Holiday Hell: Mountain Mom Goes to The Big Bad City

I was "supposed" to get a few days off by myself. That was the plan. A couple of days in a nice hotel room with absolute quiet to unwind my tightly-wrapped-self and recharge my batteries.

No kids. No dogs. No kids fighting with each other. No dogs fighting with each other. No kids and dogs fighting with each other.

No schoolwork. No housework.

No checking a certain someone's body parts for signs of tumors or flesh-eating bacteria.

I was going to visit my mom and get ME a little Mommying time. Even big girls need that sometimes, when things are feeling tough.

Life never seems to work out as planned, does it?

Yes, I know whining is unattractive. Can I at least have a little leeway for a minor pout?

What started out as a "me" weekend, turned into a "me and both boys" weekend. They felt that they too deserved a mental health break, and worked me over like Tony Soprano worked over Ralph Cifaretto before cutting his head off.

There was a concert in The Big City that the Big Kid was dying to go to, and the Little Guy was missing his Grandma too.

How dare I contemplate depriving them?

So I caved in.

Big Kid's Ipod pooped the bed a few weeks ago. Since there aren't any authorized Apple dealers in the Smaller Big City that is closest to us, and we'd be staying downtown in The Big City, I thought there might be a store there so we could get it looked at.

There was one. At Really Snooty Shopping Mall.

I called first to get the skinny. And walked into the Twilight Zone.

"Thank you for calling the Apple Store. This is Thorne speaking."

Thorne? Have I stumbled into an episode of The Young and the Useless?

Hi! I was calling to get some information. My son's Ipod isn't working, and he thinks it might be the battery. Is there someone there who could test the battery before we purchase a new one, just in case that's not the problem?

"Sure! You just have to make an appointment with a Genius."

Huh?

A what?

"You have to make a reservation at our Genius Bar."

Genius Bar? WTF is that?

Uh, I'm coming through from out of town, and I have no idea of when we'll be in the area. If we just came in, could we wait until someone could look at it?

Thorne turned on the snoot. Obviously I was just a yokel who normally shops at bourgeois establishments like Best Buy or Circuit City.

"We're very busy. If you just come in, it could be hours before we could seat you at the Bar."

Seat me? Am I going to be ordering the battery platter with a side of crunchy circuit boards?

I was completely bewildered.

At this point, if Thorne had been infused with the slightest modicum of customer service, he would have realized that I was a neophyte in the world of Apple and taken a second to enlighten a doofus like me. The "Genius Bar" was their "fix-it" desk, and the "Geniuses" were techs trained to diagnose problems in Ipods and Macs.

But no. That might have messed up his manicure.

Oooookaaaay, how about tomorrow at 2pm?

"Certainly! Can I have your name?"

Attila the Mom.

"And your email address?"

I'm going to be traveling, you prat. Think I'm going to be toting along my desktop to check my email for Genius Bar seating plan updates?

None.

"We'll see you tomorrow at 2!"

After a few moments of contemplating our schedule, I called back.

"Thank you for calling the Apple Store. This is Thorne speaking."

Hi Thorne, this is ATM again. Could I change our reservation with the "Genius" to 3pm?

"Of course! Do you want me to cancel your 2pm reservation?"

Well duh. No wonder you're answering phones and not serving computer cocktails behind the "Bar" with the Geniuses!

Long long story short now. Really Snooty Mall is a block long with minimal parking. We ended up paying 8 bucks for valet service. The Genius Bar was manned by peeps wearing fake Ipods around their necks as name tags and precious black t-shirts with one little word on them---you got it---"Genius" (I swear! I am NOT making this up! Click on the picture to make it larger!).

I'm not making fun of the employees. I'm sure that this get-up is required wearing, and it's not their fault.

Of course, Big Kid's IPod warranty expired three months ago. The tech hooked it up to his diagnostic system and said, "I think it's either your hard drive or your circuit board".

You mean your Genius computer doesn't know?

He handed us a business card to a non-Apple company and told us to contact them for repair. How weird was that?

Holiday Hell to be continued...