Confessions From The Most Corrupt Apple Store In America

[RANGA+ 1,210]

"The saying goes: Don't fuck with the person that serves your food," a former Apple Genius tells me over IM. "Don't fuck with the person who repairs your computer." He—we'll call him Ronald—spent six years as a member of Apple's Genius squad in a busy Southwestern store. It was a model store: shiny as the best of them, teeming, making money. But in back rooms and in plain sight, the employees ran wild: giving away computers, stealing phones, drunkenly destroying customer property. Ronald saw (and did) it all. You might think twice before your next visit to the bar.

 

Ronald is a skittish sort of guy, prone to hours of dishing about Apple over the phone and IM with obvious contempt, before vanishing into the thin trenches of the online netherworld. At one point we went almost an entire year without speaking, before he reemerged to link me up with another Genius we'll call Jake: a sturdy nine-to-five type whose aversion to taking part in this story stemmed only with his busy schedule.

 

Ronald, on the other hand, is terrified of Apple. Terrified of what the white and aluminum demigod would do to him, and what it'd do his friends if the mothership ever found out about what they did. It was bad, and it wasn't just a bunch of young punks working the system; the corruption rained down from above and pooled deep at the bottom.

 

Jake and Ronald both spoke with smiles and contempt about their former boss-of-bosses, a regional manager from Apple corporate who they allege ran the store like it was her own personal playground. Jake says the rest of the gang wasn't much better. "It bends my brain to know that, statistically speaking, it's harder to get a job at the Apple Store than it is to get into some Ivy League schools," he says. "Yet somehow they're staffed by some of the most inept people this side of mastering the ability to speak."

 

These were the people at the front lines of Apple's retail empire. Add a hiring boom of young (possibly inept) guns, inject them with the ego-inflaming title of Genius, add liquor, and boom: risky business. But they were a team. And together they perpetrated and put up with some serious retail war crimes—stuff that'd make Tim Cook's fleece jacket unravel.

 

 

Link to rest of article: http://gizmodo.com/5936324/exclusive-confessions-from-the-most-corrupt-apple-store-in-america

 

 

 

 

As someone that works in the tech industry, reading something like this just makes me sick...

 

 

 

[KiLaSix9+ 398]

I'm a little surprised at how bad things got but at the same time things like this were going on in many retail environments. I know where I work now things were a lot different a couple of years ago. There is a lot more control on inventory now with technological advances and methods that make it easier for employers to track and control their inventories and employees. There is also a huge emphasis on the customer service side of things now as opposed to a few years ago. That has to do with the fact that so many people are repeat customers rather than new ones and the market isn't as wide open as it used to be. Companies are now more focused on customer retention than anything else.

[RANGA+ 1,210]

I'm a little surprised at how bad things got but at the same time things like this were going on in many retail environments. I know where I work now things were a lot different a couple of years ago. There is a lot more control on inventory now with technological advances and methods that make it easier for employers to track and control their inventories and employees. There is also a huge emphasis on the customer service side of things now as opposed to a few years ago. That has to do with the fact that so many people are repeat customers rather than new ones and the market isn't as wide open as it used to be. Companies are now more focused on customer retention than anything else.

 

Yeah very true. It's a lot easier (and cheaper) for a company to keep existing customers, rather than go out and find new ones. So you have to make sure you put their satisfaction above everything else.

[Favre4Ever+ 4,476]

This article is so awesome yet so completely messed up at the same time. Also why I avoid stores like this.,

[RANGA+ 1,210]

This article is so awesome yet so completely messed up at the same time. Also why I avoid stores like this.,

 

Yeah I can't stand the fact that they call themselves "Geniuses". Most of the guys that work in the Apple stores are pretentious, hipster morons.

 

And the new Apple Genius ads?? Steve Jobs definitely would not have approved of those...