Aussie man: Apple store employee ‘questioned my intelligence’

“A Sydney dad has accused Apple of ‘stupidity’ after he claimed a staff member in one of its stores made it so difficult to pay he was forced to walk out and buy the exact same product at JB Hi-Fi instead,” news.com.au reports. “That was despite the fact he was ready and willing to stump up the cash right there and then in the Apple store.”
“Calvin Scott [not his real name] told news.com.au he felt ‘frustrated and like my intelligence was being questioned’ about the encounter he had at the Apple Store in the Sydney north shore suburb of Chatswood,” news.com.au reports. “He said he was asked to wait by a staff member. ‘They got super awkward with me standing in front of them, so they asked, ‘Do you have an iPhone?.’ I said ‘Yes … but how is that relevant?’ That’s when they started trying to sell me on this Apple Pay thing. He gave me the impression I had to use the app to buy the product.'”
““Even though I told the guy that I wasn’t interested, he kept going on. I asked him at least three times if he was going to take my money or my credit card, and he just kept deflecting back to Apple Pay,” news.com.au reports. “Increasingly exasperated at being unable to pay the normal way, Mr Scott took drastic action. ‘I threatened to leave but he said I was being unreasonable. So I put the product down, walked across the street, and purchased the exact same item from JB Hi Fi.’ …’I felt frustrated and I felt like my intelligence was being questioned. I’m not really concerned by the legalities (of whether a store can force you to use a certain payment method) as much as I am the stupidity that transpired.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Well, now, there’s one side of the story, at least.
Perhaps “Calvin Scott”** had never used Apple Pay and, when asked if he’d like to pay “contactlessly,” he got more than a bit defensive about his “intelligence” and started to perceive slights that simply weren’t there?
Which seems more logical to you? (1) An Apple Retail Store employee who has no reason to be pushing Apple Pay* nonetheless inexplicably pushes Apple Pay to the extreme point of driving a customer out of a store or (2) a customer is asked if they’d like to use Apple Pay, doesn’t know what it is (“this Apple Pay thing”), feels stupid (“super awkward”) and therefore deflects/projects by blaming the employee for “questioning his intelligence” and for being stupid (“the stupidity that transpired”)?
Psychological projection is a defense mechanism in which the human ego defends itself against unconscious impulses or qualities by denying their existence in themselves while attributing them to others. For example, a person who feels stupid and/or uninformed continually accuses others of being stupid and/or uninformed.
Read more about psychological projection via Wikipedia here.
*There are no incentives at Apple Stores for employees to push one payment method over another.
** No, that’s “Scott Calvin.”