Are you smarter than an apple genius?

I don’t remember the specifics, but I tried asking for some audio advice from a Genius once. I realized fairly quickly that I actually knew more about audio than he did, and that I should do my own research.

edit: That said, I ended up asking the question to one of my professors, who also works periodically as an Apple Genius. But the reason the professor could answer the question was that he’s a studio engineering professor. Well… maybe he’s a professor because he knows such things. Anyway, being an Apple Genius didn’t have anything to do with him being able to answer the question.

Here’s the thing, companies don’t like hiring people that are smarter than the average joe.. really.

I’ve heard of/know several people that tried to get techy jobs like say.. geek squad one of my friends tried he was telling me, and he is by no means at all what I would call a genius, but he knows more about networking than anyone else i know personally, but isn’t the greatest when it comes to software/hardware, anyways as the story goes, he was perfect for everything for the job.. and to no surprise he was not hired.

Seriously, go into radioshack and ask someone about something that you just happen to know about and see if they can say anything about it besides A they just work there, B they only know where it is, or C they only know the price.

I’ve only walked into one store so far in my life that I could actually talk to the people working there and have something in common with and they actually understand me.. and actually learn something from them, and that has been Wolf Camera.

Other than that.. I walk into a store and just from reading a blog a year ago about some new .. whatever, and i still know more about it than the workers.

It’s just how it goes.

Yes. More modest, too.

In their defense, Apple Genii go through extensive training… but I’ve been using Apple computers since 1979. I know my way around, usually on par with them.

Also, they’re usually trained to go down certain pre-defined paths. It works more often than not.

Frustrating when you can see it happening and know it’s the wrong thing.

I was a genius for two years and I’m the first to say that I don’t know everything, and neither do the other guys that work there. But, first off, we didn’t pick the genius title. Most of us hated it, because it allowed customers to constantly start off the conversation with stupid comments like “So you’re a ‘genius’ huh? Well then you should be able to fix this no problem”... Great way to start a conversation with someone you are asking to fix your stuff, put them down and insult their intelligence.

They also only have 10 – 15 minutes to diagnose a problem, decide what action to take on that problem, create the paperwork, order the part, answer customer’s questions, deal with the 3 different people that come up asking questions during that time even when it isn’t their turn because “they’re busy and don’t have time to make an appointment”, take the product to the back and put it in the repair holding area, etc. The genii see hundreds of customers a day, frequently many of the issues can be solved quickly right there at the genius bar. Sometimes they can’t, and they usually don’t have time to do extensive diagnostics. They are pushed to see as many customers a day as possible, which means some are going to fall through the cracks.

iPods in particular are difficult to diagnose because the genius has very limited tools to do so. You can basically reformat them with new software, or replace it. They aren’t allowed to open them up and repair certain components, they aren’t trained on what all of the diagnostic codes mean when you run self-diagnostics, etc. If it’s in warranty and they can’t figure out how to make it work, they usually just replace it, that’s all they can really do for iPods. Also, the genii in training are usually sent to work on the iPods, so you may have gotten a new genii or one that hadn’t learned much yet. The vast majority of iPod problems I saw was people abusing them. They’d get them wet, run with the larger hard drive based iPods which would scratch the hard drives and ruin them, sit on them, crushing the top plastic case into the bottom metal one which would put pressure on the hard drive and keep it from spinning properly, put huge dents in the back, etc. I once took a screwdriver to the back of a damaged iPod to see just how much force was required to put a dent in the back like the ones that we see on customer’s iPods who claim to have never dropped it or put that dent that. I had a very considerable amount of force with a screwdriver to put in a good sized dent in the back, but customers swear all day that they treat it like a baby. Pfft.

cool info, @StellarAirman!

Translation

It can“t be fixed = You can buy a new one for what I would charge to fix the old one.

I am at least as smart as an Apple Genius—a few years ago I aced the technical interview, but they declined to hire me when they found out I had no retail experience at all.

definition:

Expert : conjunction

Ex = Has been
spurt = a drip under pressure

I thought I was until I took the Genius test at a job fair at my local Apple store. It was really involved. I’ve worked on Apples since the early 90’s. Have taken them apart and put them back together, but I couldn’t answer most of the questions. I love those guys. I have never been disappointed when I’ve asked them for help!

@DrBill… i don’t get it…
expert is a noun, not a conjunction…. i don’t get it at all…