opa karl

I hired into Apple when I was 55, as an Apple Solutions Consultant, which was a position created to work out of specific CompUSA stores, which were having a hard time selling Apple product. That was 14 years ago. This was a high profile job, helping boost CompUSA's Apple sales, via training store personnel, and also selling Apple product through CompUSA. At one point, somewhere around 100 of the CompUSA stores had Apple employees in them, full time, and the ASC program was very successful. The store I was in was one of the lower volume stores, and CompUSA was starting its long term decline when Apple hired me, so the job only lasted two years, when the position in that store was eliminated, due to its inability to meet certain targets in Apple sales. No one replaced me full time, and the job went part time, and this was also when Apple was opening its own stores, so having CompUSA as a Mac ally was becoming less important to Apple.

I did other things for a few years, and applied again at Apple Retail in 2007, when I was 60 years old. Most people start there as part time employees, and have to work their way up to full time, if they want to do so. Within a few months, I was full time, after having set a store sales record, when the store was about five years old. I just retired from that store this spring, after having been the victim of a car/motorcycle accident (I was on the bike, and by all accounts, I shouldn't be here), which sidelined me for over two years. I am 69 now, and could have gone back, and was told so by store management and state market management, but I chose not to, because I still have walking and balance issues and can't be on my feet for more than a few hours at a time. 

Another coworker of mine just retired from part time work at the same store, after having been there almost 7 years, and he's 75. Another coworker is still there at somewhere around 60, and I have worked with more than a few people there who are/were well past their forties and into their fifties.

My point in this is that something doesn't smell right with this story. I know quite a few people at a half dozen stores, and the situation is the same; many of them are way past millennials, and they're doing everything from sales to the Genius Bar, and in between.Why this individual didn't get called back, one can only guess, but in my experience Apple is the most diverse company I've ever worked for, and as I mentioned, I've been around the block more than a few times. To extrapolate this gentleman's unfortunate experience out to an entire company doesn't hold water, but it sure seems to make for lots of speculation.

I'm always amused when someone predicts that Apple is, once again, dying, when they announce anything! The ad nauseam repetitions of "they're done innovating," and " it's not the same since Steve left," and "the end is near" are the hysterical whining of armchair quarterbacks who haven't got a clue as to what actually goes into running one of the still most profitable companies in the world, which still does more dollar per square foot sales than any other retailer, period! I've been fortunate enough to get 69 rides around the sun, and the last ten of them were working for the best retailer I've ever been associated with, bar none! Apple is a very demanding company to work for; it's not for the slackers (and they don't stay long, in any event, either because they can't handle it and leave on their own, or they're shown the door), but if one wants to put in the time and effort to grow and learn, job security, better pay than almost all retail, good benefits, and a damn great group of people to work with, make it all worthwhile. I recently retired from one of their fruit stands, and it was a fantastic way to end over 50 years of a varied work life!