Better luck next time, dudes.

Today Apple sent an email asking me about my visit. I felt this was an opportunity to let them know how to improve. They did ask, after all. What follows is an excerpt from the survey.

Is there anything else you would like to share with Apple about this visit or the Genius Bar in general?

I always have a good experience in dealing with the Apple employees. My only issue with the visit is that I had to wait 20 minutes to speak with someone, after having to choose such a precise time slot as 6:10 pm a day in advance.

Forcing customers to choose such a precise time creates the expectation that they will be seen at precisely that time, and not a minute later. I would be less annoyed if I was given time ranges to choose from to make my appointment or some other less specific method of choosing. The online scheduling system promised what the store could not deliver. If my expectations for the timeliness of my visit were lower in the first place there would be no issue.

I would not bother to mention this if it seemed to be an isolated incident, but this has been a consistent issue with the appointments I have tried to make with the Genius Bar. It seems as though there is a great disconnect between the scheduling demands you put on your customers – and the promises you make on your website – and the syncopated rhythm that the Genius Bar actually operates. It sends a message that the time of your employees is more important than the time of your customers and this is unacceptable. Please lower my expectations or live up to the illusion of clock work created by 10 minute intervals of customer service.

Thanks for reading,
Roger Estes

“Is this the Ladies’ Room?” he shouted as he came bursting in. I was washing my hands in the Men’s Room sink at my office, in a daze from staring at a computer monitor for the last six hours. Turning away from the sink, I shook my head no. “What was that other bathroom I walked past?” he asked, seeming to not believe me.

“That is the handicapped bathroom” I told him. He was wearing a shirt and a tie, and appeared somewhat intellectual, looking at me through black rimmed glasses with a mane of wavy brown hair. He could have been Bill Nye the Science Guy’s younger brother.

“So this isn’t the Lady’s Room?” he asked again standing next to a urinal, seconds after walking through a door labeled Men. Being asked twice caused me to question my own manliness. If seeing me in the bathroom didn’t make it obvious this was indeed the Men’s Room, I must have gone wrong somewhere.

“The Lady’s Room is on the other side of the building” I assured him, trying to put an end to this ridiculous volley.

“Okay good, because it’s going to get stinky in here.” He shut the door to the first toilet stall. I left, drying my hands on my pants to hasten my departure.

There are a number of issues that I am left thinking about after this curious exchange. Why did he assume that he was in the Ladies’ Room, when there were so many signs that he wasn’t? Am I not manly enough to convince someone they are in the Men’s Room by my presence alone? What did this man eat earlier in the day to provoke this evacuation emergency? In an attempt to bring closure, I have decided to coin a catch phrase based on the time I spent with Bill Nye’s doppelganger: “It’s going to get stinky in here.”

I have to credit John Cassidy of South Philadelphia, the first person who heard this story, with helping me to develop this catch phrase. It should be used when you know something bad is just around the corner. As in, your friend has been telling his wife that he has been working overtime, but instead hanging out at your house playing beer pong with a bunch of younger women. Then, you are drinking beers at his place on a Saturday afternoon, and she finds a strange pair of panties while cleaning the family minivan. This is when you make a quick exit. But before you do, please exclaim “It’s going to get stinky in here!”

This is the first of my experiments with the animated GIF, the most underrated file format known to man. Once my series of studies is complete I will begin work on my feature length animated GIF, which will be screened in Philadelphia with live musical accompaniment. More details to come.

I have always trusted you as a positive force in the world, especially after speaking with your former employees, who always spoke highly of the company. Please do not start making deals with telecoms about how to charge for internet access. Organizations like Verizon have no soul, which is something I hope I never have to think about you.

When I heard on the radio today that these talks were going on I nearly went into shock. I did not think it could be possible that Google, the White Knight of internet freedom, was attempting to rewrite the defining principles of Net Neutrality. This is short sighted and greedy. If you continue to fight for the amazing world of information that has been made possible by the current system, you will remain in favor with internet uses forever. But, if you start to fall in line with telecoms, the siphoners of the Internet’s power, you will be seen by users in the same way as them: greedy, belligerent and temporary.

Sincerely,

Roger Estes

If you also want to tell Google not to fuck us over go to freepress.net

This quality issue with Toyota is the latest example of blaming the machine. Safety is a choice people make. If people don’t know when the accelerator sticks they should jam the brakes and take the car out of gear, then maybe the brick wall they slammed into was a wake-up call.

Rule 1: If you don’t know how the machine works, don’t use it. By this rule, most people on the road today should not be there. Sure, Toyota fucked up, but so did the people driving these cars by not knowing what to do during system failure.

Rule 2: Never assume the machine is going to work the way you want it to. I learned how to drive when I was twelve years old, on vehicles that were far more dangerous than anything Toyota has ever made. I was lucky to have experienced drivers around to teach me how the vehicle worked and what to do when something went wrong. If these Toyota drivers had the training that most farmers have, none of these crashes would have happened.

Rule 3: If you crash, it is your fault. This was the level of accountability I was given when I was operating machines before I was in high school. Because of this, I became an expert in dealing with control problems. By making every problem with a vehicle the fault of the manufacturer and not the operator, the operator has little incentive to learn about how to deal with system failure. If we are going to use this system of blaming the manufacturer, the people making the machines should have some say over who uses their product, and require training before a potential buyer is allowed to drive the vehicle off the lot.

So be safe out there, and if you wrap your car around a pole don’t come crying to me or the person who made it. Go cry to yourself or maybe Ralph Nader.

This message pertains to the Track & Confirm system available on USPS.com.

The phrases “Arrival at Pick-Up-Point” and ” … ready for pickup” as used in your Track & Confirm system are confusing to consumers. This language makes it seem like we may be able to go to a post office location and pickup our package. Based on the information I could find online, this is not the case. With terms like this, that I am assuming are part of USPS shop talk, it would be helpful to have them defined on your site somewhere, or use consumer-friendly language instead. For example “ready for pickup”, could instead be represented as “waiting for carrier pickup”. With a few extra words, the reader knows that it will not be him doing the picking up, but a USPS employee.

The whole point of the Track & Confirm system is to build consumer confidence in your product. When information is incomplete or ambiguous it has the opposite effect. In my effort to find the definition of these terms, I found numerous threads online about this confusing language, but no clear answer. I also went to the FAQ section of the site to the Glossary, and was disappointed to find that these terms were not included. In any case, the Glossary of Terms pertaining to the Track & Confirm process should be available on the Track & Confirm page and not three clicks away.

I do appreciate the Track & Confirm system in general. Technically it seems to work great. The only problem is with the language being used to describe the process to consumers. It needs to be defined more clearly, as in a Glossary of Terms, or written more clearly in the first place. Thank you for your time and Happy Holidays!