Thursday, December 23, 2010

Two Shopping Day Till Christmas

I made the unfortunate decision to do a mall run today to pick up Jilda's contacts. She's having to scrape the old contact off each night with a bobby pin, so we both agreed new ones would be a good idea.
We ordered them last Friday with a projected arrival date of Tuesday. Commerce, like the traffic, was slowed to a trickle so we got a call yesterday afternoon to say the contacts were in.
Today as I headed in to town, traffic was lethargic, and slowed to a crawl as I neared the destination. Once inside the loop road that circles the mall I was home free. I walked right in to the vision center and I had my contacts within a few moments.
When I got back outside and headed home, I sat idling in the parking lot for almost 45 minutes. I noticed snails and turtles moving faster. Finally the police showed up and started directing traffic and I managed to get out of the parking lot and onto the interstate. As luck would have it, a wreck unfolded right in front of my eyes. One moment we were moving and in the next a car just ahead of me flipped for some unknown reason and ended up on its roof. It didn't look as if anyone was hurt, but as you might imagine, we sat there for a while.
When we began to move again, I thought - what the heck, I've blown several hours today anyhow, why not go to the Apple Store in another nearby mall.  It's probably no accident that Apple chose the second mall, because traffic, while heavy, moved efficiently.
When I walked into the Apple Store, it was jam packed, but withing three minutes a kid young enough to be my grandchild (if I had grandchildren) walked up and asked if he could help. I told him I wanted a Mac.
He whipped out his little iPhone looking device and tapped the screen a few times and a few minutes later another guy walked up with my new computer. The kid swiped my debit card on his device and the deal was done. I literally was not in that store more than 15 minutes. Unbelievable. The rest of the retail world could learn a great deal from Apple.
I had one dreadful experience at mall 1 and a delightful experience at mall 2.  So here's the deal. If I ever decide to make a run to the mall 1 on Christmas Eve-Eve, you have my permission to jab a sharp stick into my eye and twist it a few times for emphasis.

7 comments:

  1. The Apple store is truly heaven on earth. Except I'm not allowed to go there if I have credit cards in my wallet. So sometimes I just stand outside and look through the window.

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  2. Ha! After reading your post, I checked your profile and was surprised you're in Alabama!
    Hey... that's where I plan to move to get away from the awful traffic here in SAT!
    Surely it can't be as bad where you are as it is here where I am LOL!!!
    Hope you have a very Wonderful Christmas !
    ಌღ

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  3. I Do Not go to the mall right before Christmas. My daughter told me it took her a half hour to get out of the parking lot. Interesting about the Apple store.

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  4. Gosh that's great service from the Apple store!! Good for you!

    Glad that no-one got hurt with that horrendous car crash!!

    I went out to get some vegetables in my local shop at 8.30 am this morning (Christmas Eve) and the car queues to get into the shop's car park was already at a standstill!! But it was nice that everyone seemed to be in good cheer and no-one was short-tempered! Well not yet!

    Merry Christmas!! Take care
    x

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  5. Sounds like our kind of luck when we go anywhere. Always some kind of delay here in Myrtle Beach. Good post though. Especially the ending!

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  6. I'd say you gave your guardian angel a run for his wings that day, keeping you safe.

    Merry Christmas.
    Nancy
    N. R. Williams, fantasy author

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  7. The Apple Store is amazing, isn't it? I had a similar experience buying an iPod. They tapped, it appeared, I swiped and left.

    Hope the good experience at Mall #2made up for the miserable experience at Mall #1!

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