A few years ago adults fought each other in the aisles of Toys R Us to get their hands on a Buzz Lightyear toy for their children. This Friday will see similar scenes in retail outlets around the world. This time though, the object of all the fuss, queuing and (possibly) violence will be a toy for adults – the iPhone 3G.

I skipped the first iPhone – it was a nice toy but to someone used to Nokia’s N Series it was more like a prototype than a useful smartphone. It lacked installable apps, 3G and GPS. The iPhone 3G, though, has all those things so this time I’ve decided to bite. Hopefully on Friday I’ll be the proud owner of an iPhone. I’ll have to queue early though.

Yesterday I decided to preorder an iPhone via the Carphone Warehouse website. Finding out via SMS Text News that their preorders were about to start, a kind of latent capitalist puppet inside me awoke – I had to preorder… now! I hit refresh at the site until the order button went live. I applied. A little later my order was cancelled “for security reasons”. Huh? Last time I checked my surname wasn’t Bin Laden. What could that possibly mean? I tried again. Once again the order was cancelled. Very odd.

Talking to Carphone Warehouse customer services I was told that it must be a problem with my Maestro card (very strange as no-one else has ever complained about it). I was told iPhone preorders had all been taken and I’d now have to queue up in the rain on Friday morning after all. The only silver lining was that as my credit check had been approved it wouldn’t take long to buy the phone…once I’d got to the front of the queue… if there were any left.

I was frustrated. I was angry. How could fate forsake me like this?!

And then that capitalist puppet inside me calmed down and went to sleep. Is it really the end of the world if I turn up at the shop on Friday morning, it’s queued round the block and I don’t get an iPhone? Half the world’s population would probably give their right arm to be in a position to get upset about a thing like that. Instead, they’re stuck worrying about if they’ll get their bucket of water back to home from the well safely, or if their kids will be okay at their first day of work in the sweatshop at the age of ten. These are hardships I can’t even begin to imagine coping with.

If I don’t get an iPhone on Friday, chances are there’ll be more stock on Monday or Tuesday. Being a few days late getting the latest ‘must-have’ gadget is the kind of hardship suffered by a society that’s lost its sense of perspective. So, as much as I want to get hold of an iPhone 3G, I won’t be worrying this week. I’ll be looking forward to the fun of seeing how long the queue is an hour before opening and capturing it on a Qik video to share with the rest of the world. My own little reportage from my local Carphone Warehouse.

Then, iPhone or not, I’ll head into work and be thankful I have a job that pays reasonably well and allows me to self-indulgently blog about inconsequential things during my lunch break. The iPhone will wait.

[Photo credit: Kyrion on Flickr]