Can you hear me now?

I had occasion to go into a Verizon store today.  The hotspot feature on my Droid has been acting up; I wanted to have one of their techs see if it needed a firmware update.  This particular Verizon store has been packed with customers every time I've been there.  When I pulled into the parking lot today, it was mostly empty... I was thinking, "This is my lucky day!"

Walking in the front door, I saw that the place was virtually empty... not a single person back at the tech service counter... um, not a single tech person, either.  I sales guy asked if he could help me... "Did I catch your service people at lunch?" I asked.

"We don't have service people."

"When did that happen?" I asked, pointing at the empty service counter.

"About 3 years ago," he said.  Apparently I was hallucinating when I went to the service counter last year?  Or, he was full of crap.

When I explained that the hotspot feature on my phone was occasionally turning itself off, he said he could look at it.

Really.  That's all he did: look at it.  "Yeah, it's not working."

"How would you know that?  It's not turned on."

"I turned it on," he said.

"What about the password?" I asked.

"I got that off your phone," he said.

"So, are you going to give me your password?"  I asked.

"What?"

"You scarfed my password.  What's yours?"  He didn't see the humor in that.  He also didn't do anything but look at my phone... and waste my time.  I took my phone back, went to the truck, and turned on the hotspot... yep, it was working.  Well, it was working when I went in there, so that shouldn't be a big surprise.  It works most of the time.

Before I left, I asked him where a person goes for Verizon service... "You'd have to go to a busy store.  But, there aren't any of those around here."

A fine company representative.  That store used to be busy.  When they offered service.  Hmmmm - you don't suppose...?