Apple Stores’ Army, Long on Loyalty but Short on Pay

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/business/apple-store-workers-loyal-but-short-on-pay.html?_r=1&hp

by why-el • 14 years ago

88 64 14 years ago

nytimes.com

nn2• 14 years ago

Nothing new. As usual the faithful are the suckers.

briandear4• 14 years ago

How much is that Best Buy job paying these days?

nanijoe2• 14 years ago

For me , here's the key paragraph from the article:

"By the standards of retailing, Apple offers above average pay — well above the minimum wage of $7.25 and better than the Gap, though slightly less than Lululemon, the yoga and athletic apparel chain, where sales staff earn about $12 an hour. The company also offers very good benefits for a retailer, including health care, 401(k) contributions and the chance to buy company stock, as well as Apple products, at a discount."

briandear4• 14 years ago

Right. If employees want a "cut" of the profits, they can get that cut by buying stock. They're also getting health insurance, 401k.

WalterSear6• 14 years ago

ESPP won't net you more than pocket money at any company I've ever worked or heard about.

glhaynes• 14 years ago

They just upped the discount on Apple hardware, much to the delight of the employees I know: http://9to5mac.com/2012/06/20/apple-starts-500-off-macs-250-...

itg• 14 years ago

And a 25% pay increase. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-21/apple-retail-store-...

toyg2• 14 years ago

For comparison, companies like Oracle and IBM don't offer "the chance to buy company stock" even to senior techies and consultants, nor do they offer any real discount on their own products anymore.

WalterSear6• 14 years ago

Except a cursory google search shows that they do, just like every other tech company.

"Employee Stock Purchase Plan Oracle's Employee Stock Purchase Plan lets you purchase Oracle common stock at a discounted market price."

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/careers/college/benefits/...

"Employee Plan Account Access If you hold shares in the IBM Employees Stock Purchase Plan, please use the Employee Plan Members site to access and manage your holdings. ESPP participants will also to able to view and transact on their registered IBM common shares that are not held in the ESPP. Instructions for ESPP login access are on this page."

https://www-us.computershare.com/investor/default.asp?bhjs=1...

DannyBee• 14 years ago

When i worked at IBM 6 years go, there was absolutely an employee stock purchase program. I would be highly surprised if this had changed.

yummyfajitas• 14 years ago

Also note that Lululemon is a fairly special case - most people who work there have significant athletic skills in addition to normal sales ability. Sales staff often do stunts like yoga performances in the store window, etc.

(My sister, also a crossfit instructor, was a fairly typical Lululemon employee.)

The idea to convince upper class soccer moms that the only thing preventing her from doing this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loszrEZvS_k is the lack of $85 yoga pants.

toyg2• 14 years ago

That might be the case in the US, i can assure you nobody outside the US can access those programs today (and even among US employees, last i checked, most were not allowed). Considering the amount of people employed abroad by these two...

Shivetya• 14 years ago

Oh hell am I going to step into it.

Uh, its retail job. No one there creates the products they sell. Better yet, its not a hard sale. I would bet the majority of people entering an Apple store are there to buy something, provided they can afford it.

While some could and can make a living off of these jobs I see them as a stepping stone. As in, I would be forever fascinated by how these product I sell and obviously like are made, the design, the programming. So I would probably gravitate to learning the skills necessary to move into that line of work. Some may see this as a guide towards starting their own business, how do you market your product, present it, interact with people.

Still its not a job that requires any real education. It simply requires you to remember some product information, some tricks and tips, and not be a douchebag to other people, namely your co workers and customers.

They sell high priced products that are sold in large numbers, of course the numbers will be distorted. I really dislike articles like this because not all jobs within a company have the same value. When you have a product that nearly sells itself it kind of tells me who deserves more money - hint they are not at the store.

emmapersky2• 14 years ago

Have you ever worked in retail? I suspect not given your condescending attitude towards the skills retails works need. Exceptional customer service (which is what Apple Stores used to have, I think it's dropped off in recent years) requirers exceptional interpersonal skills, and is not something that anyone can just turn on, it's a skill - sure not one you learn through the traditional education world, but a highly valuable one.

ryanwaggoner• 14 years ago

Sorry, but no. I have worked retail, as have many of my friends and family. It's a low skill job, which is why it pays what it does and is done by armies of teenagers.

WalterSear6• 14 years ago

I've worked retail. This just isn't the case.

ghshephard2• 14 years ago

As in all things free-market driven, value is a function of supply and demand. The reality is the supply of people capable working in a retail, direct sales, or service position is sufficiently large in comparison to the companies requiring such employees, that the negotiating position is in the hands of the companies.

There is never any absolute value to any position, nor any value judgements about the people in those positions - there is simply a (dynamic) supply curve, a demand curve, and the intersection thereof.

Tragically - skills play less a role than what one might think. I am constantly embarrassed to discover the salary differential between what I make as a Network Engineer/Technical account manager and what my friends who are particle physics PHD graduates at SLAC make. (If it's not clear, the skill/education required to be a particle physicist exceed that of a network engineering manager. But the network engineering manager makes somewhat more money in the valley.)

Edit: Also - it's important to differentiate skills that are acquired/developed, (I.E. such as understanding the behavior of Muons, or quickly grokking an OSPF schematic) versus those that are simply attributes of being a nice person. I'd suggest that a lot of retail positions can be taught in less than a couple weeks (indeed, the Apple training takes place over two weeks) - whereas other skills take many years to learn.

azakai2• 14 years ago

> I really dislike articles like this because not all jobs within a company have the same value.

Did you read the whole article? That part about which jobs have value was mainly just in the beginning. The main parts of the article are about how motivated people are to work at Apple, how they foster that, and a lot of interesting details about Apple's retail outlets and what it is like to work at them.

Spooky23• 14 years ago

I sold $350k-$1.2M / month when I worked at CompUSA in college (late 90s). I averaged $10/hr jan-september, about $18 november/december.

I was usually ranked 3 out of 100 salespeople. The rest made $6.60/hr.

I wasn't being exploited, and neither are the folks at the Apple store.

orbitingpluto• 14 years ago

I take it you're an exceptional salesperson.

But the problem with your argument is that most people aren't exceptional. "Most people" is the very definition of normal. And normal people deserve a living wage, especially if they're working for the most profitable company in history.

seunosewa• 14 years ago

Nobody deserves anything.

briandear4• 14 years ago

When you are an input, you will never get rich. Apple store employees are not tricked into the job. They are promised x and they get x. If they don't like it, they can go work for a Microsoft store. Or, they can stop complaining and create something themselves. Apple has created so many jobs, not just at Apple, Inc., but with the entire economy that has developed as a result of their products.

Perhaps the NY Times ought to be criticizing General Motors for stagnant growth and job losses rather than Apple who is actually doing something good for the economy. I think that the NY Times is just jealous -- after all, Instagram is worth more.

How many jobs has the NY Times created lately?

They find it easy to attack Apple, but seem to be sleeping when it comes to companies like Solyndra and Fiskar taking millions of taxpayer dollars and effectively wasting them. Apple is a net positive for the US economy, but the NY Times doesn't care about that -- it's trendy to attack Apple.

Foxconn, for example, makes stuff for HP and many other consumer hardware companies, yet it's always Apple that gets the worm from the media.

Nonsense. That's all this is. Linkbait rivaling Business Insider.

We can criticize Apple for many things, but job creation and economic value is not one of them.

jrockway2• 14 years ago

Your points are worth making, but your tone paints you clearly in the fanboi camp. This line is particularly goofy sounding:

"I think that the NY Times is just jealous -- after all, Instagram is worth more."

You do know that newspaper articles are written by individuals, right? The CEO of the Times probably didn't even have any idea that such an article was being written.

briandear4• 14 years ago

The CEO doesn't necessarily know about each article, but you know the Times doesn't run a hatchet job on a major corporation without it filtering up to the top floor offices. Story lists are circulated among the executives. When I was a photographer for Reuters and Sipa (1996-2002), I had, on occasion, photos that would find their way up to the executive level before they'd be released. I can specifically remember my photos from Jasper, Texas and the James Bird Jr. murder getting some extra attention before they went out on the wire. Another situation involved a Black Panther protest and KKK counter-protest at the Gary Graham execution in Huntsville, TX.

Executives definitely know what's going on, especially with highly visible targets.

Stories are promoted, killed, "massaged" or delayed for various reasons by the executives. To believe otherwise is naïve.

The Times is losing subscribers, losing profits and you bet your ass that reporters are worried about it -- their jobs depend on the company's survival. Apple is increasing profits, hiring people and they're also non-union. Polar opposite of the NY Times organization. I'm not disputing any of the Times's facts, I am disputing the slant. Instead of addressing the very high youth unemployment among recent college graduates, they instead attack a company that's creating jobs -- without government "stimulus." That scares the typical Times reporters because it goes against their common refrain that government spending is necessary to save the economy.

Apple devices, specifically the iPad have cut into traditional newspaper profits substantially as well. It could be said that the internet killed the newspaper and the iPad is just fast tracking that process. People are consuming more content, but they are paying for it less frequently.

They could have run the same article about McDonalds. Billions in worldwide sales, yet cashiers are making low wages with no 401k, no stock purchase and very modest, if any health coverage. Yet, the take on Apple. What's the motivation? Are employees being abused? No. Are they being paid below market value? No. Are they being denied benefits? No.

What's the story? "Apple employees make less than the executives but more than nearly everyone else in retail." Big f'ing deal.

GigabyteCoin• 14 years ago

This article starts out with a fallacy that immediately made me stop reading:

Jordan Golson sold about $750,000 worth of computers and gadgets at the Apple Store in Salem, N.H.

No. The ~$3M dollars that apple spends on advertising daily (http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Apple-products-guru-m...) are what put Jordan Golson in the position of seeing $750,000 worth of purchases be made in front of his cash register within 3 months of his working there.

Jordan Golson probably didn't have to "sell" a single customer who walked through that door.

All I see in the 'Apple vs. Tiffany' image on the left side of the NY Times page is a more efficient business model on the left.

tseabrooks• 14 years ago

Yes, I read the first line and stopped reading, switching instead to these comments. I'm sure he sold a couple of people but the vats majority of those "sales" are going to happen either way. Apple has a huge "marketing force" in their rabid fans (for good or for ill) and they probably deserve a lot of the credit along side apples official marketing.

angrycoder• 14 years ago

All the money Apple puts into engineering and marketing counts for squat if someone goes into an Apple Store and has to deal with salesperson who is unhelpful or not knowledgeable. Best case you end up with an unhappy customer, worst case you loose a sale or a customer for life.

The Apple Store isn't Walmart, the people that work there aren't just cashiers. Hang out in the Apple store for 10 minutes and listen to the people there talking to customers, now do the same thing at Best Buy.

WalterSear6• 14 years ago

I have. In both cases I had to leave quickly before while I could still suppress the urge to commit violence.

The only difference was a greater amount of smug condescension in the apple store, and a greater amount of brofest bra' salesmanship in Best Buy.

mhurron• 14 years ago

Apple store employees are no different than BestBuy employees when it comes to knowledge level. The help they provide is the same as well, they get the stuff from the back.

If they were knowledgeable, they wouldn't be working at an Apple store.

/Mac user, won't waste my time walking into another Apple Store.

JumpCrisscross2• 14 years ago

I've come to realise this is a New York thing, but every experience I've had an Apple Stores has been filled with smiley, doltish people who are terrible at honouring appointments on time. I go to the Apple Store when I'm willing to trade sanity for immediacy; otherwise I far prefer ordering online.

The Cupertino and Phoenix Apple Stores I've been to were different, but comparing apples to apples (no pun intended) I've had great retail experiences in other New York stores.

jiggy20112• 14 years ago

I'm going to assume that the NYTimes didn't think it's readers were too stupid to figure that out. He was still the person who finalised $750,000 worth of business.

Besides, the most effective marketing apple has is still it's fans and I'm sure Apple store staff have evangelised Apple products plenty outside of work hours too.

encoderer• 14 years ago

I agree completely.

Sales requires a lot of talent and should pay commission. Certainly. But "Specialists" at the Apple store need only to be cordial, competent and informed. While not sales, that does deserve a premium above the wage offered at a fast-food counter, which at $11/hr they are getting.

I do, however, think the jobs should be in the $15-20/hr range not the $10-12/hr. That is the difference between a paycheck and a living wage in a lot of places. And Apple certainly can afford it. I'd look to Whole Foods for an example.

azakai2• 14 years ago

> This article starts out with a fallacy that immediately made me stop reading

You are 100% correct about the fallacy, but you missed out on a very interesting article. The fallacy is not a central part of it, it's just how they open.

brudgers• 14 years ago

All the advertising in the world doesn't close sales, it just gets people in the store (or to the website). If salespeople were not important, Apple wouldn't carry the burden of 30,000 of them.

ghshephard2• 14 years ago

Agreed - I would like to suggest that 100% of the 8-10 iPhones, iPod Touches, iMacs, iPads, MacBook Pros, and MacBook Airs that were purchased by friends, and family (that weren't already using Macs) - were sold by _me_ in conjunction with Apple's great Marketing and track record of supporting their product. Particularly the one Android User and one Blackberry user.

The employee in the Apple store (and I take nothing away from them) - were responsible for taking a credit card number, email address, getting the box from the store room, and putting it in a bag. I even pre-sold applecare for them.

temphn• 14 years ago

Meta comment: The New York Times has really got a burr up its shorts about Apple these days, what with this piece and its "iEconomy" articles. Yet the NYT's market cap is only $1B:

https://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NYSE:NYT

The Times wouldn't have attacked Apple like this if Jobs were still alive. For that matter, after the first negative NYT article came out, he might have simply bought the NYT for $1B and pointed it against its traditional rivals. None would be the wiser. This is what Gates did with Slate, and Soros with ThinkProgress. And at Apple's scale, that actually makes sense: better $1B out of pocket than a negative NYT article knocking 1% (nowadays $6B) off your market cap.

After all, the NYT isn't writing exposes on Carlos Slim Helu, who owns an 8% stake.

panthera• 14 years ago

> After all, the NYT isn't writing exposes on Carlos Slim Helu, who owns an 8% stake.

Amusingly, the NYT reporters like to bite the hand that feeds them:

nytimes.com/2009/02/16/business/media/16slim.html?pagewanted=all

To wit:

"Notoriously thin-skinned, he does not have to pick up the phone and bellow at those who publish and broadcast something he does not like. His vast resources often translate into less-than-critical coverage.

Mr. Slim declined through his spokesman and son-in-law, Arturo Elias, to be interviewed for this article."

emmapersky2• 14 years ago

When I was a student in London I took a job at the Regent Street apple store, the pay was a few £s above minimum wage (similar to the ratios mentioned in the article), and I gladly accepted the offer as they were paying towards the top end of retail wages at the time.

I never really felt that I was underpaid in any way, and I stuck around for about 2 years through the end of my degree. It was a great place to work, and I still have a bunch of friends from those days, some of who still work there.

Sure, it's not a world changing job, and compensated equivalently, but it is a great job and there are 30000 or so americans (and many more worldwide) who's rents are being paid through there jobs.

Good for Apple!

Domenic_S• 14 years ago

This just in: a bottom-rung retail job doesn't pay very much.

wallflower• 14 years ago

This story reminds me of my friends who worked for non-profits. It would be a perpetual hamster wheel of recruiting volunteers, organizing events, preparing. All of them were burnt out after two to three years and left. That is typical industry turnover.

Once they left, many were able to find corporate jobs in which they doubled their meager salary. Working for a recognizable non-profit is a filter for someone who works hard (at the entry level, the higher up you go, the more it is about being friends with major donors)

None of them regret it, you believe in the mission and thus you give them part of your youth.

chris_wot• 14 years ago

Great for those who work for non profits who take care of people. Not so great if you work at the cult of Apple to get people to buy expensive hardware.

jiggy20112• 14 years ago

I think the most interesting thing is the mention that a huge number of college grads work at Apple stores. I wonder if this is just due to the economy with more educated people just gravitating to retail in general or whether employment at an Apple store has a prestige that is comparable to a more traditional role for a degree holder?

WalterSear6• 14 years ago

What else are you going to do, if you are young, intelligent, naive, and have spent 4 years working very hard but acquiring no actually marketable skill? You 'start at the bottom' like your parents tell you.

Of course, they don't realize that the bottom goes nowhere today.

danso• 14 years ago

I applied to be an Apple Store employee a few years back, when the economy was pretty sour. I got into the group interview with 15 other people...among them, an opera singer, a Harvard masters, a helicopter pilot, and someone recently laid off after 20 yrs in the pharmaceutical industry.

Before people here say, "Apple is doing a lot for people in jobs meant for teenagers", keep in mind that Apple retail employees are of very high stock. And don't kid yourself, if the average Apple employee were as apathetic and unskilled as the average Gap employee, there'd be no way that Apple would be so renowned as a retailer. When you're selling a product that sold itself, you still need good people...as these particular produccts are luxury, and customers have higher demands for service

jsavimbi• 14 years ago

Keep in mind that there are people with experience and education everywhere who through a variety of factors end up in retail. Apple simply skims off the top. There are other retailers who do the same, the problem is that most people never come into contact with those people, mainly due to the exclusivity of their products so Apple can easily draw the attention of any journalist due to their open door and relative geographic accessibility. It's like restaurant rating sites; anyone can eat out and review a meal, ergo a popular yet lazy approach.

What the article fails to address is that a) I'm already sold on the new product prior to its announcement and release and b) as a backup, if I really need it, there's a retail store where I can purchase the good or service that I need to easily complement my previous purchase.

Apple store employees are gophers, regardless of background and pedigree. They're cashiers that fetch my cables, machine or add-ons instead of me having to surf through the isles of a warehouse cum store hoping to catch the eye of someone wiring their third shift. And that's why I readily pay a premium for their products: a combination of hardware excellence and premium customer service.

That Apple doesn't pay commissions and top dollar to their low-level retail employees doesn't surprise me. It's a manifestation of supply and demand and I accept that.

JumpCrisscross2• 14 years ago

Many technicians, though, wanted to leave but were unable to find equivalent work, according to Mr. Garcia and other former managers, in part because of the weak economy.

For a job paying the median income for a 25+ individual with between an associate's and bachelor's degree their labour seems fairly priced if there is nobody else bidding for their skills.

jsz0• 14 years ago

Like any other part of the labour market wages are largely based on the supply of labour. There are probably millions of people in the United States alone who are qualified and would be happy to work at an Apple Store for the same wages. Truth is there are plenty of people who would work for lower wages. Retail is not really a career. It's a job. If you want to make money you need a career not a job.

lucasjans• 14 years ago

I think the majority of us are missing the point. "Good" American jobs are hard to come by. No longer can unskilled retail sales people make a living wage, even at Apple. Glad I work in tech.

jinushaun• 14 years ago

It scares me to think how many more jobs in the future will no longer have living wages. Retail used to be a living wage job long ago.

swdunlop• 14 years ago

tl;dr -- retail jobs pay low wages, Apple included.

What I took away from it? Apple is paying market rates for its semi-skilled employees in a high unemployment market. The market is the problem, not the employer.

rdl• 14 years ago

Most of the people on the floor are kind of wastes of space -- I hate going into the Palo Alto store to buy anything, because the employee rarely actually knows what it is. I asked for "thunderbolt to gigabit ethernet adapter", which is pretty straightforward (and not stocked on the floor, since it's small and thievable I guess). 3 separate employees had no idea what it was, and then one of them decided to ask a manager, who did know. The geniuses are good, but they're not the retail people.

(I would have used the Apple Store app on my phone, but it doesn't work on iOS 6 beta...)

I kind of get the impression most of the Apple employees are there just to sell and "support" iPhones and iPads, not Macs.

Ryanmf2• 14 years ago

I worked at two Apple retail stores over the course of ~3 years. I did sales, worked at the Genius Bar, repaired machines and performed data transfers in the back, and delivered a shit-ton of One-to-One sessions. Though I generally enjoyed myself and remain good friends with many of my former co-workers, I never want to work there again, so here's some supplementary material they evidently don't want me to provide you with.

First, the top comment in this thread is…how to put this delicately…presumptuous, moronic, and generally unbecoming of the quality of discussion I expect on HN.

No. The ~$3M dollars that apple spends on advertising daily are what put Jordan Golson in the position of seeing $750,000 worth of purchases be made in front of his cash register within 3 months of his working there.

Um, cash register? Have you been in an Apple store recently? Where exactly was the cash register again? I must have missed it. And where did the customer procure the computer to place in front of Jordan at the nonexistent register? Oh wait, they're all in the back, a sales exercise would already have to be in progress for a boxed computer to make it out to the front of house in the first place.

Yes, Apple spends a lot on marketing, and they're damn good at it. The same might be said about BMW; Could their salespeople be replaced with mannequins without negatively impacting sales? How about Louis Vuitton? That shit sells itself, right?

The vast majority of customers who buy a computer in an Apple Store are buying their first Mac. In fact, the majority of them have never so much as entered an Apple Store prior to that visit. Perhaps they've had friends recommend a Mac in the past, perhaps they've even made up their mind before they walk in the door, but the average Apple Retail customer is far from a frothing-at-the-mouth fanboy. If I had to select a single word to describe first-time Apple customers (to reiterate, the majority of Apple Retail customers are first-timers—I'll return to this) it would be skeptical. A knowledgeable, approachable sales team is an absolute necessity in that context. (I can think of a dozen instances when a jilted potential buyer wrote an email to a manager complaining that they walked in, had no idea what to do, weren't approached, and bailed—at which point a meeting was called and everyone had to double down on the Warm Welcome.)

The best salespeople at Apple would be the best salespeople wherever they worked. And if they worked somewhere else, they wouldn't have to contend with a sales floor full of people who are not, and are never going to be customers. Think about that for a second. I can't think of another retail chain where every machine on the floor is an internet-connected, totally functional computer. At an Apple Store, they are. Many of them are even loaded up with pro apps, and you're welcome to play as long as you like. Before I worked at Apple, I had no idea how many homeless people had email accounts. I had no idea how interested teenagers were in taking 500 iSight photos of themselves in public. Shit, we had one dude (easily the coolest transient I've ever met) who just came in and danced to YouTube videos. One time he tried to convince me that Michael Jackson composed all the music in Sonic the Hedgehog (which actually turned out to be half-true, in reverse).

Somewhere in all that mess, Apple's sales team identifies the sometimes timid, frequently baffled first-time customer, answers questions, addresses their concerns, and ultimately sells them what is by all accounts an expensive ass computer.

Let's take a step back. Although Apple aren't the volume kings of retail computer sales, they do move a lot of units. Any idea what percentage of revenues are generated inside an Apple Retail Store? Last I heard (it's been over a year since I was on Apple's payroll) that number was less than 15%. There have been rumors for years that Apple operates the Retail stores at a loss as—you guessed it—a marketing expense. How does that figure into your theory?

Now that I have that off my chest, some other points:

-The only people I knew at Apple who made real money had been there from the beginning. Which is to say, they were in high ranking positions that didn't have a direct path to management (basically Genius and Creative) and got in early enough to receive stock options in lieu of bonuses when Apple wasn't doing so hot pre-iPod/Macbook/iPhone/iPad. The sole exception: "Store Leaders," Apple's term for the head manager of a retail store, a gig that frequently entails a six figure salary. Assistant managers are paid significantly less.

-The article is spot-on as far as poaching managers from other firms, though I encountered just as many former Starbucks managers as I did former Gap managers. The only managers I knew who had been promoted up the ranks at Apple were lifers (i.e. in some cases had been employed by Apple from the day the first retail stores opened), and most of them were stuck in Asst. Manager roles while Store Leaders were generally recruited externally. One of my managers had previously managed a MAC Cosmetics store. (Hah! Punny.)

-As you might expect, technical knowledge was rare among managers, in my experience. If you ever have an interaction with a Genius, and they mention that they need to confer with a manager and put on a sour face, they're not faking it. Almost every Genius I've ever met held their managers in absolute contempt.

-Apple doesn't hire for technical knowledge, except in the few roles where it's absolutely required (Again, Genius and Creative, and even some of the Creatives are kind of dopey.) They hire a personality type/range, with the expectation that they'll be able to train employees on technical details as required. If you've ever been to an Apple Store, and are a big enough nerd to be reading HN, you should probably have assumed this point already. If you were bitching in this thread about how Apple Employees aren't knowledgeable enough because you expected them to know even a fraction of what you know, perhaps you're not as perceptive as you think you are.

…

Ryanmf2• 14 years ago

…

-From the article:

it wasn’t a surprise to upper management because it was clear that many geniuses wanted to leave. There was a ceiling. It wasn’t a glass ceiling because everyone could see it.

A-fucking-men.

Okay, so here's my tale of woe. I was hired as a part-time Specialist (salesperson). I'm terrible at sales, but I'm a nice guy and I know technology. Also, I'm tall, and people like that for some reason. So I kind of fit the description of the archetypal Apple Retail hire, except when a customer asked me a question I actually knew what I was talking about.

It wasn't long before managers and other employees were sending the most bizarre, detailed, or otherwise highly technical questions in my direction, as any Geniuses on the clock already had their hands full. I would proceed to spend as long as possible chopping it up with a fellow geek, all the while not selling anything. This soon got the attention of my store's lead creative, who sent me off to a two day training session, after which I had three dedicated days a week wherein I did nothing but One-to-One training sessions.

It was more interesting than sales, but I was never promoted to Creative, nor did I receive any sort of pay raise. In fact, I couldn't even get management to officially promote me to full-time, despite the fact that I was consistently being scheduled 36-40 hours a week (occasionally they'd drop in a 29 hour week to absolve themselves of any legal obligation to promote me). Multiple calls to HR were met with insistence that "those decisions are made at a store level." (Eventually I adjusted my availability such that they couldn't schedule me more than 36 hours and I had Thu-Fri-Sat off every week.)

All the while, the internal training program for Geniuses and Creatives was effectively frozen. I would discover why when they eventually introduced a new role between Specialist and Genius/Creative, called "Family Room Specialist." An FRS splits their time between 1to1 training, Genius Bar shifts focusing on small device (iPod/iPhone/iPad) triage and repair, and basic repairs/RAM upgrades/data transfers in the back.

There were employees at every Apple store who had been doing all these jobs for years. Most of them had been doing them as Specialists, in my case for about a year and a half, in other cases I was familiar with as long as five years. When the FRS role was conceived, management held a hard line that a "promotion" to FRS was in fact a lateral move—no raise, no negotiation. I was in the second group of FRS hires at my store, all of us had been doing the same shit with a different title for some time already. All of us were passed over on the next round of Genius/Creative promotions. Conversations with management went nowhere, as they had little understanding of what our jobs even required, and as the article indicates, there was always a line of warm bodies around the block ready to enlist.

Even if I'd been promoted to Genius, I stood to make as little as half what the highest paid Genius at the time, another Apple lifer, was making. And that's really where the trail ends for many Apple employees, and I don't just mean internally. Most skills that make you a great Apple employee are totally non-transferable, due to the company's priorities (although noble) being so inconsistent with much of the retail world. I hear all this about how Apple's a great thing to have on your resume, but it hasn't done me a whole hell of a lot of good.

I was happy to hear earlier this week that some of my friends might be getting much-deserved raises. I'm also happy that I got the hell out of there when I did, and couldn't imagine working there again. I was a PC geek before switching to a Mac when I went to college, and I was deep into Mac nerdery well before I started working for Apple; I had my own reasons for being there. However, some other folks there hit the kool aid pretty damn hard, which can be an annoyance, particularly when they're technical dunces. As previously stated, unless your career aspirations amount to working at the Genius Bar or teaching old people how to use the Google for $15 an hour, there isn't much of a point to working at Apple for any extended period of time.

Most critically, many of the customers are absolutely fucking reprehensible. Let me repeat that, in slightly different terms: If you walk into an Apple Store, act as if the technician you're speaking to caused the problem you're having with your iPhone (Hint: Generally speaking, you're the problem.), and give the impression that you believe no one else in the building has a problem that matters—especially if you behave aggressively and/or condescendingly, issue ultimatums, throw adult tantrums, threaten legal action, or demand free replacements/upgrades you don't deserve—allow me to recommend, on behalf of all Apple Retail employees, past and present, who are restricted from speaking for themselves, that you EAT YOUR OWN ASSHOLES, YOU DESPICABLE CUNTS.

Tycho• 14 years ago

By not paying that much, they filter for people who have an extra incentive to work for Apple (ie. because they love the brand).

pbreit• 14 years ago

tl,dr; Apple retail jobs are in high demand, pay reasonably well and have excellent benefits. The NY Times was able to find some folks to speak badly about that.

Apple Stores’ Army, Long on Loyalty but Short on Pay

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