Yesterday, I made my very first trip to the Apple Store. Wow! That store is amazing! I could have spent hours in there exploring all of the items, but I had a very specific job to do and 10 minutes to do it: I had an appointment with an Apple Genius.

For those that have been following my tweets since December, I decided to buy four iPad Minis with a large portion of my award money, and in the past month, I’ve returned four of them: possibly not the initial four, as it’s kind of been a revolving door of devices, as one stops working, I return it, and then a couple of days later, another one stops working. 🙂 This is actually quite comical if it weren’t so frustrating! So this week, I decided to bring my two iPad Minis that aren’t working into the Apple Store: with the hope of finally figuring out what’s going on. I booked an appointment online earlier in the week, explained the problem in the “Additional Information” box, and got an email confirmation. Now fast forward to Saturday at 12:20 pm …

I arrive at the Apple Store just in time for my appointment, and I’m greeted to find out that they can probably only see me for “one device.” Apparently that’s the rule, but it’s not written on the website, there was no way for me to book multiple appointments, and even though I mentioned in my appointment request that I was bringing in two iPad Minis, I never got an email indicating this would be an issue. Needless to say, I was not happy. I was told to wait, talk to my Genius, and they’d see what they could do.

Then I got to meet my Genius. After some initial discussion, he told me that he could DEFINITELY only help me with one device. Okay. Fine. I’ll watch what he does and see if I can fix the second one on my own. He spent 3 minutes, plugged the iPad Mini into the computer, looked it over, saw that there was nothing wrong with it, tried to put it into DFU mode, saw that it wouldn’t respond, and ordered me a replacement (there were none in-stock). At this point, he tells me that I’ll have to try and book another appointment for my second device. Are you kidding me?! The second device has the EXACT same problem as the first one. I tried to explain this to him. According to my watch, I still had two minutes left of my appointment, so I asked him if he could just plug in the second device, see that it doesn’t work, and order me another one. “No Aviva. One device per appointment.”

Okay. Let’s see if I can get a second appointment. Well, guess what? The Geniuses were totally booked, so if I wanted to wait around for 1 1/2 hours, they could see me at some point in this time period. At this point, I mentioned that I had report cards to write, and I didn’t have 1 1/2 hours to waste. I booked an appointment for the next day. I was not pleased.

Then came Manager Matt … ta-da! If this were a movie, I’d be playing some magical music at this point. Matt was awesome! He saw me getting ready to leave, and he asked if I had been helped. I then explained my problem, and he told me to sit back down, and he’d help me out. In minutes, he looked over my second iPad Mini, realized it had the same problem as the first one, and ordered me another one. He even made me chuckle when I asked what could be causing this problem, and he replied, “Bad luck!” That’s a way better answer than, “Operator error!” 🙂

Not only did Matt help me leave the Apple Store happy yesterday, but he even inspired me to send out this tweet:

Customer service matters … regardless of our job! Please don’t get me wrong: I’m sure that the rule is one device per appointment. I’m sure that my Genius was booked with someone else. I’m sure that there were tons of people waiting to be seen, as the store was certainly packed. I’m sure that my Genius wanted to help me out, and that he honestly couldn’t. I’m sure that no one’s intention was to make me angry.

I’m also sure that Matt wanted all of his customers to leave happy. He wanted to do what he could to help salvage my trip to the Apple Store. He knew about the line-ups, but he also knew about the power of one: one person that leaves with a smile and spreads the “positive word.” 

Schools are not businesses, and students are not customers, but as educators, we all have the power to do what Matt did. We all have the power to make a child happy, to take the extra time to find out what’s wrong, and to turn a day around. We all have the power to change lives — and for the better! How are you going to use this power? 

Aviva