Ben Gilbert, reporting for Business Insider:

One longtime Apple store employee told Business Insider the battery replacement takes anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes. It may not sound like a lot of time, but for store employees, those replacements add up.

In the case of the employee we spoke with, even though they’re not in a flagship store in a major city, the staff is seeing anywhere from 15 to 30 battery replacements every day — that’s limited by the number of replacements that can be conceivably done in a workday by a single Apple Store technician. Their store “takes in more than we replace in a day,” they said.

This is exactly why I’ll wait until after Christmas to get my battery replaced. As annoying as it is to have these problems, I’d rather deal with it for another couple of weeks than have to wade through the crowds at the Apple Store. They’re already busy enough during the holidays, but this battery replacement program seems to be making things much worse.