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Originally Posted by You Need a Thneed
The lineup at the Apple store in Market Mall was still quite long this morning. The poor Apple store employees are being overworked these days I think. The Genius I met with on Tuesday said that that was his 9th consecutive day working.
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I feel sorry for the front line guys at the Apple Store. Whoever's managing the Calgary store is doing so in a way that is not about selling as many phones in as quick a manner as possibleand the front line guys take the brunt of it.
When I was there on Tuesday, they had 2 lines. One for contract activation and one for unlocked. Made sense after all, buying an unlocked one is the same as if I had gone to the store and wanted a set of headphones. I give you cash, you give me phone - we're done. Contracts of course take much longer, having to navigate carrier systems and general indecision regarding plans by the customer. So far so good.
However, where Apple Store really borked things up was how they routed staff to service the lines. The contract activations line has dedicated staffers who when they were done with a customer, went and pulled the next guy out of line. In the hour I was there about 8 people went in.
However, in the unlocked line, we were 2nd priority for all remaining staff in the store. Meaning the dude that walked in the store for some headphones got serviced 1st and if there was no one else in the store that needed help, then the staff would come out to pull someone from the unlocked line. In the hour I was there, not a single person from the unlocked line went in. Effectively, people going in to buy non iphone stuff in the store were getting serviced 1st and repeatedly cutting in line ahead of us.
After the 8th person went in from the contract line went in the pent up frustration in unlocked line let loose on the happy-smiley fanboi girl. No we don't want to talk about our favorite app. No we don't want a bag of fuzzy peaches. Fix the freaking line.
Lo and behold, after many death stares at the girl from our line she gets the message and talks to her black shirted manager. He waves 5 of us into the store and we form a line at the till. We pay and we leave within 5 minutes.
It didn't have be this way, but Apple curiously chose to do it this way Tuesday. Hopefully they have fixed this - even an 8 yr old could have seen what was wrong.
