How I Almost Let an Apple Encounter Ruin My Day

Yesterday, in Las Vegas, could be considered something akin to Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. It had to do with some bad decisions on my part and some inferior customer service from an Apple Store. But this post is less about an Apple complaint on my iPhone and more about how I handled my own attitude about the experience.

Jim’s worked great; mine not so great. Find My Friends kept returning to a log-on screen in the middle of use, forcing me to enter my password again, just to have another 15 seconds of use, before going back to the log-on screen—which indicated I was logged in. I’ve tried uninstalling the app, turning my phone off and on, etc., but nothing helped.

Since we’re in Vegas right now, and there’s no Apple Store at home, I decided to visit the local Apple Genius Bar to see if they had any solutions to my problem. It started to rain as soon as I was ready to head out the door. This should have been a sign. I had two Apple stores to choose from, both around two miles away, and Yelp can help navigate, but today, it was having some difficulty. I walked in one direction, and that seemed to be wrong, so I turned around and walked in the other direction.

By the time I got to the Forum Shops at Caesar’s, I was sweating in my raincoat. Once in the building, it was a bit of a trek to get to the Apple Store, requiring several consultations on the “You are Here” boards.

At the Apple Store. . . Where the Geniuses Reside

When I finally arrived at the Apple Store, I was hungry, but thought I could wait to eat until they did their magic. The first employee I encountered (Guy #1) had never heard of my problem and neither had his colleague (Guy #2 making appointments for the Genius Bar), but they thought they could do something to fix it, so I didn’t have to wait 45 minutes to get onto the Genius Bar. Guy #1 would back up my phone to iCloud, and then restore the phone. Sounded easy enough. So, I went off with Guy #1 (not one of the Genius team). When he tried to restore the phone, it got stuck in the process, so, because he had to go to lunch, he handed me over to someone he really trusted, Guy #3, who, in turn, ended up turning me over to Guy #4, just so I’d be covered. Also, in between, two other employees got involved in some form or another. They assured me that all we had to do was wait for the photos to download, but as I sat there longer and longer, it didn’t seem like anything was happening on my phone.

By this time, my stress level was rising and my glucose level was falling as I thought about the possible effect this might have on my research notes in Evernote. So, I pulled out my trusty notebook to write a little about what was going on. This seemed to help a bit. Here’s some of what I wrote:

When Guy #4 returned, he had decided, after his consultation in the back room that we should halt the restoration process and try again from scratch. He then left me to set up the phone, although I protested. He said it was easy, just a matter of choosing my language and selecting iCloud restoration. When given the option of picking which backup version, I picked the most recent one, and then my heart sank when I realized that version was from just nine minutes earlier, while the phone was failing its restoration.

Long story short, because the phone had been partially restored and then backed itself up to iCloud, when I chose the bad version of backup, it didn’t restore everything completely to my phone. In fact, since Guy #4 was MIA again, Guy #3 and I watched the number of my photos on Camera Roll decreasing before our eyes. Thankfully, my photos are backed up onto my Mac. Oh, and Find My Friends? It was still broken.

Guy #3 apologized to me and told me this never happens. He said we could go ahead and restore from a previous backup (from two days earlier, because it seemed the backup we had done that day was gone), but he hated to keep me there longer. I felt like I was being purged. At that point, I had already been at the Apple Store for about two hours, and honestly, I just wanted to be done. I didn’t want request time with the Geniuses. Before leaving the store, with a voice that betrayed my verge of tears, I told Guy #3 that the reason this happened was because I had been passed around to so many people, and there wasn’t one person overseeing the process. He agreed. I left without ever sitting down at the Genius Bar.

When I finally emerged from the building [they don’t make it easy to get out, and of course, I took an unwanted tour of the casino], the sun was out, but there was a cloud over my head. As I walked back to the hotel, I stopped frequently to see what was working on the phone and what was not. My texts were still there. Evernote was intact. Everything was pretty much there, except all the apps would need to be logged onto again, and all my photos were missing from Camera Roll. As I said, I’ve uploaded most of my photos to my Mac.  The ones I hadn’t uploaded were not that important.

Back at the hotel, at around 4:00 p.m., I had some time before Jim would be out of his conference session, so I stopped into a hotel eatery. I hadn’t had anything to eat since morning, so that probably hadn’t helped my mood. Soon, the chardonnay and quinoa salad started working on my mood, quite successfully, and when I motioned for a second glass of wine, the waiter said, “That kinda day, huh?”

By the time Jim showed up, I had become philosophical.

What Did I Learn from the Apple Store Experience?

Could I have done anything differently? I suppose I could have opted not to pursue a fix for a relatively minor app. Once at the Apple Store, though, I trusted that these guys knew what they were doing. And they probably do, except for the fact that their service was fragmented with so many people coming and going out of my issue. There was no continuity.

But, I played some part in the mess, too.  At the point when I was unsure of which backup to choose, I should have called one of the Guys over, instead hurrying just to get done.

Since we can’t turn back time, there’s nothing I can do to change my actions and neither can Apple Guys #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, and #6. It is done.

The only thing I can do is change was my attitude about the day. Yes, I had to log into all my non-Apple apps, many of which I didn’t even remember the passwords for. Yes, my photos are gone. But most are on my Mac and those are backed up to another cloud service, so they’re okay. Evernote is still on my Mac.

The way I see it, Apple and I share responsibility for yesterday’s mess, but I almost let the Apple encounter ruin my day. Usually, whenever I am faced with unfortunate circumstances, I try to find some good there, but sometimes, like yesterday, I let the circumstance get the better of me. I will never have the power to turn back time, but I will always be able to control my attitude when things go wrong and use each experience to avoid similar happenings in the future.

Ann Silverthorn is a writer who won’t be classified or categorized. One day she’s writing about her Cairn Terrier rescues, Nutmeg and Nora, and the next, she’s posting about a business topic or a research subject. Imagine the two of you are meeting for coffee, and she wants to share something new, interesting, amusing, or perplexing.