief counselor for an entire week. There was a shrine of flowers and old iPhones lining the front of the Fifth Avenue store for a month. This is not satire. This actually happened. Weep for your country. Weep.

Is he unemployed? Probably. Is he homeless? Maybe. One thing we know for sure is that he comes into the store every day and camps out at the largest screen he can find and watches YouTube videos until he is bodily removed from the store. He cranks up the volume as high as possible until you come over and politely ask him to turn it down. As soon he thinks you are out of earshot, he cranks the jams yet again. In case you were wondering, the jams in question are always 90s rap or K-Pop for some reason. Sometimes, this person is just watching porn: straight up, hardcore porn. To those of you who still work at an Apple Store, or any tech retailer for that matter, let me advise you to make friends with this person. They were coming to the store before you worked there, and will be there long after you are gone. I wouldn't be surprised if years from now when brick and mortar retail is a distant memory, this guy shows up where the store used to be and passes the time gently humming "The Thong Song" to himself as he waits for oblivion.

You probably think it is so awesome when you see pictures of some guy who brought his exotic pet into the Apple Store or that it is amazing that some tweens recorded a viral video on display model Macbook Pros. How would you like it if people just showed up at your work hoping to be seen being quirky? No, I don't want to see your New York Marathon medal. No, I don't want to listen to your mixtape. No, I don't want to talk about rehearsing for your upcoming burlesque show. Actually, yes to that last one, but the rest of them, no. All that Apple Store employees want to do is sell computers and iPads as fast as possible so they can take long breaks without getting yelled at, just like everyone at every job in the world. So, don't waste our time by loudly discussing your favorite graphic novels in hopes of impressing the hipster girl browsing superhero themed iPhone cases. Book stores don't exist anymore because the only people who frequented them were people like you. If you aren't going to buy something, go make real friends, or at least go bother the barista at your favorite independent coffee spot, because they are allowed to take tips.