NVinNYC

The ridiculously obsessive fascination with Apple Retail continues on ifo Apple Store today with an analysis of Genius Bar Wait Times. Guess who’s number 2 on the list baby! That’s right; my old buddies at the Glendale Galleria. Right behind SoHo: not bad, not bad at all!

Allow me to propose a pair of questions about this. First, why is Glendale ranked second, and second, why am I happy about this?

The answers to these questions are somewhat intertwined but for some comparison purposes, allow me to explain why SoHo is number one. The SoHo store was, until a month ago, the only store serving my new hometown of New York, the largest metropolitan area in the nation. A store opened on Stanten Island recently, however this is out of the way for most New Yorkers, so the SoHo store remains the main Genius presence in the area (though this should change with the opening of a midtown store soon).

Compare that with the Los Angeles metro area which contains at least 8 Apple Stores (depending on how you count) with more coming soon. Glendale is located in the relative middle of these stores in the center of a triangle between The Grove, Pasadena, and Northridge. All of this would seem to indicate that the wait times at Glendale would be rather low, but that is ignoring one important factor in the equation: Quality of Service.

Now I’m not an impartial judge here seeing as I worked behind the bar in Glendale for several months of my time working at that store, but while I was there I observed one very important thing. The Geniuses at Glendale always go the extra mile. Indeed this is true of all the staff I worked with at Glendale. On several occasions, I was told by customers not only that they were surprised by the level of service they received, but that they were surprised by the level of service above that other Genius bars they had visited.

So why does Glendale have such long wait times at the Genius Bar? Because it has the best damn service you can get for free. Congrats Conan and Co. you guys rock.

PS: if you have a hankering to check out the Genius Bar at any Apple Store, I suggest you check out the details on the new and improved Concierge Reservation System (finally dividing the iPod bitches from the cool Mac peeps!).