At the end of the day it’s interesting to read all the reviews, horror stories, happy stories, etc. about the new iPhone 4 and what people had to do in order to get it. I wanted to post about my great time with the new Apple product.
We got in line at the Sherman Oaks Westfield Mall at roughly 9:30 PM the night before. This was my first adventure in “overnight line waiting” and I didn’t know what to expect. There were about 50 or so people in line in front of us. I had a RESERVED iphone and my other half had not reserved. So we weren’t sure what we would experience.
First of all, I must say that the “iphone owner” type community is amazing. People from all walks of life and most all of them super friend, generous and intelligent. There was a guy behind us sharing his WI-FI hub freely (so I could play Twitter and WeRule all night on the iPad) and people who did food runs and one lady even brought three HUGE boxes of donuts in the morning and the couple distributed them all along the line. WOW.. Really cool people.
At 7AM they opened the doors and the line went extremely smoothly up to the Apple store where they started to split the line into two lines; 1 for reserved and 1 for un-reserved. I think I was like one of the first 20 to get a phone, being one of the reserved in line. I waited with my other half for him to get his phone.
With exception to a few rude groups of people who attempted to bring in their families in the morning into line (even tried to grab friends and family further BACK in line into their part of the line.. ugh.. gutter barbarians), everything went smoothly and the Apple people tried very hard to moderate such instances (not always successfully.. some of the horde got extremely aggressive). There was water, coffee and donuts offered to the line. A nice touch.
The energy and friendliness of the Apple store employees I dealt with through two purchases was exemplary. I felt really good about doing business with them. They seemed to like their job even in spite of the chaos and impending long day.
GOOD JOB SHERMAN OAKS APPLE STORE EMPLOYEES!!
My LEAST favorite part about waiting all night outside a store for something? NO BATHROOMS!
I’d have appreciated less donuts and maybe a portable jiffy-john out by the line. ;>