The ipod

Jon and I bought an ipod the other day. Now, I realize that most people have one (ok, most people I know do, not in a global sense) but this was a big step for the MacDonalds. Jon never made it out of the walkman era into the diskman era before it was already over.

We assumed that it would be a simple process to purchase such an item. We went to Future Shop, where we're sure they sell many everyday and must want you to purchase items like that, since that is how retail stores stay in business. I guess we were just naive because the staff there sure didn't want to help us purchase anything.

The major problem was, once we arrived at the store, we realized they were discounting all the ipods that had lost their boxes, or had been opened. And there is nothing we like better than a deal. So, instead of purchasing the pre-boxed-like every other ipod, we insisted on looking at the sale items. But we never found a sales clerk willing to open the ipod display case and let us look at them, any of them really. After trying two different sales clerks, who both said they couldn't open the case that they keep all the ipods in (if the sales clerks don't have the keys, then who does?), we gave up and left. I'm not sure about the other 3 people who had clustered around the case with us, presumably to buy an ipod as well. Perhaps they had better luck...

Next stop was Best Buy, where we found the same problem. This time though, Jon cornered a sales assistant who looked about 12 and intimidated him into finding someone who could open the case. They were quite insulted that I wanted to inspect the merchandise before purchase and seemed to think that I may actually have been trying to steal the ipods (the sales guy wouldn't actually let me hold the plastic bags that they keep them in, I could inspect from a distance). If the thing hadn't been so cheap I may have given up earlier.

End of the story is that we finally convinced the sales clerk to sell us a 1GB nano (last years model) for about $50. So, we're not quite at the cutting edge of ipod technology, but its a step up from our boombox.