Apple Stores in US to remain closed until early May
Apple in a memo to employees on Thursday said it plans to keep all U.S. retail stores closed until early May as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc on the nation.
Addressing employees directly, Apple SVP of Retail and People Deirdre O'Brien said the company is monitoring local conditions at both office and retail facilities on a daily basis and will decide to reopen stores only after "thorough, thoughtful reviews and the latest guidance from local governments and public health experts," reports Bloomberg.
In the interim, employees will continue to adhere to work-from-home protocols, which for retail workers like Geniuses includes remote tech support options. Corporate employees, like those based out of Apple Park, are also working remote to prevent spreading the virus.
Apple is developing flexible work options to ensure parents "have the support and the flexibility to adjust their schedules as needed," the note reads. As noted by O'Brien, many parents have found themselves in a predicament as they balance work with caring for children who are home from school as the crisis plays out. Apple is encouraging all employees to express any potential conflicts with management, the report said.
The Cupertino-based tech giant shuttered all branded retail outlets outside of Greater China on March 14 in a bid to protect customers and team members from the fast-spreading coronavirus. Initial plans were to reopen Apple Stores on March 27.
More recently, O'Brien in a memo last month said a revised timeline would see some Apple Stores open in the first half of April, but that, too, proved overly optimistic for U.S. locations.
Confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. continue to skyrocket, with more than 245,000 people testing positive for the disease as of Thursday. As the federal government scrambles to respond, state and local officials have called for quarantines and issued shelter-in-place orders to mitigate and manage fallout from the virus.
Addressing employees directly, Apple SVP of Retail and People Deirdre O'Brien said the company is monitoring local conditions at both office and retail facilities on a daily basis and will decide to reopen stores only after "thorough, thoughtful reviews and the latest guidance from local governments and public health experts," reports Bloomberg.
In the interim, employees will continue to adhere to work-from-home protocols, which for retail workers like Geniuses includes remote tech support options. Corporate employees, like those based out of Apple Park, are also working remote to prevent spreading the virus.
Apple is developing flexible work options to ensure parents "have the support and the flexibility to adjust their schedules as needed," the note reads. As noted by O'Brien, many parents have found themselves in a predicament as they balance work with caring for children who are home from school as the crisis plays out. Apple is encouraging all employees to express any potential conflicts with management, the report said.
The Cupertino-based tech giant shuttered all branded retail outlets outside of Greater China on March 14 in a bid to protect customers and team members from the fast-spreading coronavirus. Initial plans were to reopen Apple Stores on March 27.
More recently, O'Brien in a memo last month said a revised timeline would see some Apple Stores open in the first half of April, but that, too, proved overly optimistic for U.S. locations.
Confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. continue to skyrocket, with more than 245,000 people testing positive for the disease as of Thursday. As the federal government scrambles to respond, state and local officials have called for quarantines and issued shelter-in-place orders to mitigate and manage fallout from the virus.
Comments
Online is always there !
(also i dont think many would go even if they remained open... so its better to minimize expenses where possible, as much as possible )
This shall pass too.
Stores like Apple are going to have to reimagine how they run things for quite some time if they are able to reopen. It's not going to be as it was for a while.
240k people will die of anything.. given sufficient time frame.
Globally we have had 50k in what is a typical flue season length. (Dec-march) .... while flue has killed 500k in the same exact time......
Time will tell.... pun and no pun intended!
In the meanwhile fear mongering seems to be the fashion for this season.
There is another aspect to this that is not even being talked about much less practiced: PPE for US!
I just left my medical forum where doctors and nurses are telling hundreds of real life stories of being put into harms way without proper equipment by a system motivated by profit rather than human life. Plus it has been well documented in public sources. It is not fear mongering when one reports reality.
It is irresponsible for our government to fiddle while the virus overruns our healthcare systems. Fortunately now, after 4 months of warning and many thousands of needlessly lost lives, they are BEGINNING to take this seriously and value lives over the stock market.
I wish you all the best - Apple stores don't need to be open if you got one of the best online sales platforms out there.
This started and was announced to the world in 2019, not March. But I question how seriously "they are taking this": so far the only thing they have protected is the stock market. They have done nothing to protect our healthcare workers and even less to protect the public: No community testing, no contact tracing, protection supplies (masks, gloves, antiseptics) are impossible to find or buy and no nationwide policy on social distancing and masks. At this point China has done more for us than Trump -- they just shipped a thousand ventilators to NY. Also, private individuals and corporations like Apple are chipping in. From "them", nothing.
This is going to kill far, far more people than the flu. Stop making that asinine comparison.
And yes, mitigation actions affect everything. Which is why I said models will change, estimates will be revised, etc.
Trump doesn't know anything, as he's demonstrated on a daily basis since they started doing these pressers. He will declare victory no matter what happens, in tune with the way he's been rewriting the history of this outbreak every day. Mods: NOT getting political here, this is well documented and I'll take it no further.