Learning Strategies

So I’m at Microcenter on Wednesday to take advantage of their post-Christmas sale, and I walk in clutching their flyer with the descriptions of two external hard drives highlighted. These are advertised as being for both PCs and Macs, so I knew that I would have to go to the PC section, since the Mac section is for Mac-only stuff. (I guess it’s the reverse of Barack Obama, who is always identified as a black man with one white parent, not as a white man with one black parent. But I digress — we’ll save the subject of defaults for another day.) I approach a random salesman in the PC section, point to the two descriptions, and ask where I can find the drives.

“The Seagate is over here,” he replies, and takes me to one corner; “and the Maxtor is over here” halfway across the room. These are both 320GB drives, both on sale for $89.95, so I start to read the specs more closely. “If you’re going to use this with Leopard for Time Machine,” adds the salesman, “you should definitely pick the Maxtor.”

The question, of course, is why a salesman in the PC section of a predominantly PC-oriented store would make this assumption — which in fact was correct — rather than the default assumption in the case of a drive that works with both operating systems. Do I just look like a Mac user?

Then, as I’m waiting in line (or “on line” as I grew up saying, but now that means something else), a different salesman from way over the other end of the store in Tech Support land comes running up to me and tries to get my attention. “What did I do wrong?” is all I could think. Is there something wrong with my purchase? But no, he just wants to ask where I got such a cool jacket!

This jacket does indeed get me attention everywhere I go. And maybe it explains why I look like a Mac user.

Labels: life, technology