Slashdot Mirror
The Worst Apple Store In America — An Employee Confession
Cutting_Crew writes "Gizmodo has a piece that describes one of the worst and most corrupt Apple stores. Two employees recount management exchanging brand new computers for face-lifts (and other things), not just from customers, but also from businesses. Other common activities ranged from destroying devices repeatedly and ringing up new ones (for themselves and friends as fake customers) to outright stealing merchandise and cash. Customers may have also lost their data if they weren't polite when coming in for a repair, or the 'Genius' help may have been intoxicated."
Consider the source always. This is not the first hack piece written by them. They were caught knowingly purchasing stolen goods but got off on the technicality of being part of the "press". It is not supposed to be a license to get out of jail.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
OK, I can believe the management is a bit corrupt, but are you seriously trying to tell me a bunch of hipsters barely making minimum wage goofed off and stole from their employer??
this is an outrage!
-Lod
Exactly, how credible is this source and the source that they are quoting?
That's not the worst of it. One of them tried to sell me a computer with two year old specs at twice the price of a new one anywhere else.
In addition to purchasing stolen goods, they also attempted extortion. All that aside, those assholes have been on my shit list for a lot longer than that, ever since the stunt that got them banned from the Consumer Electronics Show.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
But were any of their previous hack pieces about Apple? Last I read Gizmodo, they were still massive Apple fanboys, to the point of unreadability.
They were caught knowingly purchasing stolen goods but got off on the technicality of being part of the "press". It is not supposed to be a license to get out of jail.
Actually, being a member of the press is supposed to help you stay out of jail.
Even judges think so, otherwise we'd be locking up every journalist that published classified documents.
I think your understanding of the First Amendment needs refreshing.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
A bad store manager can leave a lasting trail of damage. Sounds like this store had a bad one and it rubbed off on the employees.
I don't see how this is a noteworthy story though... In any large retail operation you will have some bad "apples". It also sounds like Apple found out and fired most of them.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
People steal from work! News at 11!
This is what infidelity insurance is for!
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
We try to... see wikileaks.
The first amendment was never intended to be license for just any misbehavior or licentiousness or criminal misdeeds. It's protection specifically, with regard to the press, protects them from prosecution for things they say or print. It doesn't permit them to lie, cheat, and steal... by which I mean they cannot perjure themselves, commit fraud, or commit larceny with impunity. Freedom of the press is not a blanket permit to do whatever they feel like.
Is this how bad the hype on freakin' Apple is getting? The fanboys and girls just can't get enough so that now they're all hyped on reading reviews on the fucking stores? Stores? It isn't enough we have to endure sanctimonious drivel about how cool their iWhoGivesAFuck is, now we have to endure commentary on their stupid fucking stores. Get a grip people. What's next? Are they going to start writing essays on the possible ways Wozniak washes his balls?
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
So, I broke Slashdot tradition and read TFA.
Short version:
This store was staffed by, and managed by, a bunch of power-mad dicks who were all either fired or left. Several employees were caught stealing or scamming the system, and fired and forced to pay for what they stole, and now the system is harder to scam.
Isn't that how it's supposed to work? Bad people are forced out, and system is improved to limit the behavior of bad actors? I mean, I get it, we all hate Apple, (STEVE JOBS WAS AN EVIL THIEF!) but I don't quite see the story here. Tellingly, the main storyteller, "Ronald" is still unemployed, presumably because his past references are something to the effect of "this guy stole our stuff and abused our customers" and now trying to get some some of satisfaction by trashing his employer for not stopping him from being a huge dick?
So if a member of the press commits murder, you'll let them walk?
Ever since Judy Miller went to jail for that noblest of causes the Bush Administration, the US media has loved this idea that being part of the press exempts you from criminal prosecution. I am not a lawyer, but as far as I know it does not, has not, and should not.
I believe strongly in a free press and I disagree with many excuses made for keeping information hidden ("national security", "intellectual property", etc.), but I among other things do not think that "journalists" should traffic in stolen property. Nor is being a "journalist" an excuse for Gizmodo's general sleaze factor.
The gluttony. The vanity. The greed. The envy. The fear. The partying. The debauchery. The sex. The humanity.
We have it all.
Apple geniuses.
---
How is that for a commercial?
You can't handle the truth.
It doesn't permit them to lie, cheat, and steal... by which I mean they cannot perjure themselves, commit fraud, or commit larceny with impunity. Freedom of the press is not a blanket permit to do whatever they feel like.
As far as I know it is not illegal to lie. Making lies illegal would cause a problem as soon as two stories differ from each other, for example when the government says one thing and the press another. Since the government controls the law they can pretty much conclude that the official story is the truth and say that anyone who claims that the official story is false is a liar.
Doesn't mean what they're reporting isn't true.
How does the First Amendment protect you from purchasing known-stolen goods?
As far as my "limited understanding" that may need refreshing, the first Amendment protects your right to free speech in the face of the government.
Buying stolen goods that you know are stolen is not free speech.
Ahh yes, "we" are the reason other people have no morals or ethics.
Some people always try to find a way to blame the "fanboys"...
The only people to blame here are those engaging in the acts mentioned.
Oh I don't know about that... there are lots of licenses to get out of jail.
I won't just consider the source. I'll consider my experience. It surprises me not at all that Apple is nothing more than a really shiny Best Buy. There may be a good number of tech savvy Apple users, but the majority are not. And those people are begging to be exploited. Corruption isn't a crime of character as much as it is a crime of opportunity and it's a human condition. That this happens within Apple's doors only speaks of a variety of side-effects of their image, customer base, and of course, their cool and relaxed manner.
The story also smacks of "Waiting" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0348333/). It's not a crowd I feel comfortable with. I do, however, understand the risks of doing business in organizations with images like these. So yeah, for some things and in limited amounts, I will risk my dollars and time in limited amounts at Best Buy. Apple stores? Not so much... the prices are too high for the risk.
It makes me wonder... it has always made me wonder why Apple gear is increasingly a completely sealed box with no removable anything. That is the main reason I will not buy any more Apple stuff unless it is user servicable. Is Apple's reason for doing so their employees? Or customers? Both? My initial thought was to prevent creating 3rd party markets for batteries and other compatible parts... and I still think so. But this practice also puts customers at further risk of exploitation... and as has been acknowledged since time immemorial... ...corruption is a crime of opportunity.
It's not only a matter of "if" it will happen, it's a matter of when and how often and it should be a given that it WILL happen. So I'd like to say this happens "everywhere, not just at Apple" which is kind of true. But I'd like to add that Apple make is more possible for a wide variety of reasons.
Since the government controls the law they can pretty much conclude that the official story is the truth and say that anyone who claims that the official story is false is a liar.
Hmm. Instead I'd say that there's a 50/50 chance of either telling lies. Ergo, imprison them both for half the standard sentence length.
I divide babies for breakfast.
But. My wife's macbook came from Computers Now in south Melbourne. When it started running slow we took it back to the store. They dragged their heels on the job and I eventually decided to take the machine back. The computer they returned to me had a different metal top cover which was badly scratched. They faked up the sheet which I signed which had purportedly shown the damage when I dropped the laptop off. We argued with them about it but eventually had to accepted a damaged and not repaired computer.
And the Apple store in Doncaster fixed the problem (a broken SATA cable) for 30 bucks as well as upgrading the OS. It took one day.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Perhaps you should do a little studying. "Freedom of the press" does not mean freedom of those in the business of selling news. It means freedom of the people to use printing presses to publish what they would like. The First Amendment does not give special protection to the news media. From the perspective of the Framers of the Constitution calling someone a "member of the press" would be like us calling someone a "member of the Internet".
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Sorry, if you want to be dick, snarky, or a condescending prick you deserve what karma serves you.
Sorry, you only have the options to take my money or not, you don't have the option to fradulently offer but not deliver goods or services.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Willful destruction of data is illegal in the UK. I don't care much of a cock I am to someone in a store, they break the law if they delete the data off my hard drive.
This is no different than getting spit in your food
You may think that's acceptable. I do not. I've worked in a restaurant and I'd expect any member of staff to get sacked if they tried that.
There are excellent ways of dealing with difficult, rude or tardy customers. Breaking the law and illegally abusing them are not excellent ways.
Don't be a cock.
I own a medium-sized computer store in South Carolina. I had problems with inventory mismanagement and theft a while back, so I installed surveillance cameras in the employee work areas. Every repair bench has an overhead camera that monitors what the employee does to the computer, and monitor and keyboard data at each repair station is logged and recorded to document what each employee does with the customer's software.
The cameras ultimately caught the employees who were stealing from me, and they are now serving time for felony grand larceny.
But, what really solved the problem for me was being more selective in my hiring process, and breaking down and paying for more exhaustive background checks.
Oh, and one other neat trick is never to use the references given by applicants, but ask those references for contact information for other people who know the applicant. The applicant will never give references who know the bad stuff they do.
They did not attempt extortion. Apple made a request and Gizmodo said yes provided it was a formal request, in writing not a phone call. Steve Jobs considered that extortion, because he believed rightly, the purpose of the formal request was to generate a story which would generate page views. That's not remotely extortion.
This is exactly the kind of story that a blog about Apple should be covering. You may be questioning whether journalists should be covering Apple but given the high level of public interest I don't see any reason they shouldn't be covered.
As for intimidation. Every small town newspaper publishes stuff that the mayor or the police chief doesn't like. Everyday journalists covering the national story go up against big corporations and government officials with tremendous power and budget. Go abroad and their are journalists in China reporting on abuses who get sent to forced labor. There were journalists in Egypt that got taken in by government forces and shot.
No Gizmodo shouldn't back down because Apple is unhappy.
In Soviet Russia, that didn't build you.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
Retail employees start at $11.91 on average. Minimum wage is anywhere from $5.15 to $8.25. So Apple starts their retail sales people between 100+% to 40% above minimum wage. Please clarify what you mean by "barely". Geniuses get larger wages as they have more skills. Now I don't know if you've ever worked in retail sales where most people are part-time and sometimes temporary and get no benefits but starting at much higher than minimum and getting benefits seems to be a good deal to me.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I'm not buying it.
You might deserve it, but that still doesn't make it right for the guy dishing out the revenge in the first place.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
If I caught someone spitting in a customer's food I would fire them immediately and I would also report them to the health department because inserting bodily fluids of ANY kind into a customer's food is a SERIOUS health code violation. I don't care if the customer was being a jerk or not. I have a business to run, and the last thing I need is a cleanliness scandal, or worse, having my permit revoked because I stood by and let my cooks contaminate meals.
As for the condescending prick bitching to my wait staff, he would soon find himself 86'ed from the premesis if he failed to heed my warnings. Being a customer doesn't entitle you to be a dick to my staff.
I wouldn't put up with crap from either side.
It's funny that people are questioning the legitimacy of this...when in reality if you've ever worked retail or had friends work retail you know that things like this happen ALL the time; especially in big box stores like Wal-Mart & Target. Anyone in retail will tell you that the #1 source of thefts in stores are the employees. It happens in computer repair facilities too, replace parts that aren't bad, then scrub the inventory and take it home, steal the customer's 3rd party hardware...it's relatively common. The more profitable the company, the more hidden the losses are the from the books, the easier it is to steal. If you stole from a small business they'd notice it in a heartbeat, when you're a huge corporation it's harder to control or even notice until there is nothing you can do about it. If Apple continues as the world's largest corporation, they will continue to be plagued by this, it doesn't mean they will lose much profitability, just that it's not even a scrape to their behemoth profits.
Taco Bell in our area starts people at $10.50. Target starts them at $11.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Awesome. That kind of attitude potentially bolsters a source's credibility. It's easy to be critical of those we despise; being critical of those we adore is a hallmark of introspection.
Wow, swoosh with your comprehension skils and those that modded you insightful. He said the reason you are "reading" about them and the article, not that you agree or disagree with the content of the article or someones doings. Gizmodo posts a non story, fan boys all read it and get excited about it and discuss it. Gizmodo will repeat these type of non stories because you the fan boy will read it and get excited about it again and again.
If this same story was posted about a local 7-Eleven store, no one would give a shit, no one would read, and no one would comment on it.
I can, if you like.
I used to own a small company (myself and 2 others started it, it grew to 8 people when we sold it, so it was never large.) By far the largest expense every year was the trade show budget. Even building (as far as union labour allows) our own booth / tearing it down / manning it ourselves / sharing hotel rooms, a trade show averaged to ~$50k, and we did two per year (NAB in Vegas and IBC in Amsterdam). if you consider the time taken out of normal working hours for all that, as well as how long we sweated over making sure the demos were as good as we could make them, it's a lot more than that.
If some clueless moron went around sabotaging the equipment that we set up "just so" to highlight what we were trying to show, I'd be furious. You get about 20 seconds to 'hook' someone hovering around your stand at a trade show, then a max of ~5 mins to show off your wares if they are interested. If *anything* goes wrong, it's game over, which is why we worked so damn hard to make our (very complex) system look effortless for every demo.
When a sale is worth ~$20k+, you have to come over as competent, what you're selling has to demonstrably do its job, and you generally have to give a good impression. None of that is achieved if you are suddenly scrambling to find why the fucking TV has turned off. You look like an incompetent maroon, and you've lost the potential sale.
To a large company, this is an inconvenience; to a small company, trade shows are lifeblood. You *need* word of mouth to consistently generate sales, and more people will talk about "that little company that made best-of-show" (which we did, twice) than something they saw in an ad, or something that a cold-call salesman phoned them up about.
Ours was a happy story, we wrote the asset management that still (to my knowledge) runs ILM (amongst others) today, and we got a pretty good deal for the company, but it was touch and go for a year or two and during those years something like this could have pushed us over the edge. Word of mouth works both ways. ... ("they don't even know how to turn on a TV"). If it had, then thats a whole bunch of people out of work, as well as a massive financial mess for me and the other two owners.
You go into business knowing it is a risk, you try to minimise that risk as much as possible, but you don't plan for self-aggrandizing idiots intentionally trying to break your company for their own financial gain. Everything the bastards at Gizmodo do is about getting more page hits and therefore more ad revenue. For them, it's all about money in their pocket, and frankly they don't give a shit about how they do it or what consequences will fall on others because of their actions.
So yeah. They're a bunch of assholes as far as I'm concerned, too.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
What does it have to do with mactards? People making at or near minimum wage won't take their job seriously because it is easy to find a similar crappy job somewhere else. This isn't news. Now to the extent that people think that their company of choice is infallible you can be right. But Gizmodo as mentioned has a reason to not like Apple and has a history of illegal activity so not exactly a reliable source of news. Not saying it doesn't happen at Apple stores, heck this crap happens at most stores I suspect. Just I wouldn't necessarily trust this site to report facts on anything not device teardowns.
Does Taco Cowboy punch babies? Sources say maybe!
Really, my response here has nothing to do with the credibility of Gizmodo in this article (they may or may not be, I honestly don't know). I just want to say that any time we defend an incredulous source of information because there might be a tiny nugget of truth buried in their lies, we only serve to give more credibility to those lies. Sort of like the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth.
+1 Disagree
I've also noticed that getting actual help from an Apple Store employee has become more and more difficult, unless you're plunking down for the big new shiny. So, the last time I was there, I used their Apple Store app, which allows me to use my iPhone camera to scan the code on the item i wanted and pay for it with the credit card on file. I got what I came for, I didn't bother with any of the employees, and I got to pretend that I was shoplifting the item as I walked out the door with it. Couldn't have asked for a better experience.
-- If you're posting to be funny, and your sig is funnier . . . .
Well to be fair, Macs don't have a BIOS system and UEFI is largely irrelevant to their ability to do their jobs. While I agree with your notion that their title has nothing to do with their knowledge, at the end of the day they're able to solve most people's problems and tend to do so in a way that doesn't leave a sour taste in people's mouths (unlike your typical help desk workers).
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Wages that cause people to feel exploited seem to have a huge effect on employee behavior.
There was a fairly believable story from a Walmart store manager that she stole things like diapers from inventory to give to employees with babies to help compensate for the wages that were to low for them to support their families.
"What was immoral about the Walmart store managers actions?" is an essay question that would probably get you forty different answers from twenty people.
Costco pays their employees well and has negligible product shrinkage, Walmart skimps on pay and has one out of nine items damaged, destroyed, stolen, or is otherwise unaccounted for.
To quote Milton Friedman "People will do what they have to do to survive." Morality is a luxury of the middle class.
Work bio at MMWD