Buying an iPhone: Two store process?

The Apple Store employee seemed very nervous as he approached me, yesterday. I’d been standing in line for nearly three hours, as had everyone else, and he was about to tell me I couldn’t upgrade my wife’s Nokia phone to an iPhone 3G. After he tried to give me the reason, I told him, “Are you sure? Because I went to an AT&T store on Sunday, and the guy said since her Nokia line is already on my Family Talk plan, I could switch her to the iPhone, but would have to pay extra for the data plan.” The employee said they’re not equipped to do that at the Apple store, to which I replied. “Well, that’s my fault for not confirming it, so I won’t freak out on you.”

The employee was relieved. He glanced at the line behind me, and sighed, “Thank you.”

I felt bad for the guy. Waiting three hours for a phone, half of which were spent standing in the mid-day sun on a 90° day, will set anyone to boiling. Tell that person after the wait that he can’t get the phone, and you’ve got an explosive situation on your hands. I get why Apple’s doing the whole in-store iPhone 3G activation thing, but I don’t get why they didn’t have more 1 to 3 people at a time activating phones. I also don’t get why the Apple employees, a week after the launch, still aren’t better trained on how to handle anything but the most basic activations. And considering that they aren’t, I don’t get why Apple isn’t sending more phones to AT&T…because that’s where I had to go to complete my iPhone set-up.

Jump past the break to learn how to set up your iPhone your way, not Apple’s.