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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?
So how many employees usually last beyond the first few months? Or in other words, what the ratio of new employees to well established employees be, at any point of time, in the store?
At the risk of being redundant, these are retail clerk jobs, and don't require a whole lot of skill.
People walk into the store ready to buy a computer. I've never seen a clerk in an Apple store actually sell someone a computer who didn't already want one.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
I second this. I work as a corrections officer in Kansas, working with >800 inmates Minimum to Maximum security inmates five days a week, and I only make $12.98/hour, with very bleak outlook in the way of raises.
Minimum wage is the norm. I work for a pretty good employer (Home Depot), and I get a raise whenever minimum wage goes up. I do not get the opportunity to work inside in air conditioning. I am expected to help people load their cars with their purchases, which more then once have literally weighed a ton (50 40 lb bags). My option for advancement exist, but none would get me to $11.91/hr. I do not get an employee discount of any kind, on anything. I could have benefits, but they require premiums and on $8/hr premiums are impossible.
Living wages leave them unemployed unless they happen to be worth those wages.
Precisely. What the living wage people either forget or ignore is that the alternative to a "living wage" job is not a lower paid one, but no job at all. So the real effect of a "living wage" law is to ensure that anyone whose labor cannot justify a wage that's at least as high as the "living wage" shall remain unemployed. 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.
One of us doesn't understand capitalism.
"If you (1) work hard and (2) have the talent, you can achieve greatness."
This sounds pretty much like the ideal statement of how to get on in a capitalistic society. You need to put the effort in, and you need to have intrinsic value. If you don't have *both* of those, you're screwed. That's how capitalism works - it's a re-definition of "selfishness" as applied to the working environment because the crux of the system is that the workforce is working for private owners, not the government. Those private owners do their best to exploit their employees to maximize their profit, because, well, they think the money ought to be in *their* hands rather than their employees.
Your plea is that not everyone has intrinsic value, and so they are screwed; that's not fair to them and ought not be tolerated (which I agree with, for what it's worth). Unfortunately, what you're suggesting is that the US adopt a more-socialist outlook, and the raving loonies on the right, as well as a lingering distrust of communism (unfortunately conflated with socialism) from the US-vs-Russia days make that ... unlikely.
Socialism isn't the worst thing in the world. Example: in the UK, when a car hit me on my motorbike, the police, fire brigade (the bike was in flames) and ambulance were there in minutes (these are all socialised services), I was taken to hospital, operated on, cared for and released a week or so later. Cost to me at the time: $0 - healthcare is socialised as well - everyone pays a little (much less than I pay for health insurance in the US now, for example) and no-one ever goes bankrupt because of medical fees... In addition, I obtained grants (from the government) to go to college, and the govt. paid me to do a PhD, not the other way around. This is more socialism.
The UK is still a capitalistic society because capitalism is a fine way to harness the innate desire to better oneself. I'm happy about this - I was free to create a startup company, go bust, create another and sell it for a handsome profit - in a non-capitalistic society that would have been far harder to do. I do like the socialist safety nets that underpin UK society though, my theory goes like this: capitalism is like a fine blade - it's a lot better when it's tempered. The problem for a lot of Americans seems to be that one uses Socialism to temper Capitalism, then you get the best of both worlds by treading the middle-path rather than veering too far to the right or to the left. As it stands, the US is in danger of veering so far to the right that I'm not even sure it could come back without some major upheaval in US society. This is the major reason I haven't switched citizenship - I used to joke that retaining my UK citizenship (even though I'm married with a kid) was the fallback plan. It's not a joke any more, I doubt my long-term future is in the US - once I've made enough cash, we'll probably be off.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Apple store is a touch above that since it's either computer work (genius bar) or customer service. (people on the floor)
Both positions are just retail sale jobs.
The customer service people sell products and the "Genius" Bar get people to buy replacements.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"