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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?
My wife works at an Apple store and pulls in $29.15 an hour working the genius bar. Which means that she would have been able to qualify for the mortgage we took out three months ago just on her salary. The 25% employee discount is nice also.
Methinks the poster has an axe to grind with his inflamatory language.
"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!
at $0.50 CDN above minimum wage. Got screwed into Call Director (hit 0) wages because of a scheduling conflict. Seriously.
Worst thing is, it was that or McDonalds at minimum ($9.60 at the time)
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.
You don't work at the Apple Store to make any sort of serious cash. There are many better conduits for people to travel down in both IT and sales if money is a concern. People work there for the *coolness* factor. It's about as hot as working for Google or Facebook, and employee discounts are never a bad thing. Its also an easy experience builder for people, especially given the floor traffic.
And not to nitpick, but $10/hr ain't bad. Especially if you're earning tips.
Funny how the summary didn't note why the article was just published, Apple just gave everyone raises. Reports are that geniuses are being paid in the ballpark of $30 an hour now, which is reasonable for an IT focused job.
From TFA:
"Even Apple, it seems, has recently decided it needs to pay its workers more. Last week, four months after The New York Times first began inquiring about the wages of its store employees, the company started to inform some staff members that they would receive substantial raises. An Apple spokesman confirmed the raises but would not discuss their size, timing or impetus, nor who would earn them.
But Cory Moll, a salesman in the San Francisco flagship store and a vocal labor activist, said that on Tuesday he was given a raise of $2.82 an hour, to $17.31, an increase of 19.5 percent and a big jump compared with the 49-cent raise he was given last year."
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?
Hard to say. I'd have to run the math, factoring in such variables as value of store stock, ease of concealment, average return for Apple/Tiffany product on the black market, sophistication of store security and employee monitoring, etc.
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
In many cases, Tiffany wouldn't hire them. I've never seen anyone with two-inch gauges and tattoos from wrist to shoulder working at Tiffany.
I'm somewhat surprised that Apple hires them -- not that they don't do a good job, but few companies would hire such for public-facing positions. I think Apple has tapped a good employee resource there; bright, competent young people who've made personal appearance choices that generally disqualify them for customer-facing jobs better-paid than 7-11. And it probably does allow them to pay a little less.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I am the last to defend Apple but have any of you slashdotters worked retail before?
Apple wanted to hire me at $16 an hour and fly me down to Cupertino for training as a tech. BestBuy pays $9 an hour and prefers to hire their minimal wage teenagers instead.
$12 an hour is awesome for retail! Sure the pay is about $20,000 a year and you can't live off that but it is 25% more than the competiton. Tiffany's? Well you have to have many years of experience and be great with selling credit cards and be a good saleswomen or man for that job. They do not hire teenagers.
WHat I do not understand is if you are great at sales you can sell cars for ALOT MORE money or work in corporate sales? I guess you get broken and fear based employees for that price but Apple does pay above market wages as they do not want a geeksquad representing their products.
http://saveie6.com/
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.
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.
In retail $11.91 an hour starting wage is great. Even for skilled employees. H and R Block Tax preparers, for example, are only paid $8.50.
I have had jobs in retail since 1999, and I have never heard of a non-supervisor pulling in $11.91 an hour in base salary before. Yeah with commission the 20-hour a week entry-level dude can sometimes pull in $15/$20, but base salary of almost $12? It just doesn't happen outside of New York City.
which saw several million casualties and refugess, including over a million people dead, with chemical warfare and massive tank battles, and then the 1991 gulf war where Saddam set his own oil fields on fire.... then of course the 1970s violent revolution in Iran, the rise of the Ba'ath Party in Syria and Iraq, the Suez crisis, the various wars against israel, etc.
compared to all that, the US invasion in 2003 of Iraq is not very big. it seems big, but it really does not explain the price craziness at all. things have been much more chaotic in the past in the middle east, but prices were much more stable.
You can be forward-thinking and still be realistic about how companies typically select employees for public-facing positions.
In addition, swillden's description was probably the most non-judgmental analysis of that particular employee issue I've read to date. The only real implicit judgment in the statement was actually in regard to his assumptions about Apple, not the people they hire for front-line retail positions.
If people can't live on the wages they are paid; they will supplement their income in other ways. Whether that be theft/robbery, it will happen. Paying people a "living wage" reduces crime.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
12/hour isn't a living wage in a lot of places.
And why should it be?
If you pay everyone at ANY job a living wage, how are teenagers supposed to find work? They do not NEED a living wage. They would rather you hire two of them instead of one on a living wage, so they both can work.
It's no surprise teenage unemployment is skyrocketing, with a whole generation of kids unable to gain the valuable experience of working - and it's all thanks to people like you who REALLY do not understand the full job market and all the roles it plays throughout someones lifetime.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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
How true. When I was hired at McDonald's 20 years ago, you could not have visible tattoos on anybody, any jewelry for men, and women could only have stud earrings (one per ear, no necklaces, etc). The majority of the time hey wouldnt bother to HIRE people that interviewed outside that norm. That was BRAND policy.
Any office job was the same thing. If you got tattoos, they had to cover under tees or you would be wearing long sleeves forever.