Confessions Of A Guy Who Stood In Line 7 Hours To Buy An iPhoneConfessions Of A Guy Who Stood In Line 7 Hours To Buy An iPhone

I used to wonder what kind of person stood in line for the better part of the day to buy a product when it first became available. Now I don't have to wonder -- I am one. I spent most of Friday on line at the Apple Store in Fashion Valley Mall in San Diego. What kind of person does something like that? A really tired, bad-tempered person with aching feet.I thought I was prepared. I didn't think there'd be a line at all. I told my colleague Cora Nucci: "This isn't New York or San Francisco. People aren't going to line up to buy an iPhone. This is San Diego -- 98% of the people have to work, and the other 2% are surfing."

But I thought I might have to wait on line two or three hours, so I put together a survival kit. It included a Thermos of hot tea, a fistful of Kashi Bars, a bottle of water, hat, notebook, pens, camera, my first-generation iPhone, and earbuds. I posted the list to Twitter, and added that I would also bring a handgun and gas mask. I was kidding about that. IBTerri responded:

I arrived at the shopping center at 9 a.m. to find that the line stretched down the length of the mall, around a corner, past the Pizzeria Uno, around another corner, and along an exterior sidewalk to the Cheesecake Factory. The line had two switchbacks, where it doubled and tripled back on itself. Looked like there were about a thousand people waiting ahead of me.

I walked the line taking pictures. A security guard on a fake Segway rolled up and told me that no photography is permitted in the mall. This is an idiotic policy. Real terrorists don't take pictures of their targets, so the only purpose the policy serves is to annoy shoppers.

I did not talk back to the security guard. I simply did what my years of journalistic experience have trained me to do: Look stupid, and go take pictures somewhere else. Actually, I had the "looking stupid" part nailed before I became a journalist. I have a natural talent.

The first three hours on line were fun, like a big outdoor geek celebration. The people around me were friendly. Waiters and waitresses for mall restaurants came by with menus, offering to bring line-standers food. Apple Store staff brought out bottles of water and distributed them for free. My Twitter stream reflects the party mood:

At 9:55 a.m., a woman came by, offering to sell a spot at the front of the line. She'd been offered $80, and was looking for a better offer.

The guy directly in front of me nodded decisively, "My time is worth that much!" He asked me if I'd be willing to hold his place while he went to check it out.

He was gone a while. The rest of us discussed whether we should just let him back in, or try to sell him his old place in line. If a place at the front of the line was worth $80 or more, a place in the middle of the line should be worth $20. I'm not sure whether we were kidding.

We didn't see the guy again until he strolled by nearly 90 minutes later with his iPhone 3G purchase in hand. At the time, it seemed like he got a bad deal -- had to pay $80+ and still had to wait in line another hour and a half. But maybe it was a good deal after all; he would have had to wait another five hours to get his iPhone otherwise.

I had plenty of time later in the day to consider this strange custom of selling places in line, paying people to wait in line for you, and other questions of line etiquette. How did this evolve? How did a place in line become property to be bought and sold? Seems to me that the person selling the place in line isn't the only one with a stake in this -- everyone behind him has a stake, too. What if they all told the buyer to buzz off?

Someone named "obendega" responded: "You mean you aren't loving that soothing buzz saw?"

He was referring to some construction work being done near us at the mall while we were standing in line. The annoying racket of power tools definitely added to the Not Funness of the line-waiting experience. I hadn't mentioned the noise on Twitter, which meant obendega (whoever he was) had to be waiting in the same line I was in. But where?

I didn't know obendega -- still don't, don't even know his real name. I looked around to see who he might be, but I had no idea. So I Twittered my description to him, and a few minutes later saw him waving to me, about 100 people ahead of me on line.

Later, a few more people left, and I was directly in line behind the woman with the dog -- which, as it turned out, was not a chihuahua.