A few weeks ago at lunch I dropped my beloved iPhone 4 and shattered the back side glass. Fortunately I already knew the cost to replace it, as I had just been to the Apple Store the previous weekend with a friend who committed the same act of violence against his phone.
At $29 I thought he got away cheap – but I didn’t understand why my friend fabricated a ridiculous story about how the glass shattered on his phone. Later he told me it was to try to get sympathy from the Genius in order to replace the glass for free. Of course this lowered my opinion of him (not the lie, the fact that it was a terrible lie) and I knew it wasn’t going to work for me.
After recovering from my phone-dropped-glass-shattered induced heart attack, I scheduled an appointment with the Genius Bar online & was served by the very same Genius as my friend:
“How did this happen?” he asked.
I replied, “I dropped it in a parking lot.”
At that moment it felt like you could hear a pin drop in the store. All of the surrounding Apple employees looked toward me in shock & awe, not because I dropped my phone – but because I told the truth.
“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”
~George Owell (or not)
Unbeknownst to me, a store manager was standing right behind me, came up to the service desk, and asked for more details about my phone tragedy. It seemed as if nobody ever told him “Yes, it’s my fault & it hit the pavement.” The manager took my phone with him to the back of the store & came back minutes later letting me know the glass was replaced and that the repair cost was on him.
Nothing more than the truth made it free.
