Un interesante artículo escrito por un ex-empleado de Apple (a tiemppo parcial en una Apple Store). Me parece interesante por lo que cuenta sobre la formación para trabajar en una Apple Store (no precisamente porque me parezca buena) o por las opiniones de Apple sobre a partir de cuántas visitas a la tienda el visitante puede acabar en comprador y por cosas que me recuerdan mis tiempos en un distribuidor al coincidir el mensaje (vended AppleCare, .Mac, etc). Ah, sí! Y por el software para Windows Mobile de los terminales inalámbricos con que te facturan sin tener que ir a la caja.
Las razones de dejarlo… que el trabajo no cumpla las expectativas de la persona, lo que es bastante razonable. Lo entiendo, pero no me parece un problema de Apple. Por otra parte, sí me preocupa que al final comente como una de las últimas tiendas sigue teniendo ese aire de “templo del consumo” al que nadie visita… ¿Podrán las tiendas estrella de Apple cubrir la marcha del resto? ¿Serán las ventas del sábado suficiente para cubrir los costes operativos de toda la semana?
UPDATE: Un toque de atención sobre escasa netiqueta me hace ver la conveniencia de enlazar al sitio del que sale
My Life as Apple Employee 71712
or
Why I Quit What Should Have Been My Dream Job
Introductory Apology
I feel the need to write about this since this is what has been heavily on my mind–more will follow, much more. This will primarily be about my experiences working for Apple and everything that came of it. I doubt there will be any consequences since I will be discreet about the majority of it…the names will not be mentioned or they will be changed to protect the innocent, of whom there are many. The antagonists in the tale will be obvious.
As this is catharsis in a public forum, I again state that the names and identities of all people involved will be changed. Everything else is my opinion.
Part 1
Fall and Interview Pandemonium
I was laid off by my previous employer who had to downsize to protect their company. That was one of the best things that has happened to me in a long, long time but it has taken me nearly a year to recognize that. My unemployment started on October 27th (the same day that the Apple recruiter first put up the want ads for the Apple Store to open in Reno, specifically for the Mac Specialist, Mac Genius, Creative, and Inventory Control), and so did my erstwhile job search. At that point I hadn’t decided as I have now not to work so my mind was still in the mentality of a normal job. I put my résumé up at all the normal places online and diligently looked in the newspaper for a job. The first job that really found me was Apple. I have used Apple’s product, specifically Macintosh computers at least ten years from System 6 on a Mac IIsi all the way to today and Mac OS X 10.4. I will probably use Mac because it’s simpler and better and I like it…so being called by Apple Computer sounded like a great thing.
At first I was a bit incredulous about the e-mail that came from an Apple recruiter but it all checked out. He was interested in me regarding a “Creative” position at the soon to open Apple Store at the Summit Sierra mall in Reno. I did a bit of research online and thought that I was a shoe-in. I was just the right guy they could use in Reno! I have a degree in Music and I know Logic Express and Logic Pro very, very well; I know Photoshop pretty damned well as well as a bit of Illustrator; I know iMovie and can talk my way around Final Cut…so I thought I might be able to get the job. My friends and family were completely and totally happy for me regarding this opportunity–one of them going so far as to take me out to a great Italian meal to celebrate the chance, as did my mother and father.
I went to the interview at the Sienna Hotel in December at seven in the morning, which different for me since I’d only really been waking up at 9 or even 10. I was dressed for an interview and thought I was fine. It actually took a little while for me to find the interviewer as he was not where he said he’d be, but finally, he showed up late and we went to talk. I met the Apple interviewer, who was late, and we chatted for about an half-hour, as he took notes into his Powerbook. I thought it went well but there wasn’t too much detail into what I would be doing as a Creative.
The interview that I had was disarming since the guy asked me about what I liked to do, what I wanted to do–it was very conversational and casual. Only toward the end did it feel at all like an interview when I asked about how much it paid, and was told that was up to the recruiter and about the benefits of the Apple Store. As an employee of the Apple Store you get a 10% discount on anything in the store…you also get 25% off of one computer a year, 25% off of an iPod and iPod Nano a year, as many Shuffles that you want a year, a free .Mac account, an Apple.com e-mail and chance to see behind the corporate firewall into Apple’s internal network. Not too shabby–and if you work for Apple full-time, you get complete benefits and great stock options. The Creatives also get six weeks of training–a total crash course in the all Apple Pro Apps at Cupertino and then they are sent to an Apple Store to get some work real experience as a Mac Specialist/Creative in the field.
The guy said he’d get in touch with me in a week–that week turned into two and I heard nothing. Until the day that I found out my mother had cancer…that was when I was informed that I would not be getting the position, but I might talk to another recruiter about a job as a Mac Specialist. Initially, I was crushed–I just couldn’t figure this at all…with what I know and what I can do I wasn’t hired by Apple for a job I could very, very easily do? The rejection hurt, especially with the news about my mother, my ongoing failure to get a job of any kind and since it was Winter and it was cold…my savings had run out and all the money I was making was the weekly unemployment check that one day would run out. With hindsight, I’m glad they didn’t hire me for that job since that would have really fucked me up instead of just kicking me in the ass…
A Mac Specialist? I put in the app for a lark since I was very unsure of doing that…The Apple application process is very long–if they’re at all serious or even the least bit serious about hiring you, there is a background check that is the mother of them all. The check is handled by a third party company whose one task is to check references and perform background checks (including credit checks…) for large companies and organizations who are paranoid and need to protect their brand. They talk to every one of your references and see if you know your stuff, if you’re an honest, decent person and what you’re really about. Otherwise, the application itself is pretty standard and like any other corporate form, except that’s Apple and done all in Garamond font. After doing those interviews for my application as a Creative, there was no need to do again.
So after a second round of that I had an interview at a Starbucks nearby the future location of the store with all four of the managers of the store. Only two of the four managers had previously worked for Apple–the Manager and one of the Assistants–the other two Assistants had previously worked at the Comp USA in Reno, where they also poached the Business salesman, who had sold me my Power Mac G5 when I got one a few years back and didn’t remember me at all.
I was very ambivalent about my second Apple interview so I got there a half-hour early, reading Julio Cortazar’s Cronopios and Famas and discovered the Café Misto (the best damned thing at Coffee Hell), or what the rest of the universe calls a Café au Lait and generally farted around and listened to the interview being done before me. It seemed to be the same old kind of grilling by the managers who think they know something, as a very nervous young person/job candidate/supplicant acts like they have all the answers. 2.30 quickly came and it was my turn to be interviewed.
The managers noticed that I had gotten there early, and they asked me why. I told them that I liked to be places at least ten minutes early and that seemed to impress them, one of them mentioning Vince Lombardi doing that–the interview went the same as the previous one, very informal and casual. I was told at the end of the interview I’d hear in a week and because of the previous experience I just said OK and did whatever. It was at this point that I began my online book business since I was starving to death on the $250 a week that unemployment gives you and the 98% of false job leads that I had followed up to then, including Apple.
A week later I got the call–and I was hired as a part-time Mac Specialist, and I was sent a ton of paperwork to do and I was going to have training starting the second week of February, bright and early at 8 in the morning. The fact that it was part time didn’t hit me at the time, but it would become very important. I would start at $12.50 an hour, and only get the benefits of the store discounts and the employee stock plan after six months.
After FedExing the final round of paperwork, I was in–Apple loves to send around all sorts of things by FedEX and they must be a very big customer for them. I was an Apple employee! I even had an Apple Employee number which was 71712. I looked forward to seeing who I’d be working with and what great stuff I’d learn during the Apple training, that I would be paid for. And I was working for Apple, I’d be selling Macintoshes and get to play with all the new equipment and computers and get great deals and training on it all. It seemed great and I was very excited.
Part 2
Think Apple
Since I had been hired by Apple, I more or less stopped looking for a job. I concentrated on my part time job of selling books and just having fun. Of course, my mom was sick so that was always in the back of my mind since I had to help take care of her. Time passed and I got a package by FedEx, the one service that Apple uses for everything, an initial hire folder that told me that I’d be going to the Reno Convention Center for training, and I did.
The training I’d have to become a Mac Specialist began the second weekend of February 2006. Over all, it was the most through training possible for a part-time retail tech job that was completely useless, taking a long general view. The training was held at the Reno-Sparks Convention Center and we would start at 8 in the morning on Saturday and Sunday, work until around noon or so then knock off at 5 each day. It was paid training and we were given white iPod earbud headphones–as many as we needed, since I as well as everyone else kept on forgetting them day after day when we’d need them.
We were also given a packet that had a black Apple t-shirt, a training manual, a notepad size notebook, an Apple pen and a book going over the benefits that Apple employees got, provided you worked full time. I feel that the part time training I got was useless–almost deliberately so…we were issued iBooks to use for course material and look online between sessions. A lot of our course materials were e-books that were on the iBooks as well as on the public .Mac accounts of our teachers. Two of our teachers were freelance corporate trainers and only one person actually worked for Apple–she had done so since 1986 and the days of the Classic Mac. It seemed to me that the teachers were lackluster and didn’t inspire confidence in what they taught.
In all, there were 20 people at the training including me. Mostly they were all college students and males, save for me (I’m male, but I’m very done with my undergrad work) and two other older guys and one college girl. It quickly become apparent we were all hired for different reasons–and the whole idea was to build a team of people, one person didn’t know Macs at all or computers, one was a Mac head since he was a fetus, one guy had put together websites since 1994 and owned an Internet company and dozens of domain names…and there was a teacher, we had a new one each weekend of the three weeks and the head manager.
The head manager was a refugee from the Gap, where he’d been hired away from to become an Apple manager. The Assistant Managers, except for one who came from another Apple Store, had all been hired away from the Comp USA in Reno…and a couple of the part-timers had too, as well as having worked at Circuit City and BestBuy.
So–the training went slowly. I took copious notes, since there was a lot of material and it seemed to me that it would be important. Nobody else wrote a thing and I think they didn’t take the training at all seriously and in hindsight, there was no real reason to take notes since the training we got didn’t matter. The best part were the videos about shoplifting and stealing and how to combat them. There was even a section on how to deal with problems you had with your co-workers and your bosses and how to solve these problems positively with a system called that is a commonly used corporate dialog program.
It was the most through and useless job training I’ve ever had. I did get to know just about everyone who was a part-timer and they were all good, smart people. It’s really just a shame that they are certainly not being used as much as they should be. We mostly role played, never touched any Mac other than the iBook and went over the passive-aggressive style of selling that you find at the Apple Store, if all is going well.
The very last day of training was February 25th and that was when we all got free .Mac accounts and were set-up with official Apple e-mails. Mine was employee71712@apple.com–and I got my employee number which was 71712. I was told that we would be needed at 7 in the morning at the Apple Store location at the Summit Sierra Mall the next Saturday, March 3rd. I left to hang out with my friends, confident that although it was a part-time job, that it would lead to something worthwhile.
All in all, the Apple training that I got did not prepare me for the reality of working for Apple Retail. Anyone who works at the Apple Store is woefully prepared for the job they are given, except for the Geniuses and the Creatives. Both the Geniuses and Creatives get six weeks of training and they get a two week long version of the three weekend retail training that the part-timers got. We only used iBooks and just looked at the rest of Apple’s complete line of computers, iPods and software from the website, never seeing any of them until we actually got into the store. Hell, we didn’t even get to be in the store and we simply role played in an empty room in the Convention Center buying and selling in the store. We didn’t get a course in how to use a Mac and the idea was that either you’d learn it as you went or you already knew enough We never touched or discussed the Mac based cash register system as well as the wireless payment systems that everyone on the floor in Apple Stores. At that point, those wireless systems were based on Windows CE, something that was kept very hush-hush by everyone in the Apple Store.
The Creatives, Mac Geniuses and the full-time Mac Specialists all were sent to other Apple Stores, if they hadn’t transferred from another one, to get a crash course in working on the floor in an Apple Store. And the thing is–Mac Specialists, according to the training I got, the rants the Manager and the Apple Retail Corporate people gave us, were the heart and core of the Apple Store and they were what made it work.
In the time that I worked for Apple, I only felt that the Mac Specialists were only being used. I did learn one very interesting thing though about all the photos, videos, text and music that come with Macs and are used to demonstrate them online, as examples on the computers, at Apple events and at Apple Stores. Apple has an entire until of their PR department that goes around the world to do all of that. All those events, vacations, graduations, trips, parties and “candid” moments are all staged slices of reality for Apple’s benefit.
After all the training, I was nervous and still excited to be working for Apple and I couldn’t wait for the real thing–helping to set up the store and its grand opening.
Part 3
Working for the Cult of Mac
The week before I was to start working at the new Apple Store in Reno sped by quickly–full of selling books (what was to become my main source of income that year), going out with friends and just trying to catch up on what I might have to do at my new job. I hunted down some training manuals about Logic Pro/Express, Final Cut and a few other Applications that could have been useful and I got copies of iWork and iLife 2006 and played around with them so I knew how to use them and how to explain them. All the preparation that I made and strove to do that week came to nothing as did just about everything else to do with the Mac Specialist job.
Friday, the night before I was to start work at 8 am, I went to the Summit Sierra Mall and drove by the Apple Store, which was shiny and metallic with a big glowing Apple on its store front and butcher paper covering the very large front windows. From the front, every Apple Store looks like a very posh and fancy clothing store where you’d buy very expensive clothing from French or Italian model types named Pierre, Natasha or Yvonne and you’d be scolded if you breathed in the wrong place. As with many things Apple–so much is concerned with the Style that the function, although better than most is very compromised.
I got to the store early with a coffee from Starbucks since I couldn’t get anywhere else in time. I got to where we had to park and saw all my comrades from the training as well as the managers and about half a dozen people I didn’t know and people who were obviously carpenters putting the final touches on the store. Exactly at 8, the head manager called a meeting to tell us all hello–he stood next to a guy from Apple Corporate whose position was in retail and was some sort of Vice President in the company. The Apple Corporate Guy was obviously the one in charge as he took over the meeting and began to explain what was to happen–we were all going to pitch in together to start setting up the store and that was to begin as soon as the FedEx freight trucks arrived, which happened just as he was finished talking.
All the management people from Apple that I met were nice enough and seemed to care and to know what they were doing. We didn’t start until we all introduced ourselves–I saw the two full-time Mac Specialists, the Business Consultant who I’d bought my Power Mac G5 from a few years before, the head manager of the Sacramento Apple Store who was there to help, the lady who was in charge of inventory and a lady from the Portland Apple store who was to help our inventory person get the hang of things. We met the four Mac Geniuses who seemed pretty cool and to know what they were doing and then the four Creatives, who also seemed cool, but were a little bit arrogant.
After the introductions we quickly got into gear and formed into two groups–one to unload the trucks with the Store’s inventory and the other to start stacking the boxes. All 40 or so of us unloaded the trucks very quickly and then we began to tear apart the boxes and send then we segregate the things inside them between the front and the back of the store and it was then that lunch was called. I happened to go have lunch with a couple of the Mac Geniuses, what the Tech Support people are called in Apple Store. We all got on pretty well and I felt I got to start to know them. I was having a pretty good time despite the fact that it was very hard work and we didn’t take too many breaks.
The highlight of the first day for me was opening up two PowerBooks, two iBooks and a Power Mac to start setting up the displays. After a lot of goldbricking on my part, I went home and felt pretty good after doing manual labor for Apple for eight hours and all was right with the world after some Ibuprofen, frop and rest. The next day I had off and I took advantage of it since the first few days of working for Apple was mostly manual labor. I can understand why they would have everyone help put together the store since it instills a sense of team and pride in the group doing it. The reasons are primarily psychological and financial since it’s a lot cheaper to have the people already working for you to do the set-up than anyone else. The Apple Corporate Guy and our Manager both seemed happy with us as a group and promised us a big opening day. One of the part-time Mac Specialists asked The Apple Corporate Guy if Steve Jobs might be coming by to see the opening and the answer was great. “I’d be surprised if Steve even knows that there’s an Apple Store in Reno.” His Steveness didn’t come to the opening although a lot of people did and the night before the opening we had a two hour meeting to discuss everything about the opening.
The Apple Corporate Guy, The Manager and another Apple Corporate Guy all spoke that night about what to do and how to act in the Apple Store. I was very surprised that most of what was discussed that night had not been during the training as it was all very pertinent and important to what and how we were to act in the Store. The Apple Corporate Guy gave us a pep talk and quickly left since I guess he was entitled to extra rest the night before the store opening. Then, the Apple Store manager from Sacramento showed us how to use the registers and gave us a crash course in how to use the Mac based POS system, called Easy Pay, that we were shown it and the wireless payment system that is unique to the Apple Store (and by the way Easy Pay runs on Windows CE based Pocket PCs and not Apple hardware…one of the dirty little secrets of the Apple Store…and something that no one is allowed to mention and no one seemed interested in asking about) and allows anyone on the sales floor to make a sale without going to the registers as long as the customer is paying by credit card.
The other neat thing about the Apple Store POS is that the customer can get their receipt e-mailed to them as well as printed, which is a great touch compared to most stores and even most Office and Computer stores. The Easy Pays wouldn’t be working until the next and we were only shown how to use them briefly.
The second Apple Corporate Guy turned out to be some sort of Security guy and he showed us a video about shrinkage, Mexican, Jamaican and Russian Gangs who have branched off into shoplifting, had security video clips of people stealing iPods, laptops (Apple prefers to call such computers portables) and told us how and what to do when the store was being cased by professional shoplifters who seem to only hit the Apple Store and other upmarket retailers. That video and presentation was terse and uncomfortable and after that was over the Apple Corporate Security guy left since he was to be in charge of the line outside the store before it opened.
In the final week lots of people had tried to get into the store, looked through the store windows, taken pictures and just gawked. There is nothing stranger than the behavior of geeks and nerds desperately curious about something that they can’t and won’t be allowed to see. An older couple even got into the Store since the doors were open due to the fumes of drying paint and glue and they were quickly escorted out by our Manager. It would only get stranger.
The Store Manager was the last to speak and he started off by talking about Apple rumor sites. In the online Macintosh community there have been rumor sites for years since Apple is insanely secretive about what and when they are about to release things. About 85% of the time all the sites are dead wrong and almost always tangentially wrong about what Apple is about to do. Our Manager admitted to having looked at the sites himself for laughs, since they are very funny and nearly silly, but he told us all to stop looking at them from then on since we should only get our information about Apple products and things from the Corporate website that we would be able to look at during breaks, not to speculate or guess what Apple would release.
This is completely true–until the moment that Apple releases a product, only the highest people in the company and the people working on that product are the ones who know about it. After item X hits the world, anyone who works for the Apple Store does a mad dash to a computer with Internet access to learn as much as possible, as soon as possible since they don’t get heads up about anything yet they are expected to be able to talk about item X reasonably and rationally the moment it hits the shelf in the stores. We were told the official line that we were not allowed to post online about Apple or the Apple Store, not to download illegal copies of Apple software or take copies that the store had, the penalties of these misdeed all being immediate termination. He also encouraged us to memorize the Apple PR department’s phone number, which was the standard answer to any questions about Apple products to come, requests for media to make video or photos (consumers were allowed to both make video and photos inside the store) and just about every other conceivable situation. We were told to get some rest, since we would need it and to get ready since it was going to be lot of fun on the opening day of the Apple Store, Summit Sierra.
Part 4
A Bite from the Forbidden Apple
I have to thank the Apple Corporation for many things. First, the Macintosh computer: second, the iPod and third, my my current track in life. If it weren’t for what happened to me at the Apple Store, I wouldn’t be on my way to being a teacher with an MA and the ambition to go for teaching in College and a PhD in English. Thank you Uncle Steve! Why?
The grand opening came and went without too much fanfare. Compared to how the Apple brass said it would be, it really wasn’t so impressive. There were the usual supsects waiting outside to come in and the Apple Fanboys that made pictures of everything. Then at 9 that Saturday morning, the head of Apple Retail Security cut the red ribbon and opened the store. All the employees lined up and gave high-fives to the customers who were led into the store through the walkway to the registers in back as some really bouncy techno music played in the background. They all got t-shirts and didn’t get the goodie bags that previous first day people got.
There was a lot of media attention from TV and the newspaper and lots of people just looking. We barely sold anything…and then my shift was over. I went to the employee break room to punch out where there was Papa John’s pizza for us and a sign that said “Windoze users throw ice away in the trash”, that urged us to empty out our drink cups of ice before we threw them away. The three other shifts I worked the first week went much the same way–a few sales here and there and mostly people just looking. That was the thing–mostly people were looking and using the computers to websurf and mess around with the iPods and maybe buy some kind of iPod accessory. One of the funniest things was when the gothy kids who worked at Hot Topic, across the way in the mall, would come over and use the Power Macs with the 30 inch screens to look at their MySpace sites and to make crazy pictures with iSight cameras. The Mac Geniuses had fun with them as did we all, making fun of them and generally thinking them pretty lame. The second week I was scheduled to do inventory and to be at the store at 8 in the morning…
I found myself in the stockroom of the Apple Store in Reno. For the time I worked after the grand opening, which was oppressively underwhelming, I was usually assigned for the morning shift at 8 am to do a stock count and inventory. I would go and count the numbers of iPods that the store had in the front in the convenient iSTEALME plastic containers and then go into the labyrinthine back of house where there were hundreds of iPods, dozens of Macs and thousands upon thousands of miscellaneous items. The store mostly went though iPods and iPod related accessories like hotcakes so every morning, I counted dozens of iPods and hundreds of cases, things and items for the iPod. The thought occurred to me–I am a college graduate, I am a Bachelor of English. What the FUCK am I doing? The morning that I first counted iPod cases that thought occurred to me and then the fourth and fifth mornings I really was wondering what I was doing with myself…
Add to that the fact that hours steadily were being cut. The first week of being open, we all worked 30 hours. Then we worked 20 the second, the third 15 and my last week I was scheduled for two four hour non-consecutive work shifts for a total of eight hours in one week. ONE WEEK. After all that crazy training, after helping put together the store I was only given eight hours. The reason given for the cut back in hours was the fact that we weren’t selling and once sales picked up hours would pick up as well. And that was three weeks after we opened. Bullshit. I was selling two or three iPods each shift, made a $10,000 Power Mac sale with AppleCare, ProCare, .Mac, a monitor and all the Adobe software we had, sold iBooks and iMacs galore yet my hours were cut because of bad sales in general? I was giving customers great information and telling them what they could do and how they could do it with a Mac and with an iPod, using my practical experience with Macs and with working with Windows computers and Macs and I wasn’t selling? We were all being criticized for our low attach rates of AppleCare, .Mac and ProCare.
The attach rates (extras you buy with your computer or iPod) at Apple Store for both AppleCare and ProCare are very much pushed, every day you work there pushing the extra services is pushed. The mandated goals are 60% AppleCare (the extended warranty on the Macs or iPods), 40% .Mac and 20% for ProCare (private lessons on anything with one of the Creatives for a year and a few other pseudo-rewards for paying $100 a year). Another thing to keep in mind is that no one in the Apple Store gets a commission on any sale –it’s not really worth your time trying to sell a computer either way.
The only people who really make money or get benefits at an Apple Store are the Managers, the Geniuses and Creatives and the few full time Mac Specialists. Everyone else is given little incentive to sell and are beaten up for not selling. Despite the fact that the Apple way of selling is inherently not a hard sell at all, but our managers wanted us to sell off the bat and push the attachments. But–you can’t sell to someone who doesn’t want to buy something and most of the people who walk into an Apple Store are just looking. They’re curious, maybe just interested in an iPod but just about that. By Apple’s estimates alone, it takes about three visits for someone to start considering to purchase a computer and yet they wanted us to sell someone on the Mac after just one, since it was so great but didn’t give us, as Mac Specialists, very much ammunition to be able to explain to a customer WHY they should get a Mac rather than a Windows PC.
Add to that–I had been tapped to teach some classes on how to use the Mac music apps, Garage Band, Logic, Logic Pro and SoundtrackPro, which I know very well and much better thankyouverymuch than the “Creatives” at the store. I’ve played music for most of my life and I am great at it, especially with what you can do with it on a Mac. When I was all ready to teach a lesson on Garage Band, using my Sax and putting together a real song, I was told by one of the managers that I needed more “mentoring”. Bullshit. I’ve done music longer than two of creatives had been alive-and I went to school for music, and I needed to be mentored? That just got to me.
And, let’s face it, The Apple Store is the iPod store. Mostly, I sold iPods, cases, earphones and the many things all related to iPods and their care and feeding. Many of the people who came in to buy them were yuppies and they would inevitably come in to complain about how their iPod was broken, when the only thing wrong with it was the fact that it needed to be reset. That was the main problem that the Geniuses had to face–resetting iPods of all kinds. Again, I was thinking to myself–WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING? I am a college graduate, I am a Bachelor of English. What the FUCK am I doing? The only people who can successfully work at the Apple Store are people who are going to college and don’t mind working hardly at all. I was at the point where I had bills to pay and things I wanted to do and working for Apple in the capacity where they wanted me to work just wasn’t going to cut it.
The final straw really, really was being scheduled for eight hours total. I just couldn’t handle it since I had signed up to work twenty hours as that is a normal period of time to work part time…so…my last shift that I came into work…I got one of the new Intel iMacs and a iPod Shuffle at 25% off with my then-employee discount, sent myself an e-mail with my Apple corporate e-mail so I would have one record of me with an Apple e-mail and then I left. My first four hour shift was on a Monday and I agonized over what I should do for the shift since I knew at the bottom of my heart that I couldn’t work there anymore. Sunday night came around and my friend J. called me out of the blue–she told me about a play that was happening during the time that I should have been working at the Apple Store up at UNR. She said that she’d be there and that it would be a good thing to see. So, after a cup of tea and a talk with her that night I decided what I would do the next day…I went to the play and no-called no showed at the Apple Store.
I must admit that I didn’t quit the Apple Store in the most professional or in the best way at all. All the managers called me at least three times a day for the next couple days and I never answered them. My Intel iMac and iPod Shuffle came and I began to set it up and the same day I got a letter from the Apple Store all about how I was terminated and no longer an Apple employee. I also think that it might have made a difference talking to the managers–I didn’t mention my grievances to them at the time. I probably should have talked to the manager and saw if I could have been given more hours or even done one of the lessons on the music. But I didn’t because my pride and ego was bruised by their cutting my hours and not letting me teach the music class.
I have been back to the Apple Store, out of necessity. My MacBook’s CD drive wasn’t working and I had to have the MacGeniuses replace the drive. The store was empty at the times that I went there, of course, it was 8 at night and the place was about to close…but…there was only one Mac Specialist, one Genius and the manager on shift with no customers except me. Everyone was good to me and it was fine if not a little strange because I knew that place from the very first day that it had been open…
I think that I made the right decision by quitting. But the fire that I went into from the Apple Store was no better than the frying pan from where I’d I had leapt.
Postscript
From what I’ve heard from other friends of mine who go into the Summit Sierra Apple Store, not much has changed. Almost all the Mac Specialists are working limited hours and business at the store is very, very slow for everyone except for the Mac Geniuses, who are now different from the ones that started there. My advice is this–if you want to work for the Apple Store, expect not to work very much, expect to deal with iPods and not Macs and to work very limited work hours.