July 2, 2007
Fenty's Staffers Reportedly Cut the iPhone Line
Via Consumerist, an alleged eye-witness report of staff members of Mayor Adrian Fenty cutting in line to buy iPhones on Friday. And here we thought Council chairman Vincent Gray would win the most entitled public servant of the week award.
...I work in downtown DC and went to the AT&T store on 17th and Pennsylvania around 4:45 to get in line. About 35 people were in front of me, everyone was nice, people from AT&T were giving out water and all was well. They and another store I visited during lunch wouldn't or couldn't tell us how many they had, so the line kept growing until it was about 70 or so. Six o'clock finally comes and they let some people in, and it's really slow going--like one person every ten minutes, even though there are a bunch of employees and registers in there. We later found out that AT&T's system crashed.
So we're all waiting outside and some of the people around me notice a double parked car with a driver and a few dudes outside all on Blackberries talking and looking into the store. A little while later, a guy comes out with three bags and gives them to the driver. AT&T was only allowed to sell one iPhone per customer. Then the same guy disappears back into the store, into the back room. The manager comes out to update people and someone asks him what just happened and we find out that the phones are for D.C.'s mayor, Adrian Fenty. The guy comes out again and quickly gets into an SUV parked in front of the store. By this point, more than a few people are asking questions, and after a guy behind me yells out "fix the schools first," the guy gives him the finger and sneers, "there's only 15 left."
Phone messages left for Mayor Fenty's communications office were not immediately returned, but we'll update if we can get confirmation one way or the other about whether the Mayor currently has an iPhone, and/or employs people who act like jerks out in public.
UPDATE: The Examiner's Michael Neibauer reports that, after being embarrassed by the reports popping up on the internet, Mayor Fenty has ordered the staff members involved in this incident to return their iPhones.
"The city's technology office has been taking a look at ways that wireless technology can make the District government more efficient," the Fenty administration said in a statement Sunday. "The iPhone is one of the technologies [the city government] would like to examine, and the office purchased three devices this week for testing purposes.
Mayor Fenty had no knowledge of this purchase and was not a candidate for any of the test devices. In an effort to avoid even the appearance of impropriety and out of an abundance of caution, the devices have been returned."
Photo by jenchung
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I can't tell who's more irritating, the petty bureaucratic a**wipe toadies or the gadget fetishists who can't wait a couple weeks for the privelege of paying $500+ to beta test Apple's products.
Can't we just lock them both in Thunderdome and let them at it with socks filled with manure? Because, I mean, that's why god invented pay-per-view in the first place.
Well, Adrian Fenty's office will enhance its incompetence with style using the iPhone thanks to AT&T's crappy service and snail like EDGE network
-the economics major
Would people really have preferred for Fenty to stand in line for hours and hours?
"incompetence" please explain yourself? A lot, and I mean a LOT of people think he's on the right track and I think people realize change takes time.
As for the iPhones, well obviously the Fenty group had arranged a safe way to make a large purchase and the manager of that store should be the one you're mad at. For only having a few iPhones for the only Apple Store in the District, well that's sad don't you think?
That jerk! Fenty is dead in my book. This is the last straw.
Right on monkey! Not sure why anyone waited in line, to be honest. I just happened to be at the Pentagram City Apple Store on Saturday afternoon and they had plenty of iPhones available (yeah, I know - they may not have been the 8GB ones...whatever).
Hey, what's with the smallish, grey text? Is that what guest posts will look like from now on?
I'm with Monkey. The day I get sympathetic for a bunch of Apple fanboys who have to wait a few more days for an overpriced sugar rush is the same day peace is declared in the Middle East and obese children are determined to be an efficient alternative energy source.
I don't care that much about the cutting in line -- I'm more concerned that the mayor's office apparently thinks the purchase of $500 phones and their expensive contracts is a good use of resources.
Guests demand their first-class rights! or, just a normal sized BLACK font. geez.
Socks with manure is the best idea so far. unless Reid's secondary suggestion of obsese energy counts.
- the english major (who's too lazy to sign in)
A non-story IMHO; we all know that pols & famous people get preferential treatment in situations like this. The fact that Fenty choose to take advantage of his position says a little something about him, and obviously the guy flipping the bird was an obnoxious douche-guzzling a$$, but really this is no big deal.
This comment thing sucks. Particularly, the fact that guest posts are now smaller and grey. They are way too difficult to read.
That's crap that Fenty's people jumped the line. If he wants one, he can take a vacation day and stand in line or have his a friend stand in line for him. The iphone is not so magical that DC is going to all of a sudden fix its potholes, fill its hydrants and find a way to run the Metro on time all with that snazzy touch screen. Earth to Mayor Fenty! The iphone is just not that great.
The only real news out of this is that the Fenty people now know to discipline/fire the impulse control challenged employee who gives the middle finger to people while on the job. If only all incompetent city employees made that choice so obvious.
If he would have taken a day off to buy his phone, people would have jumped all over him for that too.
Another annoying thing about this is that, whatever your feelings are for the thing, everyone knows the iPhone isn't really geared towards business users. These people already had blackberries, which are tailor-made for that purpose; what in the hell kind of practical use is an iPhone to them to justify (presumably) spending taxpayer money?
It sounds like mayor/douchegobbler Fenty must have asked his little buddy Sinclair Skinner to head down to the AT&T store for him.
re: update
Hooray for Fenty! Good move, publicity-wise.
But saying that the iphones are to help improve efficiency is like going on a fact-finding mission to test the beaches in the Bahamas.
They probably returned the iPhones because they, along with a ton of other customers, couldn't activate them.
Fuck the mayor and his staff for recklessly spending our tax dollars on crap like iPhones, when they should be concentrating on the District's real problems. If they're able to go out and blow $1,500+ on a whim like this, then God only knows how else they are wasting money.
A non-story IMHO; we all know that pols & famous people get preferential treatment in situations like this.
Normally I'd agree, but I think Apple and AT&T have generally done a good job of not letting this happen. Heck even Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, had to camp out in line. You'd think he could get one w/o much effort. The mayor of Philadelphia camped out himself (though I guess he left the line a couple of times to at least appear to be doing city business).
But good for Fenty ordering the phones' return.
As for the activation, I can't speak from first-hand experience since I don't have an iPhone, but what I've seen in news stories today says that only 2 pct of customers had trouble with the activation.
compared to what they spent on the Segways, does it really matter?
and the Segway purchase compared to what we're spending every week to support two wars, does any of that really matter? seriously, people.
There's the outside chance that he's using campaign funds the iPhone.
The District employee who's making obscene gestures to the public should be fired. Wasteful spending is one thing but being a rude public servant on the job is worse.
g
I'm glad to see that Fenty ordered the phones returned.
even Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, had to camp out in line
Stephen Colbert couldn't get one, either. I would like to say that I hope the iPhone tanks. But then Apple will start paying attention again to their increasingly sub-par operating system, and I would much prefer them to focus all their energies on producing smooth buttonless sex-toy-like iAppliances.
Someone, somewhere, has the iPhone that Mayor Fenty bought and returned!!! I'll pay $1700 for it!!
Then again, he probably only returned it because it didn't work, not to preserve his image.
Again with the Sinclair Skinner spam? Is this going to happen every time Fenty does something remotely controversial?
Looks like the city's IT office is joke. Apple has clearly stated that the iphone is not designed for business use. In addition, major IT groups have come out and said that the security systems built into the iphone are not sufficient to protect confidential data.
Of course, hearing all of this, the city decided it had to have three of them for "testing" purposes.
Good for him. He's the Mayor and he shouldn't be standing in line like the other dumbasses or certain other Mayors (hello Philly). What sucks is that this has somehow turned into an issue.
Did one of them really point the finger at crowd? WTF
Haw-haw! So it wasn't even Fenty at all, just some bag-o-dicks underling who wanted an iPhone for themselves and thinks cutting in line with a city Escalade is the way to do it. Any other "technologies" these jackasses want taxpayers to buy for them to make government more "efficient?" Like maybe plasma teevees, Wiis, or Nexus 6 "pleasure model" replicants?
I bet we could come up with a whole host of applications justifying a Wii purchase on behalf of the city government, starting with a virtual cannonball in a virtual city pool, perhaps?
This sounds like almost like an apocryphal story. Is it true that a staff member gave a person waiting in line the finger or is this an embellishment?
Fenty can do NO wrong to some idiots. (Kind of reminds me of Barry-supporters). Fenty=Barry: I've said it from Day 1 (of his campaign). DC is full of suckers. He will get a break no matter what. He's even got the Post on his team. Smart move by him...but the truth will slowly seep out.
"Fenty can do NO wrong to some idiots. (Kind of reminds me of Barry-supporters). Fenty=Barry: I've said it from Day 1 (of his campaign)."
Amen. Sounds like voter's remorse to me. "Waaahhh, even though he's woefully inexperienced, childish, and wholly incapable of effectively leading this city, I voted for him, so he's going to save the world, and you suck!"
Reminds me of the stories about young Clinton White House staffers using their ID cards to cut the line at Third Edition back in 1992.
Reminds me of the stories of young Clinton White House staffers using their IDs to cut the line at Third Edition back in 1993.
It's harder to imagine bigger losers than people waiting in line for Iphones, but Fenty's people just aced them.
And for god's sakes, the misplaced arrogance -- they're not even hacks for national pols, they're hacks for a mid-city mayor in a city with no viable opposition!
The only way this level of dorkdom can possibly be trumped: the first person to be spotted riding a Segway while talking on an Iphone. I suspect given the significant dork overlap we will see this sooner rather than later.
At this point Sinclair Skinner could beat a truckload of babies with a bag full of hammers in front of a bus full of priests and I wouldn't believe that it happened...
What does Jenny Toomey think about this?
"What does Jenny Toomey think about this?"
Comedy! Your comment made my day! Nice one!
I'm in Philly and Mayor Street sat out for 2 days to get an iPhone. He wasted 2 days of good working time for a phone, I repeat: a Phone. Now I'm fine with the Fenty getting the phone without waiting, or even his staff, if it's going to be used for real work. And I mean, come on, if you were mayor you know you'd cut line, too. At least he wasn't wasting his time with it.