I don’t think Steve Jobs would have tolerated that bullshit. He understood the customer better than that. Actually, this was his main talent.

Right, that’s literally what cargo culting means.

It’s making a surface level imitation of behaviors, without understanding the underlying reasons, hoping for the same effect.

So maybe Jobs might have made experiences that looked superficially similar to this, but he would’ve done it in a manner that actually understood the customer.

How meta. It appears I’m guilty of cargo culting the phrase “cargo cult”, since I superficially use it to describe really any modern form of tech fad following, all in an attempt to be hip with “modern” terms.

I think it’s more than that; I suspect that they have pretty onerous internal store processes about inventory control and device transfer to minimize employee theft.

And yet they were still one of the companies most noted for their onerous 'unpaid bag check' stuff.

At some point you either have to point to their inventory system being a problem, and/or them having a very low trust view of their employees, and it's the customers who get to waste their time as a result.

Or perhaps they know what Costco and Walmart and every other store knows: “Increased dwell time correlates to increased sales.” I suspect that waiting for the “Ferrari Experience” is a side show to the very real effect that the longer you spend in their stores, the higher affinity you will have for their products, during that visit or future visits.

Surely that only works if you have a pleasant experience and linger willingly. Then you develop positive associations with the store and the products.

If you have a negative experience from being forced to wait, then that's a different animal. How many of us relish the idea of visiting the DMV after previously experiencing long lines?