Having used his previous cell phone as a shot-put, 16-year-old-Boy has been lobbying for a new one for two months or so. The previous phone was the absolutely-must-have Motorola Razr. For 16-year-old-Boy, it was the end-all, be-all of his existence. For about six months. Then, meh, everyone has one, and theirs are way cooler.
By the time this spring rolled around, his appeared to have been run over by a Mack Truck. A fully loaded Mack truck. So the begging began a couple months ago, but that New Every Two program that Verizon has? Requires that you wait two years for the benefits to accrue. Two years was August 28th. For the last two months, 16-year-old-Boy has suffered the indignity of using my old LG flip-phone. You could HEAR his status points falling. I like to think of it as a character-building exercise.
So, of course on August 28th, at 7:45 p.m., we walked into the Verizon store to upgrade the boy's phone. He wanted, nay, NEEDED an LG Glide. The Verizon people looked askance at us, since we had dared to enter their store for what should be a fifteen minute transaction, fifteen minutes before closing time. Except that most of the employees were busy hiding in the back, hoping we'd leave and come back the next day.
Finally, one young lady scooted us over to her workstation, asked someone in the back to grab the phone we wanted and began the transaction. There was no, "Can you explain all the features and compare all of your products in a full-color PowerPoint presentation?" It was more like, "He wants THAT phone, and here's the number on the contract and the password and my credit card, can we please get the hell out of here before he finds something else to lust after (including the cute girl who waited on us)."
It all WOULD have take fifteen minutes, except that the phone that he wanted? They only had one on hand. I can hear you thinking, "Yeah? And?" If there's only one? They won't sell it. Because that would leave a void in the universe. Or something. So, yes, they had the phone in stock that he wanted, but no, we couldn't buy it. I'll let that sink in for a minute.
Would madam like to return tomorrow morning when they would be willing to sell me that very same phone? No, madam would not. Madam is going out of town in the morning. Could we pretend it was morning and sell madam the freaking phone now? No? Hmmm. I'm not sure what magical fairy-dust they were going to sprinkle on the phone overnight to make it sell-able, but there was none immediately available.
So, they express-shipped a phone, at no extra charge, to arrive at our place on Saturday, and 16-year-old-Boy just had to live with a coolness deficit until then. In the meantime? He managed to find a twenty-five dollar leather phone holster. I figured it would add heft when it was time for the next shot-put competition.
*All apologies to Kevin, of course.
