Rude worse than Stupid

I got the replacement for my wonderful Christmas gift. The Galaxy Tab wouldn't work out for me as on God's green earth, there is not a single adequate word processing application for android operating systems. In English, this means I cannot write my books on it. This is a deal breaker since I hope to become a rich and famous author, and unfortunately, one must write books to do that.

So, I got my new iPad (actually a refurb, but it looks new at a fraction of the cost) and spent several hours trying to figure it out. I found that the easiest way to figure hard things out is to have other people do it for me. So I called Apple Care. Apple Care is the phone support for all Apple products, and the employees are chosen by one of the most rigorous methods known to business. Prospective employees are dangled above 16 foot great white sharks and then must answer a mock customer call. The customer has an IQ of 10, and has never touched a computer before. In fact, the customer doesn't even know how to spell computer. The potential Apple Care employee is tested on how patiently and kindly he responds to every inane question the mock customer poses. If the shark is not very good at leaping, and the Apple Care potential employee remains considerate throughout the entire phone call, he moves on to step number two of the culling process.

In that phase of employee selection, the potential employee is put in a tub of boiling oil. Now a mock belligerent customer calls him, and berates him for being the biggest lunkhead on earth, and asks repeatedly why his iPad cannot fix dinner and then wash the dishes afterwards? If the potential employee is still patiently responding as though Mr. Belligerent was not the most obnoxious animal of the human race, then he is hired. Of course, this would only be if the skin grafts are successful.

So while I do see issues with the iPad, I will likely keep it just to talk to those nice young employees at Apple Care. They are unfailingly gentle, even when I ask the most ridiculously ignorant things. Not only did they talk me through the iPad set up for hours, but they even helped me fix some of the issues on my desktop computer. I asked one of them, "I hope you are a father, because you have the patience that is needed to raise children."
"I'm a grandfather of 8!" he said.
"Good for you!"

Then I had to call back because I had not yet managed to make any Apple Care employee run screaming and naked into the wilderness. The next young man helping me was even more patient than the grandfather.
"You must get extensive training in working with...well, people like me. I don't want to use the word 'ignorant' but...." (I fear I may have to in all honesty....)
"Oh, believe me," he said, "I have worked with alot of people and you are definitely not the bottom of the barrel."
My self esteem must be sorely in need of stroking considering the glow that comment put on me. I am not the bottom of the barrel!
"To tell you the truth," he said, "I don't mind stupid. My hackles go up with rude though."
I thought about my typical response to frustration with computers and with authorities trying to help me in this foreign language of informational technology. I am not only stupid, but am very loathe to admit, often rude.
However, because I had been praised as being not the bottom of the barrel, not even close, I spent 2 hours on the phone, and smiled, and laughed and endured enormous frustration pleasantly because someone believed I could.

The verse on my daily reading on my computer was from the book of Mark chapter 9. Jesus has just been greeted by a desperate father whose son is demon possessed. The father begs Jesus to exorcise the demon. Jesus answers the father with one of my favorite mottos to live by- " Everything is possible for one who believes."
"I do believe," exclaims the father,"Help my unbelief!"
With those words, Jesus works His miracle and saves the boy, and extracts the demon from his soul.

The Apple Care employee, as we entered our second hour of trying to figure out how to download 8,000 photos to my iPad told me, "Hang in there. We almost have it! Do you believe we can do this tonight?"
"I do believe," I cried, "Help my unbelief.



-Everything is possible with God