Genius Bar Visit

Sunday, a week before Christmas my iPhone decided it didn't want to charge any more.  Actually, it wanted to charge, but when you put the plug in, it was very loose.  I was convinced that I had messed up the charging port (too many times grabbing the phone thinking it was unplugged and yanking the plug out or something) and was pretty depressed with the notion that I may have to get stuck with a crappy iPhone 7 instead of waiting for the much hyped new 8's that aren't out yet.

I got online and tried to make a weekend appointment with a "genius".  My choices were:
Monday (the next day) at 5:45pm or
September 2017 or something.

I opted for Monday at 5:45pm... at a mall... less than a week before Christmas.  Shoot me.

I started driving to the mall early to anticipate massive traffic jams, and no parking at the mall.  I figured 2 hours.

To make matters worse, my phone was only at 30%, the only way to charge it was to hold the phone cord a certain way, and hold the phone a certain way, and this can't be done while driving so I didn't have any navigation aids.  I know how to get to the mall without navigation aids, but I'll be damned if I felt as though I was blazing a new trail for Lewis and Clark without a compass and totally lost.

I got there in like 20 minutes.  I found a parking spot 3 feet from the front door right away.

Damn... now I have like over an hour to wait for my appointment.

The inside of the mall was practically abandoned and void of people except for 6 million kiosk hand lotion salespeople.  I tried to make my way through the halls to the closest Starbucks without being harassed by walking quickly, head straight ahead (no eye contact with those people), and hugging the other side of the mall, but they were very hungry for customers.  Desperate for customers.  Probably hadn't sold anything for weeks needed someone to fall for their overpriced and totally worthless hand lotion.

They started YELLING at me from across the hall!  Some even ran up to me, pushing their sample at my face... I now know what antelopes feel like in the Serengeti plains.  At one point a guy screamed "HEY LADY, GET YOUR SAMPLE!", and I couldn't take it any more so I stopped, turned and yelled.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Just to make sure, I stared him down until he retreated behind his kiosk.

Oddly enough, after getting my latte and walking back through... not a peep.  Walked back through again... nothing.  They seemed afraid.  Mission accomplished.

Now that I had wasted 15 minutes "window shopping", I figured I'd just find a nice place to sit and waste some time playing Candy... oh crap, my phone is almost dead.  So I found some comfy chairs and sat there... and sat there... and sat.... there.  Life before phones was undoubtedly unbearable.

I happened to look at a sign at Rack Room Shoes that said:

So... um... do they?  Don't they?  Do you have to ask?  What the hell?

Thankfully I was distracted by the festive Christmasy music playing "Baby It's Cold Outside".  Recently this tune has been deemed horribly insensitive and triggering for some reason so I got to see hordes of sensitive people fleeing for the Mall Safe Space room.

Ok, that actually didn't happen except for in my head, but it did make me laugh.

I gave up and decided to show up early to my appointment to see if they could squeeze me in.  There were 5 people in the Apple store, but the concierge told me to take a seat in the back on some wooden blocks (that were surprisingly comfortable) and wait for my appointment time... ugh.

Thankfully a Pre-Genius showed up and said that it was his job to get as much information as possible so the genius would know what was going on.  I explained, he smiled and pulled out a little tool.  Apparently my issue is quite common and it stems from random little bits getting crammed into the charging port and keeping the plug from inserting fully, or inserting wonky.  He proceeded to pick at things in the charging port... a lot of things... embarrassing things.

Oh well, at least my phone will charge now, so I guess it was worth all of the suffering.