Talk about an airhead.

Hey OP? Here's a tip. The more you yell at people in customer support, the less they want to help you. My mom worked for Directv and when people were complete assholes to her she would hang up on them and pretend the call got disconnected. Don't be a dick, it won't get you very far in life.

46 - when I worked in telecommunications, if anyone was a dick I would hang up. If I got the call again, I told them I hung up and would continue to do so whilst they were rude.

And if you do have to get people involved, yelling at them doesn't make them more inclined to solve your problems; they give less and less of a shit the more your voice starts raising at them.

Yeah I worked at a customer service desk at a store, and if you yell at us no matter how many times we tell you "We're doing everything we can" we do less and less to resolve your problem.

The button on the side, is it glowing?

OP probably won't find it and yell at someone again, don't encourage them.

Have you tried charging it?

OP said they'd just bought a new phone, so it probably just came like that. Still, it's one of the first things you check if you're having problems with a phone so OP totally deserved it. That said, the employees should've worked it out too...

He said he got a new phone but then found out his phone was on airplane mode so he didn't HAVE to buy a new one. Meaning his OLD phone was the one on airplane mode. Not his NEW one

There's the possibility that op turned it on airplane mode by accident. My aunt would somehow pull up the screen and put it on Do Not Disturb mode completely by accident and had no idea how she did it; she did this so many times that she knew to check the Do Not Disturb button if things weren't working right. Maybe op went to turn his wifi off/on again or turn up the brightness of the screen and accidentally turned airplane mode on. I also feel like Apple's help desk should've asked him to check his airplane mode; you think they would've been one of the first things they checked. With all that said, it's still not cool that op was flipping out on the customer service who was just trying to help. Fyl because we can all make mistakes like this, but ydi because you were freaking out on people that were just trying to help you.

Maybe the employees WOULD have worked it out if the OP wasn't yelling at them and berating them. There's no excuse for that. Chances are that if the OP had kept calm they would have fixed the problem in 2 seconds. When a customer starts screaming at you, you care less about solving their problem and just want to get them the f*ck out of your face. I'll never understand why some people think it's OK to be so disrespectful!

Berating employees is never acceptable.

That is exactly what I was thinking!!! When it is in airplane mode there is a big airplane in the top bar. Not that hard to figure it out.

Or putting it in the microwave to increase reception?

do iPhones do that?

Yeah, they do. If you try to use the Internet, it will prompt you to turn off airplane mode as well.