Colorful AT&T Experience

So I got to the AT&T store at 7:40 in the morning expecting a line, but not a 30 foot line with 50 people in it. Some had been camped there since 9 PM the previous night.

Before the store even opened, a police car showed up. The officer was not the typical clean cut officer that you would trust. This one was a scruffy, older, out of shape man with sunglasses and almost never took his hand more than 2 inches away from his holster. Even though he was nice to those waiting in line, and felt unnecessary, his presence was an omen that shifted the mood.

The doors opened at 8:01 according to my phone, followed by a weirdly silent cheer. The AT&T employees seemed to have plenty of time to hang out with us outside. They gave us some free stuff. Water bottles, a foam can insulator (which I'm still using), a clip thing that I still haven't figured out, and a stress ball.

A half hour passed. The first batch was still in there.

Another half hour, and another group was in there. The chairs the all nighters had brought were still outside with us because their owners were inside or at the front of the line when the manager came out. He told us there was a good probability that the rest of us would not get a 16 GB black iPhone. He explained that we could be put on a waiting list, and have it shipped to the AT&T store in a couple of days. This was explained to me before he had said it at that moment, when someone pointed out "Why couldn't we just pre-order it online." A simple question that nobody at AT&T had an answer they were willing to give. The most obvious reason, which had occured to me at that moment was that since AT&T is requiring activation in store, they do not want it to be shipped to your house. They're sick of people unlocking the iPhone and using it with a different provider.

It wasn't long before they told us that they were out of 16 Blacks. I had come to terms with that already, and was mostly unphased.

As the sun was rising, it started to get a lot hotter. One of the employees that was routinely coming out to hang out with us explained that the servers were backed up. I found this to be almost inexcusable knowing all that I know about computers. There is an entire industry that rents servers for companies who expect short spike in traffic. Even worse, AT&T, one of the larger Internet Service Providers around, should be more than capable of finding enough bandwidth.

Another hot hour passed.

Near 11 AM, I was just a few people back in line, when UPS truck showed up and brought several boxes into the AT&T store. Of course, we couldn't be that fortunate. Nonetheless, it successfully got my hopes up, and crushed them once again.

The water cooler that originally held water bottles was now empty, and the trash cans overlowing. The ice was dumped onto the hot pavement and quickly disappeared.

Finally it was my turn to go in. I was expecting the air conditioning to be a relief. It wasn't. Somehow it felt almost as hot in the store as it was outside. In my experience, the AT&T store was always fridged compared to the outside on a hot summer day. As I walked to the counter, an employee with a clipboard started taking names and letting customers in. Probably to avoid the liability of a heat related injury like a heat stroke. Still, it did not quite sit well with me that I had to wait in line in the heat, while they could have done that a long time before I had to come in.

The worst part about having to wait 15 - 30 minutes while people walked out with iPhones was about to hit me. As I looked at the circle of workstations and employees, I noticed none of them were engaged in their workstation. It seemed as if all of them were staring at each other in a calm panic, not sure of what to do. Our female representative went over to talk to a male representative, and nothing about the body language of their interaction made it seem important. None of them looked like they were. I looked over at the computer screens, which were all visible from my angle, and the seldom clicks that were made loaded instantly.

I was able to watch as I guided my representative through a straight forward pre-order of a 16 GB Black 3G iPhone. I refused the 70$ insurance rip-off that doesn't cover anything. The time I spent going over exactly which plan I wanted was wasted since I wasn't activating anything. All she had to do was put in a drivers licsense number, a name, and what model I want; something I could have easily done from the comfort of my own house. It took 10 - 15 minutes for those 3 things to be entered as she through a sales pitch. When that was done, I saw the transaction go through instantly, and left the Apple store with nothing related to an iPhone. Just a can holder, a clip, and a stress ball.