Yom Kippur

Even though it was Yom Kippur this weekend, I still wound up working on Sunday. The semi-ironic part of the story is that I volunteered to work at the will-call table for the Temple for their Yom Kippur services. I was asked to work because 1.) I'm not Jewish, so it's not like I'm missing anything and 2.) I think it's kind of an initiation for new employees. The fact that my boss was smirking when he asked if I would work and didn't even both to ask either of my co-workers that were in the room at that very moment really got me thinking about how badly I was going to be hazed at the event.

I am pleased to report that nothing horrible happened during the 5 and a half hours I was working. There were a few "oh shit" moments, but our liberal interpretation of the rules made everyone happy and everyone got the tickets they wanted. My co-worker for the night suggested that they only ask non-Jews to work because the snide comments they're apt to make wouldn't bother us as much as it would a Jew. After taking shit from quite a few people, I'm prone to agree. I got out of there at 10:30 p.m. and enjoyed the rest of my weekend, which conveniently extended through Monday.

My iPod Shuffle has been broken for about 3 months, but I just now got around to actually doing anything about it. Fortunately the warranty is still in effect for another 3 weeks; if it hadn't been, I probably would have thrown the device into the trash. I went to the Apple store yesterday to talk to a "genius," who told me that yes, my iPod is broken and yes, he can't fix it and yes, I did everything possible to make it work. He didn't replace it, though. Instead, he opted to tell me that I would have to pay $30 for a processing fee or buy Apple Care, a $59 value, in order to get it fixed. Not really wanting to pay a significant portion of the price I paid for the damn thing in the first place just to get it fixed, I bailed on that idea. I called the Apple support line this morning with much better results. The tier 1 tech escalated me to a product specialist who is sending me a brand new Shuffle in 3 days or so. I have to send mine back when I get the new one and they'll contact me after they take a look at it to determine what's wrong with it. The product specialist said I wouldn't be out any money if it's a software problem, which it is, so I'm not expecting to have to pay for this experience.

Lesson Learned: People don't give a shit about customer service and won't help you even if they can. I really don't believe the "genius" couldn't do anything to help me out, especially since the phone techs are sending me a new one at no cost without any hassle at all. The "genius" said that I *might* be able to convince them to replace it... Right, all I did was say, "This shit's broken... I need a new one, please," and they did it. I'm not going to fret about it, but the situation was a lot more frustrating simply because he didn't want to help me.