text: Verizon stores and their system of herding their customers must have been designed by some Machiavellian-type person who watches from afar, with hidden cameras placed in all locations, and watches what transpires inside the stores like some sort of \"Big Brother\" experiment in human behavior.\n\nWhen I walk into a Verizon Wireless store because my unfortunately-named Verizon Glyde (all I can think of is a personal lubricant, how about you? maybe I have a dirty mind...) with a touch screen no longer wants to be touched... the \"greeter\" scowls at me, tells me it's gonna be at least an hour and a half, and then adds my name to the bottom of the queue.  \n\nI instantly notice that it smells of excrement... and that, quite literally, the store is crawling with humans.  It's like a bus station.  There are sad-looking people on benches, huddled together for moral support, crying in the corner, and laying in a puddle on the floor.  I relegated myself to sit by a wobbly-looking display with outdated products, hoping I'd be left alone to wait out my sentence.\n\nI have rarely seen the likes of the despair that I saw in my two hours of waiting in the Verizon store.  I bore witness to two different women using Verizon phones, calling customer service in tears, bawling about how the reps at the store refused to help them. I should have taken this as a sign. I watched a person pick off a really large scab. I saw a really together-looking dude get to the point of a breakdown when a rep jumped another customer in front of him in the queue. I mean, there was almost a brawl. I saw three crickets, a spider and a roach... and this was all before my name was called.\n\nThe service rep could not, no, WOULD not, fix my phone.  He took one look at the Glyde and started to laugh. \"THIS is the worst phone Verizon ever produced.  I can't fix this thing.  I won't even be trying.  Sorry, girl.  You need to get yourself another phone.\"  Rep then proceeded to detail my options. A. Buy brand-new expensive phone. B. Buy pre-owned expensive phone. C. Be phoneless.  \"Surely you must have a clunky Zack Morris-style phone to donate to a damsel in distress!\" I protested.  No dice.  \"Not even a loaner until my next paycheck?\" Not a snowball's chance in hell.  \n\nIt's ever so obvious that I was never going to get my phone fixed, and no matter what was wrong with it, I was going to be told that I had no choice but to purchase an entire new phone.  I think it's more than a little messed-up to not offer your customers solutions and options instead of backing them into corners. I'm between paychecks, and couldn't justify paying the evil overlords of Verizon hundreds of dollars for another POS, so I am now incommunicado, and am totally bummed.