08 apr 07
Emma is sick right now, and I spent six hours in the car with her going to/from my parents’ this weekend as well as the weekend itself. Tonight I have a sore throat and I am tired an achy. It’s possible I caught something from her, or it’s possible I had too much candy today—I won’t know until the morning. If I am sick, I am probably going to have to call in to work tomorrow. Now, do my bosses need a full rundown of my symptoms and my theory about catching something from Emma? Or do they just need to know I’m sick and don’t want to get my coworkers sick, see you Tuesday? Really elaborate excuses when none are necessary kind of bother me.
I suppose it’s a trust issue. In my retail jobs, once I had been there for a while if I called in sick no one would question me.
In mostly unrelated news, my MacBook is sick. It won’t recognize the battery even though it is fully charged, so a trip to the Apple Store is in order for tomorrow (health permitting). I’m kind of bummed, because this is the first true malfunction I’ve ever experienced with an Apple product.
Kelvin / 09 apr 2007 / 8:20 a.m.
In the mature world you really don’t need to say “I’m sick, I have the East German Nazi Virus”. You simply say, I’m not feeling well, and I am taking a sick day. Most of the time a good voicemail with your groggy half dead banshee cries is enough to convince people they don’t want to be around you. Most any good employer sees the value in seperating the bad apple from the good productive ones.
Genius Bar… Un-woot! My co-worker and I spent a good 15 minutes watching an “Apple Genius” [sic] uselessly struggle taking apart an eMac. He finally succeeded, and then … nothing. He gave up, realized he’d done all that for nothing, finally flipped down the CD-ROM drive… and got the serial number he was probably looking for to begin with. It’s fun watching learning at work. All this, just to check in the system!
Apples are pretty, but their support has got to be the ugliest in the industry. Oh, and that 3 year warranty will cost you about $300, with the added benefit of sucking compared to the equivalent warranty of a reputable PC dealer like Dell. My God I can go on forever. My favorite feature of the warranty is waiting for parts that aren’t in stock because they don’t keep a large inventory of parts anywhere, for their relatively small amount of systems out there. Apple G5 Dual Core motherboard? 1 month. A New case for same computer? 1.5 months. How about three G5 PowerMac’s dying because their radiators all leaked. Average service time for each and every G5? 1 month. Average cost per G5? $3500 Fun. I’ll stop. I got up really, really, really, early today. Like 4am.
Seriously though, if somebody dropped a new Mac Pro Quad Ocho Extreme in my lap with a 30inch monitor I’d be happy. But I’d never freaking pay for it, let alone the support costs.
-k
Shaun / 09 apr 2007 / 4:03 p.m.
You can tell that supporting Macs takes up so much of Kelvin’s time at work that he doesn’t have time to write long comments on blogs.
Oh, wait…
Josh Blount / 09 apr 2007 / 7:12 a.m.
I recently had a similar problem with my Mac Book Pro, good luck with the genius bar.