In the US, Sprint is making a laughing stock of itself by instructing staff to deny that it will begin selling the new iPhone 5 in October. Martyn Warwick wonders what is wrong with these people?
The unseasonably autumnal weather in the UK may have brought the British Silly Season to an abrupt and untimely end, but even though Labor Day is in the offing, some fabulously fatuous stories are still emerging from still sweatily summery US.
One of the best of the current crop is the "news" that whilst Sprint is known to all and sundry as being the third and next US operator to be allowed the astonishing privilege of selling the next exemplar of Jobsian utopia, the legendary iPhone 5, in October this year, the top management at the company are so paranoid about admitting the fact that they are instructing staff to deny it.
A Sprint-obsessed website, Sprintfeed, has revealed that the carrier has circulated an 'internal memo' to employees telling them to keep schtum if asked by subscribers about the pending availability of the greatest device ever invented and known to man.
The email, headed, "Action Required: Do Not Speculate about Sprint Getting the iPhone", refers directly to a report published in the Wall Street Journal saying that the operator has been selected by Apple to be the nation's third approved and accredited provider of the iPhone, after AT&T and Verizon.
The email exhorts staff. "If you are asked a direct question by a customer about Sprint getting the iPhone, you can simply say, 'Yes, I saw a few of those reports. I don't have any information to share. You may like to take a look at our website." Which, of course says sweet F. A.
What and double what? Can anyone tell me why the company should be so coy about admitting its good fortune? Are these people mad? Well. obviously they are.
And that's not all. This ludicrous corporate stupidity is compounded by a further diktat that Sprint employees, like the World War II codebreakers at Bletchley Park in the UK who cracked the Nazi's Enigma code and really had something worth keeping quiet about for 70 years, may not speak about the imminent arrival of the iPhone even to their family and friends. Presumably if the Sprint top brass discovers that any employee has done so, they'll be terminated with extreme prejudice.
It's a phone you silly sods. Just a phone. Get real and join the world the rest of us live in.
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