Not every Apple store experience is a good one

Please re-read the original post and commentary before you continue on your path of mother bashing and anti-"breeder" rants. She has explained the jokes, which seem to be causing people great distress and, beyond that, the Apple employee was totally a dickhead.

Mrs. Ridenour's blog post was on the main page of the National Center for Public Policy Research website. She's the president of the NCPPR, and her husband is vice-president, so I guess she's entitled to use the site as public sounding-board for her gripes, huh?

Anyone else run her name through Google?

(WikiPedia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Ridenour

(SourceWatch) http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=National_Center_for_Public_Policy_Research

Okay, so they bully senior citizens and spend an exorbitant amount of their budget on soliciting more contributions. This isn't much of a shock; however, notice the Jack Abramoff connection? THAT, I wasn't expecting.

Lets see here. The kid stole a stool. Well, that's bad. What should have happened? She should have asked to use the stool, the employee would have said no. The employee does not need to explain himself. A simple no, you cannot. It's his stool, not hers.

Also, she seems to think stools are safe. Well. Hm. That's strange. Because just last week, I fell off a stool. Interesting. Guess I'm not as advanced as that 5 year old. (I'm 16)

I'd bet anything, if that kid fell off, she would be pissed and sue Apple for letting him use the stool. She'd probably win too, which is the sad part.

Those stools are for one purpose. ONE. For people at the genius bar to sit and get help. That's it. They are not allowed to be moved away from the bar. That's why they're called a "Bar Stool".

Oh, and one more thing...

The kid is 5.
First of all, if a 5 year old kid can convince you to buy a multi-thousand dollar computer instead of a

The fact that Mrs. Ridenour has been allowed to breed is ... disappointing.

Obviously, you did not read some of the previous comments, Beerzie Boy. Amy Ridenour is a principal in an extremist RIGHT WING organization that is likely an unindicted co-conspirator in the Tom DeLay/Jack Abramoff scandal. Someone that unethical and far Right makes liberals look good.

I was convinced that this was a joke/hoax, but alas.

It was interesting to read that her son was a "prospective (and past) customer of the store". Perhaps he has paid for his past purchases with his own credit card.

Putting this self-absorbed rant on the The National Center for Public Policy Research's blog definitely lowers my opinion of the organization. I'm a lefty with three young sons; this sort of crap makes both parents and liberals look foolish. Bad job, Amy.

tnkgrl you are my hero and i couldn't've said it better myself.

Just another example of how people with small children think the world revolves around them. Because they have a kid in tow, they should get special treatment...

And by the way, what 6 year old is "hoping to convince his mom to get a laptop"?

Boo Hoo. Maybe you should sue. Give me a break.

I have a few different thoughts on the subject. If the employee didn't want the child on the stool because he could've fallen off and gotten hurt (and then the mother would sue Apple), okay. If he didn't want him on the stool because he thought a six year old didn't need to use a MacBook, that's lame. The whole pushing the kid to use the kiddie iMacs really bothers me. Just because you're a kid doesn't mean you want to play with kid things while mommy and daddy do the real computer shopping. I know I was an odd child. I know that most six year olds weren't playing Doom (ok, at that time, most six year olds didn't have a computer at all), fussing around in DOS, or wondering about system upgrades. But I was. Six year olds can be capable of using a computer system intelligently. He's obviously well past the key banging stage, and reminds me a bit of myself at that age. In my house, it was I who pushed for a CD ROM drive, for Windows 95, for a faster processor, for more RAM. I knew more about the computer than anyone else in my house, and I was a kid. Does a six year old *need* a MacBook? Probably not; a Mini or iMac would probably do just fine. But if a six year old wants a MacBook and can convince his mommy that this is the computer they should get ("they", as in, for both of them), then why not? I would have loved to have had a laptop when I was younger, but I didn't get one until I was sixteen, because of money. I believe the Apple store has every right to say, "hey - you can't use that stool", but has no right to be condescending to a child because of their age (telling him to go play with the kiddie iMacs). At his age, I don't think I would've reached the table to properly use the MacBook either. But my dad probably would have knelt down and let me sit on his knee, rather than commandeering a stool from elsewhere in the store.

This is definitely not worth be be news at all. Just because a parent is so absolutely focussed on his/her child does not mean that an employee could not ask for safety precautions to be met. You could get sued easily in the US by a parent who does not see its own fault. And people who wrote such elaborate posts about such a thing are very likely to be the ones who would try to sneak away quietly IF their child would actually manage to break anything - and if caught would start bitching about how it's the stores own fault to be so "unsafe". Like Julius Caesar once said: "The most empty vases sound the loudest"