Apple Store, shut up and take my money

When is a store not a store?

When it’s an Apple Store.

Since their mythic inception, forged in the crucible of Ron Johnson and Steve Jobs and their hippie-dippy retail ideas, the Apple Store has always been an anti-store. It’s not your daddy’s CompUSA! It’s not your grandma’s RadioShack! The Apple Store was a place to chill with your friends, while you looked at all the weird stuff no one was buying until iPods were popular, and then the iPhone.

A number of architectural revisions have occurred since then, and technical reorganizations have reshaped the shop. But the stubborn persistence to be unlike other retailers, often to the point of frustration, remains the same.

By my count, there are three ways to behave at the Apple Store as a customer seeking to buy something:

1. You approach an Apple Store employee and tell them you want to purchase something.
2. You approach an Apple Store employee and tell them you want to pick up something you ordered already.