... so says the Girl Scout motto. This is a story of my good turn today.
I had some free time this afternoon, so I browsed a coupla Thrift Shops (whoo hoo! A set of art pencils for thirty-five cents!) and drove around the neighborhood. I passed CompUSA once, thought for a second about browsing around in there, but didn't stop. drugrevenue.com
15 minutes later, I was back.
I was curious to see if The Sims Online was available yet, since I had lost track of it completely. So I found my excuse to go in.
Nope, no Sims Online yet (I know, it's not being developed for Mac, grr. But there is a Windoze machine in this house just for gaming, heh). So I wandered into the small Mac section to see how it was doing.
CompUSA is notorious for not encouraging Mac sales. Their salespeople cringe when customers ask for Mac hardware, software or accessories. You'd think you had just asked them to pull their toenails out or something. Scott Kelby writes about this in his book Macintosh: The Naked Truth. He also suggests ways for us Mac Evangelists to improve the situation. One of these ways is to visit your local CompUSA store regularly and tidy up the Mac section.
Only a die-hard would do that. I guess I'm a die-hard now.
I went around to all the stations... I think there were 3 iBooks, 5 iMacs, 2 G4s and 1 Ti... and I cleaned up all of their desktops, filled up the docks (they were empty, save the trash and the finder icons), and did a general tidying of the area. It was really sad... all the hard drives were named gobbledy gook like "sadfg" or "../.,;". The desktops were chaotic. Open windows everywhere! A nightmare for this minimalist Mac user! It made a difference... even though I didn't physically do much, the section looked clean and consistent from mac to mac. I grinned to myself and walked out of the door, without buying anything, after about 15 minutes.
Who knows if this service will accomplish anything... will someone buy a Mac just because I made them look good? I have no idea. If it helps influence one person's decision to buy a mac, that's good enough for me. Someone has to care, and it ain't gonna be the workers at CompUSA.
So I did my good turn... and a geeky one at that. Maybe tomorrow I'll save the world or find a cure for the common cold.
Nah.
Not real shocking that the guys don't encourage Mac sales - I wouldn't expect any sensible or knowledgeable Mac user to choose CompUSA for employment (especially with Apple Stores popping up all over the place.) Plus, you have to know how to answer the question why should I buy this $3000 Mac when I can buy this $600 Dell over here? Of course, we can rattle off a list of reasons a mile long. The best reason I hear most PC users come up with is uh, I hear theyre better for editing video. Thats about the extent of their Mac knowledge.
transmitted by Mike on November 16, 2002 11:07 PMActually, when I went to January of 2000 to shop for a computer, both my dad and the CompUSA guy spent 2 hours trying to convince me to buy a Mac over a PC.
transmitted by kat on November 17, 2002 03:41 AMMike: I agree with your comment, of course. Since I live in the Silly Valley, I have better places to go for Mac stuff than CompUSA... i.e., Apple retails stores, Fry's, ComputerWare, even the Apple Campus. I betcha the Apple Store-within-a-stores will be fazing out now that the Apple retail stores are doing so well. It is what's best for everyone, methinks.
kat experienced the rare encounter of a CompUSA employee that actually likes Macs... amazing! I tell you, that is a rare find. I wonder if I can ever find another one in the wild...
transmitted by courtney on November 21, 2002 12:09 PM