Over the weekend, I found myself passing by the Apple Store in the city and noticed that the Apple Vision Pro headsets were available for demo. With half an hour to kill, I thought, why not? I had no intention of buying one, and after the demo, that intention hasn’t changed. I might jot down some thoughts on the new shiny gadget later, but what I do want to talk about is the post-demo experience I had this morning that wasn’t so much weird as it was irritating and slightly creepy.
An email from Apple asking me how “Chloe” did.
I assume Chloe was the young woman who led me through the demo. She was fine, by the way. But it felt icky getting that email and being asked to rate her performance. I was so put out by it that I took 10 minutes to fill out the entire survey, maxing out all of her scores because, to be honest, why should anybody have to put up with this shit.
It's not just an Apple thing, of course. I've had these follow-up emails, we all have, from dozens, perhaps hundreds of businesses over the last couple of years. This one seemed particularly irritating and creepy because I did spend 20 or 25 minutes with ‘Chloe’ and if I wanted to talk to a store manager about her performance I'd have done so. I don't need to be email stalked afterwards for the feedback. It feels really fucking gross. I wish that retailers would stop doing this.