Liveblog Of Being On Hold With The Apple Store
By Chris Killen
This morning, I called the Apple store in Manchester to get a written quote for the repair of my girlfriend’s Macbook (I’d brought it in the previous week after accidentally spilling water on it). After about five minutes on hold, I decided to liveblog the wait …
10:33am –Wish I had the idea to do this liveblog five minutes ago. Apparently I’m next in line to be answered. There’s hold music playing. I think it’s Florence & The Machine.
10:34am – The lyrics are ‘anything could happen’. I hope the thing that happens is that someone answers my call soon. The recorded message just said again that I’m next in line to be answered.
10:35am – Who actually listens to this music? I don’t mean that in a snobby way; I’m just genuinely curious. Feel like this kind of music is only played in ‘expensive hairdressers’ and
*call answered*
What happened next: The guy at the Apple store answered my query, told me he’d email me the details I needed through, etc. Great. Then, after a couple of hours later the quote came through, but when I opened it, it was just a blank PDF. Not so great. At least this time when I called back, I was full prepared to liveblog my on hold experience …
12:25pm – Back on the phone. I’m the next call to be answered. Not sure what this music is. Sounds like ‘advert music’. Like something that might be playing during an advert for cars, I guess. Or Apple products; that would make more sense.
12:26pm – I’m the next call to be answered. I wonder if I’m going to have an argument. Feel like I’ve hardly ever had a ‘customer service’ argument before. Now the music sounds like ‘underwater footage’ music.
12:27pm – High definition film of sea anemones, coral reefs, puffer fish. The magic of the deep sea. I wonder when the next Avatar film will come out. I hope the world doesn’t end before the next Avatar film comes out. Maybe it will be in Touchscreen/4D/Some sort of new technology that doesn’t exist yet.
12:28pm – Now my phone’s gone silent. Ominous. Oh, okay, new song starting. Piano music. Weird piano music. Singing. Sounds like, um, Daniel Johnston maybe. But less mentally ill. The vocalist is saying ‘let me in, unlock the door’.
12:29pm – Is it Mumford & Sons? Are Mumford’s sons actually the sons of a person called Mumford? Are they a ‘band of brothers’? I like it when siblings are in bands. Seems like they have a mental link/telepathy thing going on, which results in better music, sometimes.
12:30pm – I don’t like this song. Sounds nothing like Daniel Johnston anymore. Someone told me recently that mp3 technology was first designed to make ‘Joe Le Taxi’ sound as good as possible.
12:31pm – I don’t know where I was going with that ‘Joe Le Taxi’ thought. Something about how modern mp3’s should be formulated to make this song sound good on the speaker phone of my phone because this sounds like a piece of shit, maybe.
12:32pm – I’m the next call to be answered. I wonder how much this is costing me. I’m going to hazard a guess at ‘four pounds and counting’. I wonder what would happen if I recorded and uploaded a ‘twerking tutorial’ video to YouTube. Now the song has changed to something that sounds like a car made of lazers crashing into a dying whale.
12:33pm – Now it just sounds like a ‘normal synthpop song’ again. Weird. Like an ‘effeminate Hurts’ or something. Okay, there’s that lazer/whale sound again. I am the next call to be
*call answered*
Postscript: So what did I learn (if anything)? I learned that music doesn’t sound great when played through a phoneline and out of my phone via the speaker. That the Apple store in Manchester Arndale takes roughly 8-9 minutes to answer a call on a Monday morning. That I can touch-type around 50 words per minute. And that it will cost £416 to get my girlfriend’s Macbook repaired.