Today, in true Apple formality, I received my blue t-shirt.

The (current) blue t-shirt is the shirt worn by all Apple employees in the store. As an employee that has been shadowing for the last few weeks, this is a big deal to me. I’ve had the lanyard with my name on it for some time but the customers coming always wouldn’t recognize that because I wasn’t dressed like all the other employees. There would often be a question of “oh, do you work here?”

So tonight I was finished up with a customer setting up their iPad and Andrew, who has been so very kind and welcoming to me since day one, motioned me aside and said he needed to speak to me. We started discussing aspects of introducing our MobileMe service to customers and how I had approached the different elements this service had to offer. The conversation seemed a little strange, but I presented how I had delivered the different elements of MobileMe to different customers. Then Big Tony (who is a mentor at the store) came along up beside me, mentioned in a booming voice “Can I have everyone’s attention?” to, literally, employees and customers in the store. (So of course Andrew was the fall guy to keep me distracted while Big Tony could getting everything set up. So clever.) He then proceeded to announce to everyone that I was a new Apple employee who had just, basically, earned his stripes and that we should all give me a round of applause. And with this, he handed me the company-issued iPad-branded blue t-shirt that all the other employees were wearing. It was at this point that I’d not be wearing street clothes with the lanyard, but that I was one of them, an equal, someone who would interacted with customers solo without any kind of supervision. Needless to say, I was beaming smiles and gave a gracious bow as the claps from employees and customers alike abounded. Co-workers that either weren’t on the floor at the time or that were out-of-sight of the main room that I had shadowed with had big, beaming smiles on their faces and gave me high-fives or fistbumbs the next time they saw me.

Wow.

I felt so appreciated, so respected for the work that I had done and the interactions with customers that employees had watched me perform during the reverse-shadowing sessions. It was a strike of confidence and acceptance that I carried with me all the ride home.

I am official. Officially Apple.

How can I help you today?

Yesterday Apple and its carrier partners took pre-orders for more than 600,000 of Apple’s new iPhone 4. It was the largest number of pre-orders Apple has ever taken in a single day and was far higher than we anticipated, resulting in many order and approval system malfunctions. Many customers were turned away or abandoned the process in frustration. We apologize to everyone who encountered difficulties, and hope that they will try again or visit an Apple or carrier store once the iPhone 4 is in stock.

Next Thursday on release day is going to be a busy day!

Also, today Apple release iTunes 9.2 which includes the following iOS4-ready features:

• Sync and read books with iPhone or iPod touch with iOS 4 and iBooks 1.1
• Organize and sync PDF documents as books. Read PDFs with iBooks 1.1 on iPad and any iPhone or iPod touch with iOS 4
• Organize your apps on your iOS 4 home screens into folders using iTunes
• Faster back-ups while syncing an iPhone or iPod touch with iOS 4
• Album artwork improvements make artwork appear more quickly when exploring your library

iOS4 stand-alone upgrade will be available for current iPhone users on June 21. (Original iPhone [metal] is excluded and not all new features will be available for all models. More info here.)

Today marks the first time I will be working in an Apple Store while the WWDC keynote happens. This is where Steve usually makes new product announcements and this year’s anticipation I’d all about a new iPhone, rumored to be called “iPhone HD”.

The keynote starts at 1:00 Eastern so I’ll be on the floor helping customers while the liveblogging sites are doing their updates. I’m hoping someone will be upstairs checking these and coming down and keeping us updated.

~

All of the above was written on the way to work and I’m home now after my shift. It turned out that because we’re using iPads now at the concierge that we were able to follow the minute-by-minute on a webpage there, which was totally nice. It’s also nice to work with so many Apple geeks.

So the new iPhone 4 (as it’s being called) is out now and it’s identical to the one that Gizmodo bought a couple of months ago. And while there may not have been many surprises, it still looks pretty sweet. Although I’m not eligible for an upgrade by AT&T until February 2011 so it doesn’t look like I’ll be getting this phone anytime soon. And after February, I may as well wait the few months until June 2011 when iPhone 5 is announced.

One thing I find odd about the announcement is why weren’t the hard drives bumped up from 16-gig and 32-gig to 32-gig and 64-gig?

~

And happy 4th blog anniversary to me!

Here are some of the pieces I designed for Tiki 6. The Memorial Day Tiki party is hosted by friends Chris & Jeff at their beachhouse in Rehoboth. This year’s numbers of 6-6-6 almost took on a demonic theme before it was scaled back to “Are you a good tiki or a bad tiki?” The 6-6-6 comes from the sixth party, six is their house number and six o’clock was the party’s starting time.

The pieces are, clockwise from top left: back of t-shirt, cocktail labels, elevator sign (yes, the beachhouse has an elevator), front of t-shirt, back of invitation, front of invitation, “bad tiki” sticker sheet, “good tiki” sticker sheet. All work is original and created in Illustrator. Printing was done through Vista Print, with the exception of the elevator sign and cocktail signs which were printed using a home printer.

Tuesday I went over to Apple to sign my tax forms and all. It was great to go “backstage” into the employee-only area and see iPods stacked for purchase (no stock is kept on the showfloor). And the warm welcomes by employees coworkers was really nice too.

According to new Homeland Security standards, there’s a list of government-approved documents I had to bring with me to prove that I am actually me. I brought in my driver’s license and my passport but under close inspection it turns out my passport actually expired almost a year ago. Has it been that long since I went to Scotland? I guess so.

I was told I could not be processed until bringing in one of the other approved forms of identification and the only one I remotely had was a birth certificate, and I can’t remember seeing that in the past three or four moves. When was the last time I used it?

So I come home and tear apart all my filing cabinets and places where I’m hoping it resides. No luck.

In a bit of a panic, I go online and check how long it takes it obtain a replacement passport and it’s at least four weeks. And in order to get a new passport I need the (missing) birth certificate and a social security card. I don’t even remember ever having a social security card. I assume I had one at one point or maybe my Dad has my copy but regardless, I don’t have one. In order to get a replacement social security card, I need a passport and a birth certificate. The terrorists have won.

Luckily I was able to go online and order a birth certificate but it’s going to take 10-15 business days. Yaargh! I was worried this was going to delay my new employee training sessions this weekend but luckily my manager said he might be able to temporarily process me without it but that I’d need to show it eventually.

This whole worrisome story comes to a good ending this morning when I received my official email from Apple welcoming me as an employee. It directs me to an employee-only section of their website that allows me to set up my employee account. It’s a great way to set up all of that information concerning health care, benefits, 401(k), etc.

There are “My First Month” and “Going Forward” tabs but it won’t let me access them; I have yet to actually start my first day. I’m hoping that these information tabs will be unlocked after Saturday & Sunday’s all-day training sessions.

Yesterday’s in-store interview (#3) was a success! I am now a full-time employee of this company. Have you noticed how I’ve never mentioned the company by name? I thought it best to avoid googling caches (although I’m sure there’s about a billion for the A-word) and tying me to them, especially during the hiring process. I haven’t said anything derogatory but you never know who’s monitoring. But it probably doesn’t matter now that I’m hired unless I started bashing them. Which is unlikely.

Apple. There, I said it.

Unfortunately the position I’m hired for isn’t exactly the DreamJob I’ve been hoping and laboring for. It’s not the location I wanted (Georgetown) or the position I wanted (Creative). It is a Specialist position at the busy Pentagon City store, which I think was my fourth store choice because its busy and hectic nature of being set in a mall. But I’m not going to complain about it, it’s still with Apple and I’m happy with it. The P-City store is the highest-grossing on the East Coast, so it will be nice to cut my teeth there. And the store manager said that moving into a Creative position when one opens up is encouraged and transferring to another store is okay too. So I’m going to give this Specialist position a run for its money and move up from there. It won’t be the nice one-bus commute in the city (and above ground, too) that I had hoped for either. But again, I’m not going to really complain about that either. After all, it was DreamJob.

The pay is not that good though and that’s the one thing that is a little unsettling: it’s about half of what I was making at Grafik. While I was going to try and hang on to my part-time job at Evolve it now seems mandatory. I hope I can get the schedules of both jobs to fit each other.

Now, how would you like your discount?

Today in DreamJob news:

At 2:48 pm I get a call from the Pentagon City store. Odd, I’m thinking, since all the attention has been focused towards the opening of the new Georgetown store. I’m surmising that they’re pulling resources to get the new store open and this is their way of informing me.

After listening to the voicemail a few dozen times, and having a stiff rum & lemonade, I call back. It turns out the Georgetown store is full (their words—meaning fully staffed already) but they’re interested in me coming on at the Pentagon City store.

Now, the Pentagon City store is in a mall and it’s kinda tiny and always crowded and, at least one time when I was there, unbearably hot. But maybe it’s that high-volume hectic environment where it’s best to go in there and kick some ass.

Tomorrow’s appointment with the store manager (whom I spoke with on the phone) is at 3:00. I guess I’ll know by 4:00 then!

Well the “end of next week or the beginning of next week” officially ended today. This was the timeframe that my interviewers said I would have to hear back about the Georgetown job.

I sent an email to my contact at corporatino and received this response:

“The Georgetown store leader is making offers this week. As she is doing this herself for the entire store, it’s taking a little longer to get through to all final candidates. Please expect to hear from her by Friday of this week. Thanks for your patience!”

So I’ve got another couple of days of hoping then I guess. Good thing, because I was starting to lose the faith.

At the end of my DreamJob callback interview last week, this certain employer told me I would hear back from them “late next week or early the following week”. Hiring status was to be determined after the dreaded credit check, and then they would let all the potentials knows one way or another.

Today it is officially “late next week”, even more so than yesterday was. And I haven’t heard any word. This is not necessarily a bad thing but I’m a little anxious. Wouldn’t you be? Everytime the phone rings or the email goes bong I’m thinking “here we go, this is it”! But they’re not.

So now I guess it appears I will have to wait thru the weekend to find out any news. Drat!