£8 per hour. Geez, ...blah blah... I feel sorry for the staff - I always joke and level with them but they can't say much. The lighting is nauseating. ......blah blah....
Someone holding a gun to their head saying, "work here or else..."?
New poster here, and I promise I'm not a troll. Hello to all.
Unfortunately this is all correct, and it has been their modus operandi from day one (which means it actually began under Jobs, though who knows? May have been Forestalls baby).
About ten years ago, I got hired twice at the local Apple store. I never accepted because of the low pay, which at the time was less than $7 an hour (though please note that geniuses make more than sales people). No, there are no sales commissions or potentials for advancement. I actually made more working part time at a call center than I would have for the richest company on earth (and got benefits, too!).
I always assumed this was to keep their frontline comprised of young, 'hip' staff that don't need to rely on the job or just don't know any better, though I have seen the occasional employee over 30 since that time.
One last thing (no pun intended): Apple retail is a separate division internally, you are NOT working 'for Apple' proper. If you have fantasies of climbing the Apple ladder, forget it. The two divisions do not intermingle.
Depending on a person's needs and temperament, it could be fun, but there are other non-professional jobs that offer more to their employees. Heck, you'd likely do better waiting tables or working for Geek Squad.
I had a very similar experience. Started in Syracuse NY in August 2006 while I was still in college, eventually transferred to Boston, and moved to an IT role at another company in August 2014. Nothing was perfect; there were great times and tough times. Ultimately, the people who were all about sales/numbers and not genuinely interested in just having a good experience for their customers and themselves were few and far between. Throughout my 8 years across different stores and regions, people were sought out and hired because of their personality, knowledge, and willingness to learn and do what was right for the customer AND their co-workers. I worked alongside people of a wide range of ages, from fresh out of high school to people in their 70s (and still going strong!).
When I started, the pay was higher than any other retail job in the mall, short of commission-based ones where the customer didn't matter. We were never told to "upsell" unless it was legitimately better for the customer. If someone was looking for something we didn't or couldn't offer, I'd point them to Best Buy or Circuit City. Why sell something to a customer that will just have them come back disappointed or angry at us? I've had people come in and say "I have X amount of money. Sell me on this." And I'd end up saving them money with a better solution than the most expensive computer with bells and whistles that they would never need or use.
As for advancement, Retail and Corporate are pretty tough to jump across, but they do offer career experiences and other roadmaps to help get you where you want to go. Realistically, this leaves tens of thousands of people vying for a handful of corporate opportunities. You're better off leaving the company and coming back with other experience.
As for the Forestall reference, I think it was more of a John Browett thing. I remember there being a hiring freeze and slashed hours for part-timers, and fewer opportunities for overtime, even when it made more sense to work an extra hour or two to help out. For me (and most people I worked with in different markets), eventually it was the retail hours and working on holidays that led to us leaving the company more than any issues we had with the company itself or the way it was run. There are certain things you'll face with any retail environment that will be cons no matter how cushy the job or company.
I never thought I'd work in retail as long as I did, but it was a genuinely fun place to be and for all the things about it that annoyed me or I disliked, I don't regret it at all and it's gotten me to where I am now, which is not bad at all.
I don't agree with the slant of this article, but that aside… working at an Apple store is a few notches up from McDonald's. For almost everybody, it is not a career. Yes, you might make store assistant manager someday, but what do you expect beyond that?
This is what I love about a free: you get to plot your own destiny. Put yourself in the best position for career advancement, if that's what you want.
And by the way, applying to work at any high-profile company means you'll make less money and compete like crazy for the job. To see what I mean, try getting hired by Disney.
No job, customer, or employee is perfect. No can't make 100% of the people happy. It's just impossible. If you don't like the job, or pay, leave!!!. You could be another group pricing yourself out of a job.
Why do so many people these days think they should get high pay, lots of benefits, and not work too hard for a zero skill job a monkey could almost do? What will end up happening is a few peyote will get the higher pay and most everyone else replaced by a robot. The industry is slowly working too that. When did it first start?. Elevators? Pumping your own gas?. Self check out lanes, etc. Jobs disappearing!!!
This is just another example of the hypocrisy in the Apple brand. Which is synonymous with American wealth and success, yet is produced packaged and supported on substandard wages. But hey at least you get a free Mac or something. It's definitely the American way.
Why do so many people these days think they should get high pay, lots of benefits, and not work too hard for a zero skill job a monkey could almost do?
We need to begin mass replacing all whiny, self-entitled employees across many different types of businesses and replace them with either robots or monkeys.
These people are a joke, and anybody who has a low wage, low skill job may soon find themselves out of a job completely, if they get too uppity.
This is just another example of the hypocrisy in the Apple brand. Which is synonymous with American wealth and success, yet is produced packaged and supported on substandard wages. But hey at least you get a free Mac or something. It's definitely the American way.
The American Way to me (as a Canadian) is if you work hard and put in the effort you will be successful.
If you sit on your ass with a sense of entitlement then don't expect to get too far. And don't fucking whine to me about how life has treated you.
As someone who was at one point in life, homeless - and now has a family and makes a salary around 6x minimum wage, I get seriously pissed at lazy people who seem to think the world owes them a living.
The American Way to me (as a Canadian) is if you work hard and put in the effort you will be successful. If you sit on your ass with a sense of entitlement then don't expect to get too far. And don't fucking whine to me about how life has treated you.
*gasp*! That’s racist; how dare you! Wait, no, it’s sexist! Because women... oh, wait, they make more for the same work... Okay, then, it’s classist! You must give 90% of your income in taxes! Never mind the legality of the passage of the 16th Amendment!
as a Canadian
I’m so sorry. I can’t even imagine not having freedom of expression.
Why do so many people these days think they should get high pay, lots of benefits, and not work too hard for a zero skill job a monkey could almost do?
We need to begin mass replacing all whiny, self-entitled employees across many different types of businesses and replace them with either robots or monkeys.
These people are a joke, and anybody who has a low wage, low skill job may soon find themselves out of a job completely, if they get too uppity.
And then who will buy the 'low wage', 'low skill' products?
BI: How do the staff internally talk about that? The retail staff can’t afford the products. BI: But it’s still the case that the majority of the people working at the store simply cannot afford the products on a regular basis. BI: Do staff talk about how ridiculous it is to work for Apple and not be able to buy anything? BI: Do Apple employees regard this as political in any way? Because this is how inequality works. You’re selling devices worth thousands every day and you’re not being paid enough to live in a one-room flat near the store.
Yes, definitely a case of framing the questions to elicit a desired response, but I wouldn't expect anything more from the click-driven online press these days.
The interviewers reasoning is biased simply because it applies to just about every retail chain in every country.
How many car salesmen at Lexus can actually afford to buy a Lexus?
How many retail staff at Harvey Nichols can afford to buy their clothes at Harvey Nichols?
How many estate agents can actually afford to buy the houses they sell?
And as for being able to afford to live near an Apple store? Has this idiot seen where Apple stores are built? How much does this journalist (and I use the term loosely) think you'd have to earn to live anywhere near an Apple outlet? About £100,000 a year I reckon.
I think this article really leads to a much broader question than the relative wealth and happiness of Apple's retail staff; the real question is, what can we do to get professionalism and integrity back into journalism.
Good point. Ever been to a fancy restaurant? Some of those servers and bartenders are there for decades! What about financial people who do wealth management for the 1%? Envy will not get you far in any form of service business. There are jerks in every job. Whiny patrons, ungrateful patients, entitled complainers.
All folks should know of Fundamental Attribution Error. Per Wikipedia it "is the tendency for people to place an undue emphasis on internal characteristics (personality) to explain someone else's behavior in a given situation rather than considering the situation's external factors." You don't know what a person has been through and you have to be optimistic and open to the idea that they don't mean to be mean. You have to be Panglossian, however self-delusional, to survive in that field – it's not for everyone.
I find Business Insider news are biased against Apple. I also find Forbes's news do the same thing. I think this kind of news receive a lot of clicks and it is good for their business. On AI website, this article received plenty of comments.
Even if I assume that the article tells the truth, I don't find it surprising. In my opinion, the world is very competitive and capitalism enables this. In every company, Apple is not an exception, there are some employees are not happy and not treated fairly. Supervisors have their favorites and constantly support them. Supervisors choose their favorites not always based on their skills. Some of them just close friends or even having an affair with the supervisors. Companies are always interested in spending less money and get the more work done. This is the point that companies treat people not as human. And guess what, the system works.
I believe if you change the article from Apple to Samsung or any company, story still fits. This is just the way it is. I remember Apple ones talked about diversity among its employees. Color, religion etc. This sounds very good and it is good for business. This doesn't mean all those people are selected to work based on their skills but their difference.
As an Apple customer, I have always satisfied with the service. I am sure some stores functioning better than others but in the end I got what I needed. And it is impossible to make everyone happy.
The problem is that Apple Stores use and require highly skilled people for their stores, yet consider it's fine to pay them like unskilled retail labor. No other brand would be able to pull this off; they can do it because so many people adore them, and they take advantage of it. Not very nice.
IMO, no one can live anywhere near London on £8 an hour. In fact, no one could live anywhere near London on 3x that rate. London is so expensive that even executives who I've known have had to move hours away. But even with monthly passes, the commuter lines and London Underground are so expensive that you need decent pay just to pay the commuting costs. I'm actually surprised they can pay that little in London.
This isn't just London. Unless you're already in a rent controlled or rent stabilized apartment or your family owns a condo or coop that they bought decades ago, no middle-class person can afford to live in Manhattan either. There are no cheap places to live anymore - even slummy apartments would go for $3000 a month and the boroughs aren't much better. The only reason I can afford to live in a borough of NYC is because I bought my last place in 1990. In any new building almost anywhere in the five boroughs, even studios go for $600K.
It's hard to say whether unhappy Apple employees have legitimate gripes or are lazy people who like to complain. It's probably a combination of both.
I've only had good experiences at Apple stores and in the past, Apple did frequently go beyond what they were obligated to do, although I think they probably do that less often today as they probably enforce the "official" rules more. If the employees are unhappy, they don't show it.
My daughter had a laptop and a baby in the house pushed the screen back and broke the hinges. The machine worked, but the screen needed to be supported. But then the screen stopped working, apparently due to a bad video card or bad connection. She brought it in just to have them fix the video as they said it wasn't worth fixing the entire thing (for which they quoted a price that was almost the price of a new machine). She got it back and they had fixed the entire thing. She called me up in a panic thinking they were going to charge her the full original quote. They charged her nothing.
My son-in-law had a G4 tower in which the power supply kept failing. After the third failure, he told them that if it failed again, he wanted the machine replaced. (I don't know why the installation of a new power supply didn't solve the problem, but it didn't). It did fail again, but by the time it did so, the G5 had come out and Apple gave him a G5.
While still under warranty, my MacBook Pro's optical drive began to fail. It would play music, but not DVDs. I brought it in and demonstrated this. The "expert" said the machine had to be checked with a new account. I showed him I had already set that up. He said, "you obviously know what you're doing" and said they would replace the drive, but it would take two days. I begged him to try and do it faster. I had brought the machine to Apple very late one night. When I woke up the next morning, I already had a message that the machine was repaired and I could pick it up.
Over the years, I had bought two iPhones that had problems: one wouldn't charge fully and the other lost about 1% per minute. They replaced both instantly.
So for all those reasons, Apple has my loyalty. The only other company that has even come close is OPPO (they make high-end Blu-ray players).
I think that you can get great service from Apple if you stay calm, be nice and act intelligently. Why would any employee give anyone good service if they have an attitude or walk in with a sense of entitlement. The night I was in the store with the DVD drive problem, a customer was totally enraged because she had forgotten her password and Apple couldn't help her, aside from possibly reformatting the machine. She kept on insisting that it was ridiculous that Apple couldn't figure out her password. She simply would not listen when Apple employees tried to explain the security rationale and she just kept on getting angrier and angrier.
When I walk into an Apple store (and even though i'm an older guy who they might not be able to relate to), the employees have always been very friendly and I'm always asked if I want any help (but not in an annoying way). Considering the pay, I'm sure there are some employees who don't know the details of the products as well as they should, but overall, I find the service to be quite good whereas in almost every other retail environment, I walk out either annoyed or aghast at how badly the employees are trained. In a big box electronics store, I don't want any of the employees anywhere near me.
Advancement is a challenge in many businesses - it relates to the number of positions available. There is a lot of competition for those spots (internal and external). You have to compete to "win" that spot. You need to put yourself in the mind of the manager of that spot & what would they be looking for.
Where I am, there are many people who have been good, solid employees. They do their jobs well - the company needs people like them in those jobs. But they expect that simply doing this for years entitles them to a promotion (and there are level promotions that they often will get like going from 1-2-3, and raises that come with cost-of-living adjustments and some merit increases). I have tried to council them, that in order to advance up further, they need to do things like move into different positions in the company, take a role in a different country, jump to be a prime on a very demanding project, or even go to another company to get different experience and then come back. Almost no one does...but they still complain (a little) that they aren't getting promoted.
The problem is that Apple Stores use and require highly skilled people for their stores, yet consider it's fine to pay them like unskilled retail labor.
Who are you to decide how much someone is paid? That’s the market’s job.
The problem is that Apple Stores use and require highly skilled people for their stores, yet consider it's fine to pay them like unskilled retail labor. No other brand would be able to pull this off; they can do it because so many people adore them, and they take advantage of it. Not very nice.
Comments
When I started, the pay was higher than any other retail job in the mall, short of commission-based ones where the customer didn't matter. We were never told to "upsell" unless it was legitimately better for the customer. If someone was looking for something we didn't or couldn't offer, I'd point them to Best Buy or Circuit City. Why sell something to a customer that will just have them come back disappointed or angry at us? I've had people come in and say "I have X amount of money. Sell me on this." And I'd end up saving them money with a better solution than the most expensive computer with bells and whistles that they would never need or use.
As for advancement, Retail and Corporate are pretty tough to jump across, but they do offer career experiences and other roadmaps to help get you where you want to go. Realistically, this leaves tens of thousands of people vying for a handful of corporate opportunities. You're better off leaving the company and coming back with other experience.
As for the Forestall reference, I think it was more of a John Browett thing. I remember there being a hiring freeze and slashed hours for part-timers, and fewer opportunities for overtime, even when it made more sense to work an extra hour or two to help out. For me (and most people I worked with in different markets), eventually it was the retail hours and working on holidays that led to us leaving the company more than any issues we had with the company itself or the way it was run. There are certain things you'll face with any retail environment that will be cons no matter how cushy the job or company.
I never thought I'd work in retail as long as I did, but it was a genuinely fun place to be and for all the things about it that annoyed me or I disliked, I don't regret it at all and it's gotten me to where I am now, which is not bad at all.
Why do so many people these days think they should get high pay, lots of benefits, and not work too hard for a zero skill job a monkey could almost do? What will end up happening is a few peyote will get the higher pay and most everyone else replaced by a robot. The industry is slowly working too that. When did it first start?. Elevators? Pumping your own gas?. Self check out lanes, etc. Jobs disappearing!!!
These people are a joke, and anybody who has a low wage, low skill job may soon find themselves out of a job completely, if they get too uppity.
The American Way to me (as a Canadian) is if you work hard and put in the effort you will be successful.
If you sit on your ass with a sense of entitlement then don't expect to get too far. And don't fucking whine to me about how life has treated you.
As someone who was at one point in life, homeless - and now has a family and makes a salary around 6x minimum wage, I get seriously pissed at lazy people who seem to think the world owes them a living.
I’m so sorry. I can’t even imagine not having freedom of expression.
All folks should know of Fundamental Attribution Error. Per Wikipedia it "is the tendency for people to place an undue emphasis on internal characteristics (personality) to explain someone else's behavior in a given situation rather than considering the situation's external factors." You don't know what a person has been through and you have to be optimistic and open to the idea that they don't mean to be mean. You have to be Panglossian, however self-delusional, to survive in that field – it's not for everyone.
Even if I assume that the article tells the truth, I don't find it surprising. In my opinion, the world is very competitive and capitalism enables this. In every company, Apple is not an exception, there are some employees are not happy and not treated fairly. Supervisors have their favorites and constantly support them. Supervisors choose their favorites not always based on their skills. Some of them just close friends or even having an affair with the supervisors. Companies are always interested in spending less money and get the more work done. This is the point that companies treat people not as human. And guess what, the system works.
I believe if you change the article from Apple to Samsung or any company, story still fits. This is just the way it is. I remember Apple ones talked about diversity among its employees. Color, religion etc. This sounds very good and it is good for business. This doesn't mean all those people are selected to work based on their skills but their difference.
As an Apple customer, I have always satisfied with the service. I am sure some stores functioning better than others but in the end I got what I needed. And it is impossible to make everyone happy.
This isn't just London. Unless you're already in a rent controlled or rent stabilized apartment or your family owns a condo or coop that they bought decades ago, no middle-class person can afford to live in Manhattan either. There are no cheap places to live anymore - even slummy apartments would go for $3000 a month and the boroughs aren't much better. The only reason I can afford to live in a borough of NYC is because I bought my last place in 1990. In any new building almost anywhere in the five boroughs, even studios go for $600K.
It's hard to say whether unhappy Apple employees have legitimate gripes or are lazy people who like to complain. It's probably a combination of both.
I've only had good experiences at Apple stores and in the past, Apple did frequently go beyond what they were obligated to do, although I think they probably do that less often today as they probably enforce the "official" rules more. If the employees are unhappy, they don't show it.
My daughter had a laptop and a baby in the house pushed the screen back and broke the hinges. The machine worked, but the screen needed to be supported. But then the screen stopped working, apparently due to a bad video card or bad connection. She brought it in just to have them fix the video as they said it wasn't worth fixing the entire thing (for which they quoted a price that was almost the price of a new machine). She got it back and they had fixed the entire thing. She called me up in a panic thinking they were going to charge her the full original quote. They charged her nothing.
My son-in-law had a G4 tower in which the power supply kept failing. After the third failure, he told them that if it failed again, he wanted the machine replaced. (I don't know why the installation of a new power supply didn't solve the problem, but it didn't). It did fail again, but by the time it did so, the G5 had come out and Apple gave him a G5.
While still under warranty, my MacBook Pro's optical drive began to fail. It would play music, but not DVDs. I brought it in and demonstrated this. The "expert" said the machine had to be checked with a new account. I showed him I had already set that up. He said, "you obviously know what you're doing" and said they would replace the drive, but it would take two days. I begged him to try and do it faster. I had brought the machine to Apple very late one night. When I woke up the next morning, I already had a message that the machine was repaired and I could pick it up.
Over the years, I had bought two iPhones that had problems: one wouldn't charge fully and the other lost about 1% per minute. They replaced both instantly.
So for all those reasons, Apple has my loyalty. The only other company that has even come close is OPPO (they make high-end Blu-ray players).
I think that you can get great service from Apple if you stay calm, be nice and act intelligently. Why would any employee give anyone good service if they have an attitude or walk in with a sense of entitlement. The night I was in the store with the DVD drive problem, a customer was totally enraged because she had forgotten her password and Apple couldn't help her, aside from possibly reformatting the machine. She kept on insisting that it was ridiculous that Apple couldn't figure out her password. She simply would not listen when Apple employees tried to explain the security rationale and she just kept on getting angrier and angrier.
When I walk into an Apple store (and even though i'm an older guy who they might not be able to relate to), the employees have always been very friendly and I'm always asked if I want any help (but not in an annoying way). Considering the pay, I'm sure there are some employees who don't know the details of the products as well as they should, but overall, I find the service to be quite good whereas in almost every other retail environment, I walk out either annoyed or aghast at how badly the employees are trained. In a big box electronics store, I don't want any of the employees anywhere near me.