Apple Store Employees Soak Up the Atmosphere, But Not Much Cash

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Apple Store Employees Soak Up the Atmosphere, But Not Much Cash

Posted by timothy on Saturday June 23, 2012 @11:15AM from the paid-entirely-in-itunes-scrip dept.

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?

21 of 654 comments (clear)

That pay is just for the first few months by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 11:16 · Score: 5, Informative

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.
1. Re:That pay is just for the first few months by D'Sphitz · 2012-06-23 11:53 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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?
2. Re:That pay is just for the first few months by Yosho-sama · 2012-06-23 11:57 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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!
3. Re:That pay is just for the first few months by D'Sphitz · 2012-06-23 11:57 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  A quick google shows fast food starting pay is right around $8/hour, retail at $9/hour, so I'm having trouble generating any outrage over Apple paying $12/hour.
4. Re:That pay is just for the first few months by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 12:24 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  I admit, I'm a bit of an Apple hater sometimes. It's their attitude, towards thinking they own basic concepts, but I digress. I did a quick check to see what competing retailers are paying.
  Best Buy sales associate $9.70: http://www.glassdoor.com/Hourly-Pay/Best-Buy-Hourly-Pay-E97.htm
  Fry's Electronics sales associate $9.19: http://www.glassdoor.com/Hourly-Pay/Fry-s-Electronics-Hourly-Pay-E3186.htm
  They are paying more than the going rate it seems. Though I'm sure it's worth it if your are trying to fill your store with hipsters that the apple fans can look up to as the apostles of apple...
  Anyway, for me this story is doesn't seem to have any basis that I can clearly see.
5. Re:That pay is just for the first few months by Clock+Nova · 2012-06-23 13:10 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Maybe that's because most PC manufacturers use Apple as an R&D department.
  
  --
  There they were, sitting in the van with all those dials, and the cat was dead. -V. Marchetti, CIA
6. Re:That pay is just for the first few months by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 14:15 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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.
7. Re:That pay is just for the first few months by im_thatoneguy · 2012-06-23 15:00 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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.
8. Re:That pay is just for the first few months by rtb61 · 2012-06-23 18:31 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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
What a stupid time to post this drivel by brunes69 · 2012-06-23 11:23 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.
1. Re:What a stupid time to post this drivel by Volante3192 · 2012-06-23 11:48 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Yes, making $11/hr means you've got it hard.
  Contemplate the meaning of that for a moment. It's not just that we have high unemployment, it's that those WITH employment aren't getting anything close to a living wage. And you know what happens when you don't get a living wage? You have to go on welfare programs.
  Funny how that works out, isn't it?
2. Re:What a stupid time to post this drivel by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 12:01 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Are you telling me that people cannot live on 22K/year?
  Here is a man that raises his family of four on 27K/year: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/06/01/raising-a-family-on-under-2000-per-year/.
  I live on 28K/year (making 90K/year, mind you!).
  My two roommates live on the 12K/year stipend for their research.
  My girlfriend lives on 15K/year.
  None of us are on welfare. All of us have savings cushions. All of use drive our own (paid for) cars (between 15 and 4 years old, mine is the oldest). All of us can afford to do reasonable things: going to swim with dolphins this weekend, all of us have spent at least 1 week in a foreign country this past year, several of us have had theme-park weekends, and we each eat out of the house about once per week. We are not about to claim welfare.
  Fuck you.
3. Re:What a stupid time to post this drivel by RubberDogBone · 2012-06-23 14:13 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Where did the idea EVER come from that you were supposed to get a job/situation like the one you describe and stay that way your entire life?
  The plan should be, get a job. Keep that job until you can get a better one. When you can, get a better job and move up. Repeat as needed. It won't take most people more than a few years, a decade tops, to climb the job ladder into something that pays well and provides the base needed to raise a family and eventually retire. They can climb the ladder as high as ambition will take them.
  Nobody is supposed to try to have a family and kids, and/or work their entire lives and try to retire off a job paying $11 an hour. THAT idea is repulsive. This country rewards people who get off their tails and think outside their self-imposed boxes (mental prison cells) and try to achieve something better. You have got to try.
  Easy? No. Nobody promised easy. Just that it can be done if someone is willing to try.
  Settling for less than that is the problem. Too many people peak at those low plateau jobs and never reach higher.
  
  --
  Sig for hire.
4. Re:What a stupid time to post this drivel by cptdondo · 2012-06-23 15:00 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Where did the idea EVER come from that you were supposed to get a job/situation like the one you describe and stay that way your entire life?
  That's the definition of a "living wage".
  We in the US have taken up this "up or out" mentality where it's no longer possible to spend your life doing a simple task; you have to somehow "better yourself" in order to actually make a living wage.
  So we start off at starvation wages, and if we can't make the cut we starve. Just listen to some of the rhetoric.
  There's a lot of value in having an experienced person doing basic tasks, but we've forgotten that. Go to Europe, or Japan, and see what level of service you get there.
5. Re:What a stupid time to post this drivel by Space+cowboy · 2012-06-23 15:37 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  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!
$12 an hour is being exploited? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 11:23 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.
1. Re:$12 an hour is being exploited? by grif_91 · 2012-06-23 12:00 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  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.
Article notes everyone just got raises by maccodemonkey · 2012-06-23 11:28 · Score: 5, Informative

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."
Re:Question already answered by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 11:52 · Score: 5, Funny

Tiffany Store Genius, because then I have a chance to bonk some rich trophy wife.
Slave labor by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 14:03 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.
Re:Why do YOU think everyone needs a living wage by dlp211 · 2012-06-23 15:47 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.