get serious

Deirdre has worked at Apple for 30 years. She was promoted to Retail and People from Operations, having actually started out in shipping/receiving at Apple in the early 90's before Steve's return. I do admire her growth from the trenches that instilled her with a people perspective which was sorely needed when she was promoted.

Apple Retail has come along way in the 15 years I've been involved. Way back employees often didn't get their schedules until one or two days before the new work week. "Needs of the business" was the reasoning when in reality it was overloaded store leaders and short (read cheap) staffing. Store Leaders were still manually writing schedules up until 2017 in stores with 100+ employees. Retail was the redheaded stepchild of Apple until the battery replacement program when tens of millions of batteries had to be replaced. Corporate then began to realize the power of personal customer service. Apple has come a long way and are way better than a lot of employers. That said they've been weak at store leadership training. Apple is about experiential training and learning from mistakes. When managing people those mistakes impact peoples lives. If it weren't for employee's dedication to the Apple mythos their problems would be much worse.

Pretty safe way to get your name in the news. Kudos to his publicist.

Beats said:

It’s insane how much work Apple has to do to invent the first iPhone. Swiping, scrolling and pinch-to-zoom were insanely great innovations.

Only for Android to come along and copy all the hard work. Imagine how that felt?

Imagine how the inventor of the wheel has to feel.

Apple retail employees, including Part time, employees do get benefits. Pretty nice ones. Sick play, vacation pay, stock purchase plan, 401k, products discounts personal and family/friends. Also healthcare  and life insurance. Tuition  subsidies. And more. Pretty darn good for retail and best I’ve ever had in 30 years of working in the world. 
As for opportunities - they are there, but I think many employees over estimate how many opening there are. Many new employees have dreams of working in Cupertino.  With  100 to 300 employees per store and 500 stores there are more retail employees than in all of Cupertino. The road to corporate is riddled with unqualified people that full of themselves.