True Confessions of An Apple Store Employee (Number 71712 to be Exact)
Apple fans who think they want to work at Apple should read the dissertation over at ifoAppleStore to find out the ultra top secret inner workings of Apple retail store (Like the wireless payment systems are run by Windows CE), according to Apple Employee 71712.
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. [...]
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.
It is really an interesting article to check out if the snippet of text gets you excited.
