Apple etiquette

Let me make something clear for those of you who don't know: It is very gauche to purchase an iPod at the Apple store. It quite simply isn't done. I am telling you this so that you don't ever make the mistake of walking into the Apple store and deigning to try and purchase an iPod.

Kidding, but only a little bit. I decided to buy BT an iPod nano for his birthday. I knew it would be easiest to simply order it online, but I didn't want it delivered to the house, and I also didn't want it delivered to my workplace because I don't like my coworkers to know my bidniz. So I decided I would just pop into the Apple store right quick and buy one and just get it over with.

As soon as I breached the hipster-lined doorway of the Apple store, I felt the familiar disorientation. There is just something about the Apple store that makes me feel as if I am actually in an iPod. It's all white and stripped-down and there are hipsters everywhere and lots of technology I don't understand.

I scanned the extremely crowded store,* looking for the check-out desk/cashier. Haha, silly KB(T)! How old fashioned! There is no cashier or check-out area in the Apple store, you goose! 1.) There is a long desk in the back called the Genius Bar with dozens of disgruntled hipsters waiting for help with their various malfunctioning Apple products; 2.) there are earnest young Apple salespeople standing by each and every product, making their pitches to dead-eyed technology junkies; 3.) there was even an inexplicable line that had formed in the middle of the store, ending at one particularly knowledgeable salesman. But, like... how do you go about buying an iPod?

This is when I panicked and retreated to Anthropologie and bought a really cute top to build up my courage.

But then I was like, Screw This! I came to the mall for a purpose, and I'm going to buy that godforsaken (but totally lovely) piece of equipment or die trying!

So I walked back in, past the random line of people and hovered near the Nano section, hoping someone would come up and try to sell me something. Nobody did, so I waylaid the next Apple person I saw. Here is how it went:

Me: Excuse me, I would like to buy an iPod.

Apple Guy: [attempting to scurry away] Okay, well there are several different iPods to choose from.

Me: I know exactly which one I want, but how do I go about buying it?

Apple Guy: [slight eyeroll] Oh, well, at the end of the Genius Bar you can go talk to Michelle. She has iPods back there and you can always go over there when we're really busy, which we often are because, I mean, it's the Apple store.

And then he kind of ran off into a back room.

So I went and talked to the very harried-looking Michelle and successfully bought the cursed (but lovely) iPod Nano. In charcoal. Because it is the manliest of the colors.

But I just wanted to let you guys know, in case you weren't already in the know, that the Apple store is kind of a speakeasy, where you have to have information in order to get what you need. And I'm telling you, you just have to know to go to the corner of the Genius Bar [which looks exactly like the rest of the Genius Bar] and talk to the pleasant but stressed-out young lady at the end [who looks not unlike the other stressed-out employees unfortunate enough to be behind the Genius Bar] if you ever want to do something so banal as purchasing an iPod from the brick-and-mortar store, and not online like you're s'posed to.


*Can someone tell me what these hipsters do for a living? It was 2:30 on a weekday! There were like 100 people in there, wtf?