At your service, Sir...

Whilst I was cogitating over a piece of cake this morning, an email dropped into my inbox. This happens from time to time, usually its something to do with work but every so often it's someone trying to sell me something. In this particular case, good old Apple - evidently not happy that they're getting enough custom from me already.

But I suppose they know how this works. People who already buy Apple stuff tend to have a loyalty towards them. These customers fall into two categories:

The most 'hardcore' are The Apple Worshipers. A rather geeky bunch, they're the sort that cheer and applaud and wolf-whistle at Apple's product launch keynotes and would rather like it if they put Steve Job's bottom on a postage stamp just so they could lick it every day, were it not for the fact that putting something in an envelope and giving it to a person to deliver is so passé is this age of technological marvel.

The second category contains those who just believe there are greater and lesser degrees of crap. Windows PCs are crap, Macs are slightly less crap. Oh and they look prettier too... but what's really wrong with a biro anyway?

I guess this email was targeted at the biro contingent. It's primary message being that rather than tapping keys and clicky clicky-ing on the Apple online store, then waiting for the People's Post Office with a big parcel, one could actually visit a genuine bona-fide Apple store, inhabited by real human beings, and stocked with shiny things to buy.

At this point, allow me to quote from the aforementioned email:

We're here to help. Introducing the in-store Concierge, just in time for the holiday season. The Concierge (in the blue shirt) is your guide to finding anything in the Apple Retail Store. If you need any help, just ask and they'll point you in the right direction.

The Concierge! Well I must say I'm glad i found that one out. To think I was going to go and ask an ordinary shop assistant to help me find whatever elusive piece of technical gubbins I was after. Evidently your average common or garden Apple shop assistant isn't capable of such superior service - they must only take the very highest calibre Sixth former/Media Studies Student/2 Star McDonalds Employee and give them a whole extra half hour of training before they can don the exclusive Blue Shirt of a Concierge.

But then, Apple have a history of this. Let's take a completely hypothetical situation: Computer broken? No whirring? No clicky clicky? No amount of swearing or death threats seem to fix it? What you need is some kind of technical support person... or in Apple's parlance, a Genius.

Take it to the Apple Store and find the Apple Genius - that spotty scouser they pay minimum wage to stand there and spout technical mumbo jumbo at you. He's often found, apparently at the 'Genius Bar'. Well, either there or at the Frog and Tadpole Bar, or outside having a fag and scratching his arse. When he's eventually located he will give your machine a cursory glance and say something which is eventually decipherable as "It's %$@&ed mate, buy a new one."

At this point I presume I'm supposed to find my Concierge, to tell me what I need to buy and where to find it. They are apparently the only employee on the premises with this secret magic information.

What the ordinary shop assistants are doing throughout all this, god knows. Maybe they've buggered off to get a job where they wont live in constant fear of getting some stupid job title slapped upon them.

Which brings me neatly around to the question - is that their actual job title? Is is written in their passport?
Occupation: Genius

Not even Einstein had it that good. It almost tempts me to go and work for Apple.

Now I'm not accusing Apple of being the only company in the world to try and fob us off with these ridiculously unconvincing attempts at customer service, but they are one of the few who give them a silly name too. But i suppose it gives me something to laugh at.

Genius? Genie Arse more like.