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You didn’t mean for it happen.
You were just standing there on a Thursday afternoon, grande flat white in hand, waiting for the train while your 90s Jams Spotify playlist pulsed at a respectable decibel level in your earbuds. You heard the light, little ping of an incoming text and made the mistake of left-handedly pulling for your iPhone out of your back pocket. You tried to get a solid grip on it, even with that non-dominant hand. But you failed.
It slipped. You went to catch it, a horrified, slow-motion “dammit” coming out of your mouth as you watch that gold 6 Plus get ready to take a tumble. Briefly, you pray that your earbuds will stop the inevitable, but as they are violently yanked from your ears, you know that prayer was in vain. The fellow commuters around you give a “that sucks” nod in solidarity as you go to pick up the facedown iPhone, hoping you won’t see what you know is beneath.
It’s smashed. Not just a little corner crack. Full on. Spider web. Smashed.
Dammit.
You make it through the day with careful texting, thankfully avoiding getting Apple glass in your thumbs, and explaining about 1200 times that, “Nothing cool happened. I just dropped it,” before coming home and logging into your account to see what sort of insurance you have on your phone. They have to take this kind of thing into consideration, right?
A deductible of almost $200!? So AT&T just wants to screw you over. This is ridiculous. It’s just a screen; you can YouTube how to fix it yourself. You don’t need an entirely new phone, just fix the part that looks like it was attacked so you don’t have to worry about getting tiny cuts when you’re texting, and you can actually see the face on the person you’re swiping at on Tinder.
There has to be a better way.
You scroll around the Apple website, looking for a light at the end of that tunnel when you finally get to the right page. $109 for screen replacement; bingo. Obviously not ideal but better than having to wait 72 hours while struggling with a broken phone, deal with transferring all of your memory, all for double the price. You’ll just go to the Apple store, and they will take care of everything.
An appointment? What is this? This isn’t the dentist. How long do they need to take a sad excuse for a screen and replace it with one free from fingerprints and transgressions? Fine. 1:50 p.m. it is, Apple Store. See you then.
The next day rolls around; you knock out a chunk next to the home button when trying to turn off your alarm, so clearly, this needs to happen today. After a brunch where you get severely annoyed with having to keep explaining, “I know, I’m getting it fixed today,” you make your way to that white walled, glass doored, beacon of hope: The Apple Store.
What the hell? How many people are here? Are they all just not willing to buy their own iPads so they just come here on a Saturday afternoon to get their tablet fix? You sideways squeeze through the crowd, utterly baffled by the class of elderly people clearly out to learn how to use their shiny new phones, and make your way to the girl with a ponytail who seems to know where to point everyone.
“Hi, I have an appointment,” you manage to get out as you narrowly miss slamming into a rugrat in a JanSport running towards a tiny table labeled “Kids.”
“Sure! Name?”
Jenny, the concierge, takes you a corner table and says someone will be with you shortly. You wait, fighting the eye rolls as an employee explains to a woman in her early 40s that no, the phone doesn’t just automatically know every one of her fingerprints, and give every person in that blue polo who walks by a look of sheer hope that they will be your’s and your phone’s savior from this hell.
Thirty minutes have gone by. Why did you need to make an appointment if you were going to wait this long? If you had known you’d be spending the rest of your life at an Apple Store, you would have at least brought in a Slurpee with a few shots mixed in to take the edge off. This is actual torture.
Forty-five minutes. Is this why members of #TeamAndroid look so stupidly happy? Because they’ve never dealt with this 10th circle of hell?
Fifty minutes. You’re greeted by Adam who doesn’t seem to understand you are two seconds away from cursing both him and Tim Cook before smashing every Macbook in arm’s reach. How is he so chipper? Do they pump uppers into their Apple airwaves? Then he has the audacity to make a “You really did a number on this guy” joke before telling you it’ll be about another hour and a half, maybe two before your phone is ready.
Well, great. Apparently this is how you die.
It’s been a good ride, because now you’ll be sitting phone-less for two hours, with no way to text your family that you love them, but have died from malnutrition, lack of a buzz, and utter annoyance at your general surroundings. You could’ve made do with a broken phone for a little while, but you just felt judged by everyone saying, “What happened!?” and had to do it today. If anyone needs you they can send you a message via carrier pigeon to the chain restaurant next door where you will be drinking your sorrows away.
Two hours and four Red Robin Freckled Lemonades later, you go to retrieve your phone, silently promising that if it takes more than 15 minutes, you will make a scene. Remarkably, Adam is there and gets you in and out with a congratulatory look, a swipe of your debit, and a, “Hope we don’t see you again soon!”
Well don’t worry, Adam. This entire afternoon (aside from the eyelash batting and number exchanging you did with the Red Robin bartender) has been such a terrible experience you will be cradling your now fixed iPhone more gently than a first time mom who is still afraid of the soft spot.
See you soon? No. See you when the 7 comes out, Adam. And then the 11th circle of hell will be how long the line is. .
Image via Death To The Stock Photo
Respond
Kendra Syrdal
Once in college John Cusack asked Kendra to sing for him. She said no. Visit her website to ogle at her face and send hate mail // kendrasyrdal.com
@kendrasyrdal
@kendrasyrdal
ksyrdal
I’m going to try to take a different approach to this. We really don’t like your articles, and as insane as it may sound, it isn’t anything personal. Anyone here who does hate on you on a personal level, well they’re just a dick. I’m sure you may have some real talent as a writer, but frankly, at this point, I think we both need to understand that we are not your target audience, which is fine. You can put a great writer on here, but if we can’t relate with their point of view, they’ll probably get trashed. So I would like to speak for the majority of the audience of PGP, please Kendra, find a different audience. #TeamAdam
Well said. Most of us deal with enough negativity every day, and I come to PGP to read articles about celebrating the small victories I can relate to, like brunch or mediocre rounds of golf on the weekends. Reading constant complaints and bitchy articles just reminds me unnecessarily of the worst parts of postgrad life and makes me even more stressed.
If she would just hang out with Will for a week, maybe two, I feel like her perspective on life could change so quickly.
How about a PGP sponsored cruise trip Will?
And Shibby can live the #marglife
I think the the bigger issue lies with the editors and the people who give the authority to post these articles. They run off the talented writers (Brian and Knox), but then they post this crap. It would be one thing if PGP was a blog where she is able to post whatever the hell she wants, but her content has to go through some type of chain of command to get posted. That’s where I think we need to point our frustration.
The people that have to approve these articles are also the same people reaping the benefits of increased ad revenue from all the views and comments.
I enjoyed the article.
Didn’t read, came for the comments.
Do you ever get exhausted from complaining so much?
Kendra,
I understand you are attempting to appeal to the female readers, but after yet another inane article consisting of you bitching about a topic evidently irrelevant and uninteresting to the general readership here I respectfully ask that you take your writing elsewhere. In addition, please review the article your colleague wrote.
Here is the link:
https://pgparchive.wpengine.com/you-need-to-just-get-over-it/
Sincerely,
“If I wanted to deal with daily complaining I’d have a girlfriend”
Also – most of us have been there – but YOU are the asshole who didn’t care for your phone and dropped it. Thus, YOU are an asshole in that scenario and have no right to complain no matter what happens. Just take your lumps…stupid asshole.
Key word attempting. These topics don’t appeal to most females, except maybe whiny hipsters.
“I somehow got a miracle appointment at the most crowded time during a weekend the day before and then bitch and moan about it being crowded and busy”.
You coulda just wrote that. Same substance, same message. At least it wasn’t a list… which has made me realize that it isn’t the list writing that I hated. It’s the negativity.
you could just get a case….
…of beer, to lighten up.
or a marg
A good case has been made for both of these
Even the best cases have a moment of weakness. A case and I had been through thick and thin, I thought I could count on it to get through anything. But, all it took was one perfectly timed drop, and I haven’t been able to trust anything since.
You’re not even trying anymore huh?
#blackballkendra
Isn’t Kendra the chill-bro living on the west coast? Coulda’ fooled me. Calm the fuck down. Drop your phone off and go have a few beers at the nearby bar. Oh you actually did that and are still pissed? Go fuck yourself.
Pump the brakes bro, they were Red Robin Freckled Lemonades. Have some respect for the lemonade and freckles man.
The people on this site seem to not understand the humor in hyperbole and over dramatizing things. I primarily communicate in eye rolls and deep sighs and most people understand it’s a joke. These people are only entertained by slapstick comedy preferably about shitty beer, misogyny, and/or bowel movements.
I think this article is a funny concept but could be executed better if it was not written in second person. Very few pieces succeed in the second person.