The ipad2 launch was an incredible success for apple, and incredibly frustrating for many consumers.
People throw the word "entitlement" around in this forum more than my late grandparents ever did, which is really saying something. Frankly, it's a pretty awkward use of the term. I don't consider people frustrated by the disorganized insanity surrounding this launch to be "entitled" any more than I consider those who waited in line and purchased an ipad 2 to be "deserving." Either is a strange way to view the purchase of a consumer good, no matter how exciting that product may be.
I sat out launch day. That has proven to be a major mistake on my part, but it hardly invalidates the following:
1) Apple products don't fall from the sky and onto the shelves at the apple store. Somebody is making decisions about where and when to ship ipads as they become available, and those people know exactly when they are arriving. There is nothing even slightly cryptic about the whereabouts of thousands of dollars in product within the distribution chain.
The decision to keep retail employees in the dark about this information is beyond stupid. There is nothing even remotely entitled about being angry that the line of fifty people at your neighborhood apple store was for nothing, because no actual product arrived that morning.
2) Selling out before everybody is served is the nature of any highly desired product. However, there is nothing cryptic about the number ipads currently available at a store at a given time. If there are 150 people in line and you have 20 ipads to sell, you might think about saving people some time.
3) Apple store employees, if you don't like answering endless questions about ipad 2 availability, consider looking for another job, or at least passing this along to your superiors' superiors:
"Our refusal to utilize any of the limitless technology afforded us to communicate to consumers about ipad 2 availability is going to result in endless phone calls from people asking the exact same thing over and over again. We don't use twitter, we don't publicize store inventory online, we don't make any statements about pending deliveries, we don't do anything except act annoyed when people call around the clock asking about ipads."
Added to that, mysterious answers to straightforward questions don't go over well. It might be corporate policy to say things like, "we may or may not be able to meet the ipad demands of the line of people around the block," but you should expect very little courtesy from people in return.
Maybe I'm just getting old, but I find the whole thing pretty obnoxious (in case you couldn't tell.)
People throw the word "entitlement" around in this forum more than my late grandparents ever did, which is really saying something. Frankly, it's a pretty awkward use of the term. I don't consider people frustrated by the disorganized insanity surrounding this launch to be "entitled" any more than I consider those who waited in line and purchased an ipad 2 to be "deserving." Either is a strange way to view the purchase of a consumer good, no matter how exciting that product may be.
I sat out launch day. That has proven to be a major mistake on my part, but it hardly invalidates the following:
1) Apple products don't fall from the sky and onto the shelves at the apple store. Somebody is making decisions about where and when to ship ipads as they become available, and those people know exactly when they are arriving. There is nothing even slightly cryptic about the whereabouts of thousands of dollars in product within the distribution chain.
The decision to keep retail employees in the dark about this information is beyond stupid. There is nothing even remotely entitled about being angry that the line of fifty people at your neighborhood apple store was for nothing, because no actual product arrived that morning.
2) Selling out before everybody is served is the nature of any highly desired product. However, there is nothing cryptic about the number ipads currently available at a store at a given time. If there are 150 people in line and you have 20 ipads to sell, you might think about saving people some time.
3) Apple store employees, if you don't like answering endless questions about ipad 2 availability, consider looking for another job, or at least passing this along to your superiors' superiors:
"Our refusal to utilize any of the limitless technology afforded us to communicate to consumers about ipad 2 availability is going to result in endless phone calls from people asking the exact same thing over and over again. We don't use twitter, we don't publicize store inventory online, we don't make any statements about pending deliveries, we don't do anything except act annoyed when people call around the clock asking about ipads."
Added to that, mysterious answers to straightforward questions don't go over well. It might be corporate policy to say things like, "we may or may not be able to meet the ipad demands of the line of people around the block," but you should expect very little courtesy from people in return.
Maybe I'm just getting old, but I find the whole thing pretty obnoxious (in case you couldn't tell.)
