dapple5320

I worked in Apple Retail up until 2012 so things may be quite different now. When I was there, however, we were given what I would call above average pay for retail employees. Most retail employees were making between $8-$12 at the time while we were making between $13-$25 / hr depending on the position and experience. We also got very nice health benefits. I have not found health insurance that good with any other employer since then. I was also given the option of participating in a 401K match program (Apple would match up to 6%) and the option of buying Apple stock at a pretty steep discount each quarter (you could buy the stock at whatever the lowest price had been that quarter regardless of where it had risen to). I also got a pretty generous product discount (25% on one computer per year, 15% twice per year, and 10% on any product, any time).

Again, I don't know if those benefits still exist for new employees and I should clarify that part time employees were not eligible for all those benefits. That was just for full timers. But what was the same back then is that customers could be assholes. You'd have that almost every day. This issue comes up every few years it feels like with each new generation of retail employees. The stories are terrible. Getting spit in the face or berated by someone because they dropped their iPhone in water sucks. I'm just not sure what anyone would expect Apple to do about that. Any retail job is going to have that kind of nonsense, unfortunately. Not saying it's right. Just saying the company can't really do much to control for that. No company can. All you can do is choose how you will respond to it. I will say that in my experience with the assholes I dealt with, I mostly felt supported by my managers and felt that they were able to find a good balance between addressing customer concerns and supporting me in those situations. 

The management side of things is a different story but there too I would say that in a company as large as Apple you're bound to get some bad managers. Apple should do what it can to address that and either coach or fire those managers. But to expect that you'd never get a bad manager at Apple is putting the company on a pedestal. When I was there I had three different store managers and I can tell you that I liked 2 out of 3 of them. The 3rd one was why I chose to leave. 

This article is heavily weighted around the employee who committed suicide and their manager and it's a terrible story. My guess is this is more about a campaign to get that manager fired rather than a story about a toxic environment in the company overall. Maybe that manager should be fired but I don't think their behavior is reflective of all of Apple Retail.