“Did you meet Steve Jobs?”

Apple employees, former and current, get this question a lot. My answer as an ex-employee? Yes… And I made an impression. But I’m not so sure it was a good one.

For context, I started at Apple in 2005. That’s post-iPod, pre-iPhone. (Gen Z, don’t ask me how life happened then. That’s an existential post I’m not prepared to write.)

About a year into working at the North Michigan Avenue store in Chicago, I was selected to participate in a 3-month corporate internship program in Cupertino. Part of this experience entailed live Q&As with senior Apple execs, including Steve.

In a small auditorium at 1 Infinite Loop, prior to Steve’s arrival, we were debriefed by someone in PR about what not to ask Steve — for our own good. The advice boiled down to, “ask whatever you want — at your own risk — because Steve won’t be shy about putting you in your place.”

A lot of awkward questions from fellow retail and college interns were followed by short, impatient answers from Steve.

Then, about 15 minutes before the scheduled end of the program, I started to get butterflies in my stomach. It was strange. I had no idea why I felt nervous — I most certainly didn’t have a question to ask. But there it was. I was definitely nervous. And when the woman from PR announced they would take one final question, it was practically an out-of-body experience as my hand shot into the air.

Steve called on me.

What I wanted to ask was, “what inspires you?”

And I did ask that. But, unfortunately, I didn’t stop there. Nervous, I kept rambling. I said something about how ideas sometimes come when people take showers or go for runs or —

He cut me off: “That’s bullshit.”

Chastened, I sat down, my cheeks an official color match for the red upholstery on the seats. I thought I had bumbled my one chance to interact with him.

But he continued.

“That’s bullshit. That’s not where ideas come from. I get ideas when things piss me off. When they don’t work like they should.” Then he paused and said, “Who here loves their mobile phone?”

A smattering of hands raised hesitantly. “I mean really LOVES their phone?” Some hands went down.

To the hands that remained in the air, he said, “That’s bullshit. Phones suck.” He proceeded to go on a rant about why. I recall thoughts on terrible design, the inanity of flip phones, general half-assed-ness, and more. (My words, not his.)

Then he said, “Who here loves their car?” Fewer hands raised this time. “I mean really LOVES their car?”

“That’s bullshit, too. Cars suck.” Another rant ensued. As I did not have a car, nor was a car anywhere in my near future, my brain did not retain even an approximation of this information.

Here’s the thing, though. Steve’s rants were the best part of the whole Q&A.

Steve was in his element. He was passionate. Life force was flowing through him and moving us in the audience. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for him to talk about phones with us BEFORE the iPhone was even announced. He couldn’t reveal anything when he was well on the way to solving a problem that would change the world as we know it.

Whether I made a good impression or not is debatable and, frankly, irrelevant.

If that’s what it took to witness a genius in his element revealing exactly how he makes a dent in the universe? I would ask again in a heartbeat. And I would happily drown that question in Awkward Sauce.

Anita Stubenrauch is an ex-Apple creative and the founder of Cause:Effect Creative, an agency that helps brands express visionary ideas with poetic power.