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Apple Store Employees Soak Up the Atmosphere, But Not Much Cash
raque writes "The NYTimes is reporting on just
how badly Apple Retail employees are being paid. Apple is exploiting its fan base for cheap labor. This is one reason I don't go to Apple Stores if I can avoid it. Stores like NY's Tekserve offer a great shopping experience without so exploiting their workers." Would you rather start at an Apple store for $11.91 an hour (average starting base pay, according to the linked article) and an employee discount, or at Tiffany for $15.60?
"Would you rather start at an Apple store for $11.91 an hour (average starting base pay, according to the linked article) and an employee discount, or at Tiffany for $15.60?"
I think the people who work at Apple Stores -- and others waiting for callbacks -- have already answered that.
What, supply and demand suddenly can't drive wages now?
But I imagine this, like any article on Foxconn (aka "Apple factory"; forget all other customers), will be another anti-Apple free-for-all, so have fun!
With US unemployment at a six month high and the global economy in the tank, a story comes out that people making > $11 / hour at the local Apple store have it hard off?
Pretty sure that there are 10 people waiting in the queue for every 1 job that opens up at one of these stores.
Are you kidding me? They have no specialized skill. It's a basic retail job. Some people in the US would kill for $12 an hour. And you even get to hang out in the air-conditioning. Give me a break.
Even for the non-genius bar employees, is $11.91/hour starting pay for retail supposed to be shocking or what? I worked many jobs just out of high school in the 90's for $5/hour, it's been a long time since I was paid hourly but am I really that disconnected that I think 12 bucks an hour seems fair?
Your comment is based on your lack of understanding about how badly the dollar has devalued. $12/hour isn't a living wage in a lot of places.
My kingdom for a donkey!
has gone up dramatically since the 1990s, and the Consumer Price Index has essentially been 'gamed' to hide all of this.
gasoline in particular went haywire about the same time that the commodities exchanges switched from open pits to electronic trading (see the book Asylum by McGrath-Goodman for more information)
food is linked to gasoline of course, but it still doesn't explain why flour is fluctuating up and down by 100% every few months.
housing of course went through the roof thanks to the subprime mortgage securities and their deriviatives (CDOs, Synthetic CDOs, etc), and the foreclosure robo-signing scandal has backlogged the system so much that prices still havent come down properly.
in other words, yes, things have changed.
And yet somehow Australia manages to not be a economic shithole.
To hire someone who's labor cannot justify the "living wage" is to engage in charity and many small business owners cannot afford to be that generous.
if you cannot afford to run your business without slave labor then society should not allow your business to remain open.
Perhaps we ought to fashion a global system of government designed to guarantee useful employ and a humanely-appointed and self-sustaining lifestyle to each and every human being alive, rather than extend the massive self-enrichment scheme of some 200 people (and thousands more aspirants) which we today recognize as the contemporary world's geopolitical organization?
Why can't we--the buliders, architects, drafters, and laborers of the Internet, education, and science, allied with thoughtful and effective politicians, entrepreneurs, and educators--build something better?
Why can't we change the way people think? The way the wealthy and the politically powerful think? Why can't we educate them that to do so is in their best interests as well as the best interests of their fellow humans?
Seriously, people. Let's get on this.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I see two sides to this.
1) People walk into Apple stores to buy Apple products. iPhones literally sell themselves. It's not the guy with the credit card scanner.
So in this regard, the sales staff, while important--aren't terribly unique or important to the transaction except not being bad. And there are plenty of not-bad employees to choose from. So I see no reason to have high wages.
2) The flip side is that as they say an Apple sales person can easily sell $350,000 worth of *PROFIT* per year. Probably gross sales for an Apple retail employee are a fraction of say a Target checker but that's incredibly efficient--so it seems from a one-off perspective a company which makes $350k from someone's labor every year should give him a good cut of that. Instead they just put the profit into the bank.
As to the article in specific. Comparing an Apple Employee to a Tiffany's employee is a bad comparison. Like I said, an iPhone sells itself. A tiffany's employee needs to present a high-end image to the client. A Tiffany sales person needs to compose themselves like as if they too could afford their goods. That means their expenses for wardrobe are higher, they will have a higher demand on their physical appearance and they need to present an image.
A 20 something sales person at Apple though just needs to be a 20 something person who uses a smart phone... which is pretty much every 20 something in existence.
Yes, Intel never even made countless references to the MacBook Air or even the iPad when addressing their Ultrabook design...
For someone accusing another poster of fanboyinsm, don't you think you're oversimplifying things a little too much? Have you actually used a Mac? Yes, you can get the same specs for less, but can you get the same specs with the same kind of build quality, battery life, driver support (on both OS X and Windows), display quality, and overall integration with an entire ecosystem for less on anything else?
My Nokai 3310 was fine, too, until I tossed it away. Does that mean I should have never bought another phone? Regarding retina, can you please name another brand with them on laptops? Can you name another brand with a 326DPI display on their phones? If it's been available before then I'm sure you can!
If you can't figure out why the New York Times considers New York City labour issues to be news
Well probably like the rest of the planet he understands the New York Times is an international newspaper, not a city rag.
And did you post that after the part about them talking about New Hampshire, not New York? Or did you just miss that yourself?
Not a Times reader I guess.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Teenage unemployment is skyrocketing and yet we have some of the lowest minimum wages(adjusted for inflation) the country has seen in its modern history. It's almost like wages have nothing to do with teenage unemployment at this point.
Not entirely true. Ask anybody who used a computer in the late 80s, early 90s, and Apple was way ahead. SCSI on the desktop? Check. A completely USB connected home computer? Check. In fact, it was likely that Apple's early insistence on cutting edge tech is at least part of the reason nobody bought them until Steve Jobs came back. SCSI on the desktop? Who the fuck can afford SCSI on the desktop, and why the hell would I need it? I agree however that with core components (processor, graphics card, etc.) Apple's computers are consistently behind PCs. BUT...Apple isn't really interested in selling computers that run Crysis at 2560x5760 in full 3D, because they learned the hard way that such things only serve a niche market. They build PCs like Black & Decker builds coffee makers. You turn it on, it works. Which is exactly why I'll never own an Apple computer. I don't give a shit about user-friendly or stability. I want to play with the naughty bits. I do think in certain areas they are ahead. I hate Apple to the core, but I can't even argue with the quality of the Apple displays. The original iPod scroll wheel was way ahead of its competition, and maybe touchscreen smartphones were inevitable, but the iPhone made it work before anyone else did.
The penguin made me do it.
I work for an airline and get free flights, does that mean that airlines ass rape it's customers?
Hint: the answer's no.
Amusingly, this comes from a person who hasn't had to buy an airline ticket in years and gets to bypass getting felt up by TSA officials.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
Who said $12/hour was a "living wage"?
And why should Apple pay retail clerks walking the floor a wage designed to support a family of four? Do the clerks add THAT MUCH value to the proposition that they deserve $20-25/hr + benefits?
Should Apple ignore the near inexhaustible supply of willing and able workers that will take the job for $12/hour?
If Apple were to double retail clerk pay ($12 -> $25/hr) do you think Apple would keep the same number of clerks, halve the number of clerks or create more clerk positions? My money is on halving the number of clerks in the store.
Ken
What is the point of working if you are not earning a living wage, seriously, why? Who would you be fooling working eight hours a day five days a week basically pointlessly, can't afford health insurance, can't afford a reasonable place to live, can barely afford to sustain yourself only sufficiently to be able to turn up for work. Why work within that system when logically your only hope of a future is to rebel against it, especially when you see all those cheats, liars and thieves wallowing around at the top of it.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Even slaves got (crappy) room and board out of the deal. People making less than a living wage don't even get that. They are probably better off out of work.
If we allow employers to hire people at less than a living wage, we just end up subsidizing their payroll with food stamps. Shall we also help them buy labor saving devices at a discount and pay their power bills for them?
> Have you actually used a Mac? Yes, you can get the same specs for less, but can you get the same specs with the same kind of build quality, battery life, driver support (on both OS X and Windows), display quality, and overall integration with an entire ecosystem for less on anything else?
Yes. Owned 2. Mananged to sell them, fortunately.
Again, yes. I currently have a dell XPS 15 with an HD display. The display is better than all MBPs short of the 17" 1920x1200 with matte display. It has a better sound system with integrated subwoofer, and I opted for the 9 cell batter which is giving me 6-7 hours of real-world performance despite the XPS having a quad core SB i7. Build quality? Let's qualify that: Build materials of the case of the MBP are better. Quality and fitment is the same: The XPS is well-built, but has some plastic. Considering the XPS is outfitted like a MBP that is twice the price, I don't care at all.
LOL. It only prevents us from having riots in the streets like in the good ol' days of robber baron capitalism. You know, even rich people understand that if there are too many destitute poor people around them, sooner or later there's going to be a fight, and the poor are numerically superior...