LJ Idol Three Strikes Edition - Week 10 - craic

Toni sat at her desk and sighed at the phone she’d just hung up. Support calls where the operator was unable to help were the worst. Toni was sad. She was also mad. And both of those feelings conflicted with the normal desire to be polite and kind to the human on the other end of the phone. How do you politely end something that has left you only with the knowledge that the other party isn’t going to help you? Last week she’d had a call where she’d actually said, “Well, I hope you get some calls today where you are able to help someone.”

But today with Apple it was more of a case of, “Yes you’ve read that script already, thank you. I disagree with that course of action, but clearly it is the one you will continue to utilize. I guess we should end this call since it seems clear that no more will be gained from it.”

Bad timing was the name of the game this week for Toni. Last Sunday night, Toni’s daughter had realized that the screen was newly and badly cracked on her beloved iPad. When she logged into Apple to see what could be done, Toni had been heartened to see that she had actually paid for Apple Care on that device. But the coverage would soon end, so she’d arranged to take the iPad into a local service provider that was on her way to work first thing on Monday morning. The local provider was Simply Mac, which proceeded to declare a nationwide bankruptcy on Wednesday. The local Simply Mac store was now locked and shuttered. They weren't returning calls or sending updates via email.

Toni had hoped that Apple itself might offer some solution, since the little device still had active Apple Care. But the people on the helpline only wanted to point out that the issue was between the device owner and the now bankrupt company. Their “certification” of Simply Mac ended when Simply Mac ended, and there would be no help from their quarter.

Toni sighed and picked up some work. It was time to work on something that she could move forward. She guessed that she would go ahead and file a “lost item” police report on the locked away iPad over lunch.

***

“My bro,” grinned Chase, “I don’t see why you’re being so uptight about this. I was just having a little bit of fun.”

Jennifer looked at him across the sweaty rim of the copper mug that contained her Moscow Mule. It was hot and the fans were working overtime on the big porch of Madison Social.

Good things about summer:

Jennifer’s favorite bar for an afternoon pick-me-up wasn’t nearly as crowded as it was during the year.

Bad things about summer:

Her boyfriend Chase wasn’t taking any classes now, but he also wasn’t working full time and his ideas of fun ways to pass time were likely to get him killed.

It was 95 degrees in the shade.

Jennifer took a sip of her drink, closed her eyes for a moment and then fixed Chase with her soon-to-be chem-degree B.S. graduate gaze.

“Did you tell anyone where you were going before you went to meet this guy? Did you talk to him through your own accounts, with your actual name on them? He can probably find you, and he’s probably just taking his time trying to figure out the best time to kick your ass.”

Jennifer noticed Chase noticing what was probably the glistening of sweat between her clavicles above the neckline of her crop top. God, he probably wasn’t even paying attention to what she was saying. He was really cute, though, she thought, as she watched him sip from his long neck bottle.

“Babe,” he said, “I actually feel kind of bad for the thieving little bastard. He definitely couldn’t kick my ass, and he didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who likely has a posse to help him out with that kind of thing, either. I would have split- just told him I didn’t have the money if I’d thought he might actually come at me. But the beauty of this is that he can’t legit come at me! I’m scamming a scammer here. Winning one for the side of goodness and light! I can’t believe you don’t want to accept this super cool three-month anniversary present I scored for ya.”

Chase took another pull from his beer and then put his elbow down on the table and cradled his chin in that hand, leaning forward and looking across at Jennifer. God, he really was like a puppy sometimes. “You’re right about one thing,” he admitted, “You deserve a better present than this.” He gestured at the iPad and pair of iPhone Xs on the table between them. “I can’t believe that little loser thought he could sell me all this for 500 bucks. The iPad screen’s pretty cracked and the phones won’t turn on. Maybe I need to charge them. But it looks like the pad’d probably work if you just wipe the memory first.”

Jennifer considered her big sweet boyfriend, sitting there in his Alpha Phi Omega t-shirt. Okay, so he was a frat boy, but it was the co-ed service fraternity, and that was where she had met him. And he wasn’t actually dumb, just. . . unrepentantly enthusiastic about some things. While she had been in classes, he’d created his own project based on some other dude’s YouTube channel about a similar thing.

The project:

Find someone on Facebook Marketplace or some other part of the internet that you suspect of trying to sell stolen stuff.

Pretend you want to buy the stolen stuff.

Agree on a possible price and then meet up with your sketchy internet contact to examine the stuff.

Swipe the stuff from the suspected swiper.

Run!

Enjoy good times and profit!

Chase was staring out across the street at the intramural fields, where some soccer was happening. “The little dude had a sob story about how his manager at some bankrupted repair shop told him to take whatever he wanted out of the back room, since corporate wasn’t ever going to cut anyone’s last check. He seemed almost sheepish about the whole thing, but he basically admitted this stuff is all stolen. He didn’t even really try to yell at me when I grabbed it all and just ran off. Honestly I thought about telling him to call my uncle, you know, the one that just got out of law school. . . But I don’t know if even he could help much with that. And then I remembered my mission.”

“Well, I propose a couple of added steps for your mission, my would-be Robin Hood,” Jennifer said as she finished her drink. “First, go get your car. Then you drive me over to the police station where we will turn in this ‘lost property’ that you came upon on the side of the road- you pick any intersection you want to tell them you found all this at.” She could see that he didn’t like the sound of that, so she continued quickly, “Then why don’t we head over to the rock gym for a little bit of climbing, and then you can take me out for a proper three-month anniversary sushi dinner?”

“I guess I could work some more on that new v3 on the overhang,” he said, still watching the soccer, but then his face lit up happily as he adjusted to the new fun plan. “Alright, yeah, that does sound like a good plan, let’s do it!”

-----------------------------------------------------------------
So, it's probably pretty obvious where this week's inspiration came from. When life gives you lemons, write some imaginary lemonade! Simply Mac really did go belly up in our town and across the nation. All this as big Apple keeps fighting new anti-trust proposals to keep their profits maximally maximized and squeeze all the little guys. Jas really is out an iPad as of Tuesday evening as I'm writing this. Apple really was completely useless about it on the phone. But who knows what could happen next? Not me, that's for sure.