“National Hug Day” and my Apple store meltdown.

For all of my patience yesterday as I lived at the Apple Emergency Room, today was a different day.

The APPLE store called.  Their/my phone registration problem was resolved.  Come on in for a new phone.

Sucker that I am, I dropped everything and trotted in.

Nobody seemed to know who I was.  I was getting more & more frustrated when I saw one of the

managers who’d worked with me yesterday — and the day before.

He called in a few more red-shirts.

Finally a replacement phone, not shiny OR out of a new box, was thrown my way.

I looked at it like it was a dead fish.  I was getting more and more frustrated.

To make it worse, I didn’t have my stress ball.  In my rush to be reunited with my sick digital friend, I’d left it behind.

Major mistake.

I could feel the tears well up, because  isn’t ‘depression is anger turned inward”?

I was so angry I could scream, but instead … I felt my lower lip tremble.

Oh no.  Not here.  Not now.  I couldn’t hold it anymore.  Three days of this had worn me down.

“I’m about to lose my s—“, I warned the red shirts, but my advisor Ali wasn’t there and this new group didn’t get it.

“I’ve been here since MLK Day,” I said.  “I’ve come back four times already, I can’t keep doing this, I’m travelling tomorrow, I need a phone that works and I need it now.”

Suddenly I saw a friend of mine — John Berzner — talking equally animatedly with another huddled group of geniuses.

It was comforting to know someone else was frustrated.

As my team floundered, I got so frustrated I started to weep. t

John was now seated with his genius, at the same table where I was standing and crying,  trying to explain through my tears.

I heard him excuse himself from his computer geek to come over to me.

“Come here,” he said, pulling me away from the team.  “What’s wrong?”

I wept, tried to explain, but by now I was crying too hard.  

He gave me a hug — and talked me down.

“I was about to have a meltdown,” I admitted, mumbling into his shirt.

“No,” he corrected, “you WERE having a meltdown.  You were already there.”

He and his nephew, newly here from Paris, babysat me until the red shirts got the problem more  or less resolved.

APPLE didn’t give me a new phone.

They didn’t upgrade me to the “6”.  John suggested it was the least they could do for me, but I couldn’t deal with another change.

 I was so happy to finally get the hell out of there, I settled without a struggle.

They had broken me down.  But at least I had friends.

Before we left, we took a picture of us all smiling — to document how we made our way back through APPLE adversity.

And as John reminded me, “None of this is real.”