My blackberry’s broadband service disappeared on me so I trekked to the suburbs¹ to the Sprint repair center.

I arrive, explain my problem, and I am told that unfortunately, my blackberry has to be reformatted. I suspect this is what happens whenever they don’t want to spend the time figuring out what the real problem is…but I shrug and ask them to save my contacts.

Since the reformatting would take 15-20 minutes, I fetched a magazine from OfficeMax and shuffled to the McDonald’s next door.

25 minutes and 1,500 calories later, I walk into the Sprint store and meet a very sad looking customer service rep.

Service Rep: “Uh, sorry, we didn’t do anything to the phone yet. I forgot to ask you for the phone password.”

Dandy.

So I got thoroughly read my magazines while waiting for the actual repairs to my phone….

After getting the blackberry back, I saw an email from Madre Jansen – she saw my foursquare posting about being at the Sprint store and wants me to call her before I leave the store so she can ask about our plan.

So I call her and hand the phone off to the customer service rep so my mother can quiz him about our plan. She eventually opted to upgrade it.

I left the store after little over an hour, which is better than the three hours it look last time…I also learned two things during today’s Sprint adventure:

1. I have developed the habit of absent-mindedly checking tweets, foursquare, and emails while waiting in line. Not being able to do that today felt, well, strange! Waiting in line was suddenly a HUGE waste of time instead of an opportunity to get caught up on social networking! How did I ever manage lines before?
2. The blackberry is actually a small computer. It took forever to redownload and customize everything again. It felt like getting a new laptop. The only saving grace of the update is that my phone no longer feels the need to reboot after I install programs, which saves a ton of time.

---

¹ Because apparently none of the Sprint stores in the Mall of America are repair centers…