Apple Store retail employee discusses what it's like to work there

Apple has over 300 stores...there are great stores and there are lousy stores.
While it may be a "retail" job, Apple is not a retail company.
For this reason it is not like most other retailers.

Apple is a top-notch company with very desirable products that sell themselves.
The employees inside an store are not there to sell merchandise but to provide a great experience. A great sales experience, a great learning experience and a great support experience.
It is really nice working for a company you can be proud of and not have to constantly make excuses for.

At the end he asks "Who wouldn't want to be a Genius?" The answer (and I was a Mac Genius for several years) is "No one really wants that job. It sucks."

Talk about getting abused by customers. Let me tell you this: Apple Customers are frequently rude, abusive, and frankly horrible to other people. I was threatened, cursed at, accused of lying to my face, screamed at, and actually had someone threaten to kill me because THEY had dropped their computer, and then they lied to my face about it. Dents in metal don't lie, but people do, and they get violent about it.

No one wants to be a Genius, believe me. It's a stressful, horrible, demeaning job that drives sober people to alcoholism. And it's not Apple's fault it's so bad, it's the customers.

Not everyone of course, the nice people outnumber the monsters, but the monsters drive you to drink.

So be polite to the Genius, he's just a schmoe trying to get by.

I spent nearly four years working for Apple as a Genius, and thankfully, much of what was described in the article, I was able to avoid. Granted, we had my own set of challenges we were expected to achieve.

(Disclaimer: These were Apple's or our store's expectations, and not any sort of guarantee to customers.)

The Genius Bar is expected to crank through as many appointments as humanly possible per day, often handling both an iPod/iPad/iPhone and a computer simultaneously. Ours being a relatively small store, two Geniuses assigned to the bar were expected to field as many as five customers at one time (more if a Family Room Specialist was available) while still providing that "one-on-one" interaction customers expect. Some sort of resolution is expected in 15 minutes or less. That may mean replacement of an iPhone or iPod, checking in a computer for repair, or resolving some minor software glitch. Any more than that, you begin to steal time from the next appointment and you stay behind the rest of the day. God help you if you have a grandmother with pictures of her grandkids, or those uber-paranoid users we call "tinfoil hat" people.

If the parts are available, repairs are expected to be completed the same day they are brought in - I got to the point where I could replace a logic board in a MacBook in under 20 minutes. The expectation in our store was two repairs per hour. That's fine if the next five computers are failed hard drives, but if you have to replace a MacPro logic board, you might as well clear your calendar and accept the inevitable - you aren't getting two an hour done today.

Make no mistake, I've worked for a number of retail companies, and Apple was one of the better ones. But it is retail, it is a job, and it is hard work. You aren't just there to look cool and hip, like some sort of iPod accessory... you're expected to produce, regardless of the position.

I guess I am "old school", the whole thing about staff being late, tardy or absent is still unreal to me.

I thought Apple came across ( in the article ) fine - pretty much as I would have guessed from paying attention to how they operate when I am in the store.

What I do find disturbing/sad is how bad customers can be. I've worked and managed retail, so I have seen my share. I have also seen plenty of rude, inconsiderate, over-privileged and arrogant customer behavior in the local Apple Store. Actually, I might stop by more often if it were not always so depressing. And, personally, I don't want to be associated with bad customers.

It would be great if they could offer a discount or something to good customers.

I have to say that Apple is pretty good to employees if not making goals etc gets you a talk to figure out why. I worked at Gap for a while and we had to push add on items AND the credit card. There was only for each of the three brands at the time and even if someone had a Banana Republic or Old Navy card, which works at Gap, you had to get them to get a Gap card also.

The company figured if you should be able to get one card per hour worked. They did give you credit for applications that were rejected, but it was still a crazy number to hit. I was the top dollar at my store every week for like six months, never late, no complaints from customers, at least two items for like 90% of my sales. I pitched the card every time and yet I was fired for not getting enough signups. Mostly because they had one of those other cards or they were non US tourists. But my manager didn't care about my 'excuses'.

uh.... the guy in the article says he avoids the "tech section of the newspaper..."

uh... newspaper? Is this for real? :P

Worked there almost 5 years and we did not have plain clothes security at our store. I imagine his/hers was a high traffic store or in a bad area.

No body is fired for not selling MobileMe. His statement that nobody sold it is false. I only worked around 20 hours a week, but found that I met all the goals almost all the time by not havnig a sales pitch, but just listening and pointing out what they might use it for.

No call, no shows and theft were the primary reasons people were fired.

Changing the language back is easy. Cmd+Ctrl+Eject. It restarts the computer. Deep Freeze means that the changes aren't saved, and when the computer is back up, it's in English.

Apple Retail Alum.

I used to work at the Apple Store, and everything stated was entirely accurate.