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Apple Store Employees Aren't Allowed To Say 'Crash', 'Bug', or 'Problem' (theguardian.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader mspohr shares a Guardian article which argues that Apple Store employees "are underpaid, overhyped and characters in a well-managed fiction story" who "use emotional guile to sell products":
When customers run into trouble with their products, geniuses are encouraged to sympathize, but only by apologizing that customers feel bad, lest they implicate Apple's products as the source of the trouble. In this gas-lit performance of a "problem free" brand philosophy, many words are actually verboten for staff. Do not use words like crash, hang, bug, or problem, employees are told. Instead say does not respond, stops responding, condition, issue, or situation. Avoid saying incompatible; instead use does not work with. Staff have reported the absurdist dialogues that can result, like when they are not allowed to tell customers that they cannot help even in the most hopeless cases, leading customers into circular conversations with employees able neither to help nor to refuse to do so....
[I]n a move so ridiculous it's almost certain to be a hit, the Genius Bar has been rebranded the "Genius Grove". Windows are opened to blur the distinction between inside and outside, and the stores are promoted as quasi-public spaces. "We actually don't call them stores any more," the new head of retail at Apple, former Burberry executive Angela Ahrendts (2017 salary: $24,216,072), recently told the press. "We call them town squares."
The article argues that since there launch in 2001, Apple Stores "have raked in more money -- in total and per square foot -- than any other retailer on the planet, transforming Apple into the world's richest company in the process."
But it also complains that Apple's wealth "flows from the privatization of publicly funded research, mixed with the ability to command the low-wage labor of our Chinese peers, sold by empathetic retailers forbidden from saying 'crash'."
[I]n a move so ridiculous it's almost certain to be a hit, the Genius Bar has been rebranded the "Genius Grove". Windows are opened to blur the distinction between inside and outside, and the stores are promoted as quasi-public spaces. "We actually don't call them stores any more," the new head of retail at Apple, former Burberry executive Angela Ahrendts (2017 salary: $24,216,072), recently told the press. "We call them town squares."
The article argues that since there launch in 2001, Apple Stores "have raked in more money -- in total and per square foot -- than any other retailer on the planet, transforming Apple into the world's richest company in the process."
But it also complains that Apple's wealth "flows from the privatization of publicly funded research, mixed with the ability to command the low-wage labor of our Chinese peers, sold by empathetic retailers forbidden from saying 'crash'."
... back when I was a suit.
At a meeting, I told management that we had a major problem.
My boss corrected me saying, "We don't have problems, we have opportunities."
I said, "OK, then I have nothing to report."
A big wheel raised his hand to my boss and said to me, "No, go ahead and report."
I told him. "We have an opportunity that's causing a major problem."
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
When I bought an iphone 6, I though I was investing on a couple years phone, and bought a 128MB model. It was my 2nd iPhone after all.
Big mistake. Apple turned it slow with the infamous updates "to keep old batteries happy".
I just switched to Android, a 200 Euro/USD phone is more than enough to use and drop every couple of years.
On the bright side, I am not also giving my business to a company that only cares about fake political correctness and about using their foothold on business to promote whatever Tim Cook things about political or sexual issues instead of caring into improving technology.
I sure as hell get that at every shop I walk into these days. And it ain't restricted to tech products at all.
My interaction with most sales staff at most shops usually end very abruptly, and often rudely now. Simply because they are clearly not trying to help in any meaningful way. Which is usually is around questions of specs and function of the products they are meant to be selling!
They may as well be machines.
Everything is awesome, all Apple products are flawlessly perfect. ~ Duke of Duloc
And so the little BUG never got fixed. As a result, several web-facing products began quietly failing. Nobody dared report it as the Ecuadorian embassy is already full up. And so the little BUG grew and grew. One morning, Apple work up to most of the Apple missing. A large worm was then observed munching away down Cupertino Ave and Apple Way, devouring all in its path. It had become unstoppable.....
And the rest kids, is history. Today we can look at these Apple products on display in our museum. Note they are heavily sealed for safety reasons....
creimer. There's a little fat man inside eating all the information and dressing the capacitors as 7 year olds. He's impossible to get rid of, you'll need a new computer!
apple; the company that lies, cheats and steals tells its employees to lie.
I always figured being dishonest was a requirement to work at apple.
no longer contiguous.
I'm sad to hear you are having a non-supported issue with your excellent aPple device, but I'm happy to tell you for merely another 1K, you can replace it without having to retype your contact list.
The last apple device in my home was a Mac II CX which as solely running A/UX because I needed X windows compatibility. I later moved to a Graphon X terminal using a 38K modem
This is the endgame of white washing everything, controlling all employees (and consumer) social behavior, political correctness everywhere we turn. You control the message everyone is giving and you can sell to a captive audience without stirring up any resistance.
I LOL at your insinuation that it is only the left. The behavior you quite accurately describe is in fact rampant and present in the cultures of both left and right as well as the entrenched corporate world of those that worship the Almighty God : Currency.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I don't own an Apple computer but if I did and I needed tech support (which I wouldn't), I would make it my mission to use all the forbidden language and act confused when they didn't respond using the same language. When they finally quit the linguistic acrobatics I'd start yelling, "HERETIC! HE SPOKE THAT WHICH SHALL NOT BE SPOKEN!", pointing and maybe jump on on a table to maximize store-wide attention.
And that's how I plan to get banned from every Apple "town square". ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Try actually producing shit that isn't buggy AF. They FINALLY fixed the external monitor problem that forced my MBP to be reboot 1-2 times a day for the last year or so. Of course, next update of MacOS will introduce some other nightmarish bug...I mean "situation".
on users is a sin.
Hire smarter people using merit to work on the OS.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
It is not often that I compliment apple on locking down everything, but I have to say this is a great strategy. It reminds me of choosing the wall color of a business to help affect the mood, having no clocks in a casino, or having the bathrooms at the back of the store.
The key is that as long as the computer *identities* as functional, they can treat it as such. Expecting something to actually *function* as all the work invested, expecting it to fill its mandated *role*, is an offense against the proletariat. Failed workers of the world, unite!!!
More seriously, the staff at the Apple stores have been been very helpful and walked me through some very obscure problems and gotten me working replacement gear quickly, and helped me pick out good gear for my needs. They impress me with the quality of their work: It's just too obvious that this deliberate mislabeling of a clear physical state is much like the current fantasies about gender identity as opposed to actual physical sex.
Haha wait one minute there buddy
Really shows what a sick cult apple strives to be. It will probably cause a few of the devout faithful to have a full on aneurysm but hey; I'm sure others have warn them continually about the hazards of dealing with apple so tough luck.
So they won't mind if I set up my own stall there, right? Maybe selling used Android phones, or offering MacBook repair services.
"We agreed not to use the word recession in The White House."
"Then what do we call it?"
"A bagel."
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
I can't say "Trump" and "impeachment" in the same sentence at my government job. But "ass" and "hole" is okay.
the year a phone gets its feelings hurt when you say it crashed.
One business that has always been profitable is telling people that changing there attitude will change their situation. Currently, TED talks are a popular platform for this. "If you see everything as an opportunity, it becomes an opportunity!" Some people believe that and there will always be people who believe that because believing the trope is much easier than the alternative - facing and solving hard problems.
It's believable for two reasons. It's so attractive - we WANT t believe that all these hard problems can be solved just by changing our attitude. Also, it's inverse is true, making it an attractive fallacy of the inverse. It's true that if we have a defeatist, hopeless, victim attitude, we won't solve our problems.* We'll whine about them, we'll blame others, and we won't solve anything.*
Of course does NOT mean that the right attitude magically solves our problems. A "can do" attitude, fortitude, looking for the opportunities we can leverage, determination is a *prerequisite* to finding solutions. It's not the solution. It's what you have to do *before* you find the solutions, and *after* you frankly acknowledge the problem.
* If this truth that an attitude of victimhood and blaming others doesn't solve any problems reminds you of a certain political party, that's not my fault. They chose that approach.
Now you're just fucking with us.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
"Overpriced"
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
They need to be sued for false clams that any of them are Genius.
I bet the entire lot of them wouldn't have a combined IQ over 100.
I thought the three words were "sale", "discount" and "free"
Sometimes the Guardian is a great source, but other times they're just delusional.
But it also complains that Apple's wealth "flows from the privatization of publicly funded research, mixed with the ability to command the low-wage labor of our Chinese peers, sold by empathetic retailers forbidden from saying 'crash'."
"Privatization of publicly funded research"? That's mind-bogglingly stupid. Show me a PhD economist who claims to prove otherwise, and I'll show you extremely strong evidence that motivated reasoning is a thing. By that standard we should run all airlines as public utilities because none of our current plane designs would be possible without WW1-era-government-funded R&D.
The claim that Apple retail employees are "low-paid" is slightly less stupid, so I'll bother to refute: as someone who is roughly 19 years into a retail career, I have never made the same hourly Apple employees do. I know, I have repeatedly applied to their stores, because even the shelf-stocking guy makes 30% more then I currently do. To get their wages in a non-Apple setting you need to be at least a department supervisor. It's also an amazing place to work precisely because they don't have commission. You can sell someone a $400 iPad or $799 Mac Mini instead of selling them a $3k laptop or $6k Mac Pro because you make the same either way.
In terms of Chinese wages being low, that's a bit of left-wing lore that was true ten years ago, but is quite exaggerated today. Chinese factory workers would not put up with the Communist Party if they hadn't been given some very nice raises in recent years. They make less then US factory workers, particularly factory workers on old Union contracts, but not that much less. It's also somewhat silly to damn Apple for doing something literally every other company in the world does.
The rest of the article it doesn't improve. No shit Apple tries to control every aspect of the customer experience, so does literally every other company on the planet. At my retail company there are actually tasks that I am supposed to perform in 90 seconds, and the computer adds all these tasks up, plus all the time I have devoted to said tasks, and if I was taking an average of 2 minutes per task I would in huge trouble. No shit Apple wages (which start at $14.50 an hour and go up fairly rapidly from there) can't support a family of four, but if it couldn't support a family of three half my coworkers would have literally starved to death years ago. The only guys who make $14.50 an hour are management and the handful of guys who got hired in back before they started hiring High School kids with no home improvement experience.
I prefer to use the precise, descriptive term.
(now really hoping that Iars doesn't use Stupid Quotes here)
but only by apologizing that customers feel bad
This has become the norm in any corporate apology. No matter how badly they've performed, the best you'll get out of any big organisation is something along the lines of:
"We strive at all times to provide the highest levels of customer service and satisfaction. I am sorry if you feel that we have failed on this occasion."
Never any kind of admission that they have ballsed up, no matter how much evidence there is that they have made a phenomenal pig's ear of things. Instead they try to suggest that it's your fault really - you're being over-sensitive, and it's not really their fault.
The really stupid aspect of this is that a decent apology can win you customers. I used to run a small mail order business, and when we got something wrong we would instantly take the blame and apologise. "Oh, whoops! Sorry - that's my fault." People were so surprised at this kind of honesty that it won us some of our most loyal customers. Big business though seems absolutely determined never to issue a real apology, and by so doing they merely alienate the general public.
âoeWar is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.â
What, you thought only communism used propaganda?
This comes from the people who made the infamous 1984 ad.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
another fucking "lets kick the fruit around" headline on /.
This need to bash Apple is pathetic.
Hated by those who feel disempowered because they can't root their hardware, tinker with it, mod it or run Amiga 64 emulators and ripped off roms on it.
As my if mother gives a fuck that the device she hooks into the internet on can do any of the above. Pics of grand kids and Facetime is all she gives a shit about.
Not just her but 99% of the internet, tech using, public out there.
There are a number of things I don’t like about Apple right now... but this story doesn’t ring true to me.
I went in this past summer with an iPhone 6S - GPS no longer worked. The “genius” (yeah, I do hate that) listened to what I’d done to attempt a remedy, said “I’ve seen this problem before, but it’s usually been with the 6 not the 6S”, then gave me a replacement 6S. No hassles, no dissembling, no attempt to upsell.
In summer 2017 I went in with a 2015 MacBook Pro whose trackpad and keyboard wasn’t working. The guy took it, said “the trackpad cables on these sometimes get pinched during assembly and eventually fail”, and they did the repair.
I do find the new University Village Apple Store annoying, though. And I hate that they seem to have gotten rid of the dedicated help/repair area - while you’re waiting for your appointment, you’re just kind of hanging out in the middle of the throng trying to look for who ever is eventually going to help you. But I haven’t had any issues with the people themselves.
#DeleteChrome
Do not use words like crash, hang, bug, or problem, employees are told
Actually I think this isn't a bad thing. I'm a software engineer. When me and the missus have dinner and talk about the work day, I'd say for example, "there was a problem with the app but I was able to figure it out". She sometimes responds with "why does your job consist of so much problems?"
It's gotten in my lingo to just call everything a problem. It's not a bad thing, my job is fixing those and delivering a working end product. But I think it makes it more understandable to regular people to not call it a problem/crash/etc.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
But they're allowed to say "Glitch"
Do not use words like crash, hang, bug, or problem, employees are told. Instead say does not respond, stops responding, condition, issue, or situation. Avoid saying incompatible; instead use does not work with.
It seems like a reasonable way to standardize this kind of language, especially when dealing with people internationally or from various disciplines who might not be familiar with CS jargon. Perhaps they should become familiar with basic jargon before operating a modern pocket supercomputer, but when it's Apple's customer visiting Apple's store and asking Apple's employees for help on Apple's product, it's pretty clear who you'd have to make that case to.
Wow, you got screwed. I thought my iPhone 4S' 16 GB was small! :P
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Seriously, this doesn't surprise me.
Used to work for a reseller. A week before Boot Camp was released, we were testing it to demo as a transition technology for customers. An Apple national sales manager came along (in front of customers) and got angry at us asking why anyone would want windows, etc. We explained as a transition technology. He wasn't my manager, just a rep from Apple.
Two weeks later, I recall that the manager returned, once Boot Camp was released talking about what a great transition technology it was. No apology was made, and he seemed so proud of himself at the time.
Seriously, there is a reason why only 1 person I know from that reseller is still using OSX day-to-day (and its only because they were certified in OSX server and had no experience with Windows server or Linux).
We only had a bit of interaction with them directly, and they didn't seem like the nicest company from where I was standing.
If you actually admit to a fault, you provide evidence for a lawsuit.
As if the problem, bug or crash goes away with all the newspeak.
If Apple would invest these resources in some programmers.... (a.k.a. developers! developers! developers! (remember that one?))
No it's not. It's sleeping.
"We have this issue formerly know as a crash"
They're sales staff. They're as much geniuses as Subway sandwich makers are "artists".
I was a Apple fan boy for years, felt like I was in a technology cult. Its really not but the fact that Apple uses brilliant marketing and carefully crafted products that differ from run of the mill tech is what makes Apple loads of money. The products don't have to be better, you just have to think that they are.
You can't say "crazy" ,"mentally ill" , "cult" if you in the cult.
I consulted at a competitor to Verizon. We weren't allowed to ask "can you hear me now" because it was used in one of their commercials.
We also weren't allowed to say anything negative about the competition. Instead we were told to highlight what our products and services could do.
"...since there launch..." ***Their*** There =/= their.
Authoritarian.
Fascism is corporate run government; similar to but opposite of government run corporations. Different spectrum (in a way kind of a loop) of economics while freedom is a different separate spectrum and the combination of the two create the actual political landscape. It's still a simplified abstraction but most people seem unable to think even in 2 dimensions -- like 1984, the language and culture limit you to describing only 1 dimension in terms of left and right. (worse than Flatland, but the point is well made in that story.)
Crash: Rapid unplanned program exit
Bug: Unintended program functionality
Hang: Unscheduled process suspension
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Trying to understand the opportunity involved in BP dumping billions of barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico with Deepwater Horizon... exactly who benefited here?
"We have an opportunity to test the problem-solving skills of our best engineers & roughnecks. Further, we can test the efficacy of the world's oil spill clean-up technology."
See? That wasn't so hard. ;)
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Anti-political-correctness is fascism pretending to be a defence of free speech. It's supreme irony that for us to have free speech some people think that we have to ban criticism.
So criticism (anti-political correctness) of your criticism (political correctness) of other people's speech is fascism? Why isn't it free speech? How many layers of recursion do we have to go through? Or is it an unnecessary exercise, because the humorless scolds of the left always magically end up in the virtuous column?
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Having been the recipient of this form of speaking from Apple staff after yet another Mac died from a poorly soldered GPU, I have to say it just sounds psychotic.
"We care about you", " We are sorry you are having problems", "The device is not functioning as you want", "It is not your fault", "We can fix it for $1000".
Fuck you Apple. Were it not for OS X, I'd have dumped you a long time ago.
"COLORED PEOPLE" bad. Never ever say.
"PEOPLE OF COLOR" acceptable.
It's not "TELLING THAT YOU ARE MISTAKEN". It's "GASLIGHTING".
Since when did "emotional guiding" and language blacklists and whitelists become news?
And White House employees aren't allowed to say dossier, collusion, or impeachment. True story.
Apple has been occupied entirely by fertilizer produced by bovines and it has adversely impacted their central nervous systems.
Hey, Apple... what does the word "incompatible" MEAN? Does. not. work. with.
As in, "Apple's attitude towards their former customers is incompatible with my buying anything else from them in the future." Gaslighting is more of this bovine-feces behavior that I will no longer tolerate.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
We actually don't call them stores any more, we call them town squares.
Heh, fuck, I could not better this in trying make a cringe-worthy capitalistic statement - It's so perfect I almost suspect it's astroturfing - Yes Apple! please do come and run our town, I for one welcome our new technological overlords.
to be fair it could be written better. The Guardian isn't saying that private companies using publicly funded research is bad, they're pointing out the disconnect between a company that built itself on the public dime and then actively abuses said public. And yes, I know most of the research wasn't done in China, Humanists think in global terms since there's a global race to the bottom going on right now, if you're a tech worker you've probably experienced that in the form of outsourcing...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
It's not double think, it's a classic marketing tactic. Your customer service reps are the face of your company. You want them to put a good face on. As for internal discussions you avoid the words because if you get in the habit of using them you'll slip up in front of a client.
Apple has created an impression of being significantly more stable than Windows. Take away the bloatware and buy decent hardware and that's just not true. Now, to be fair it's often hard to do those things with Windows (I got stuck with a $1500 Toshiba laptop that is absolute junk) but there's still way too much of a gap between the reality of Mac OS and it's perception. You get that with a consistent message across the company.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
It's a big jump—fraught with insecurity—to go from living at home to living on your own. Who's going to tell you you're still awesome when the best laid plans of callow fledglings screw the pooch?
Apple Inc.: I will! Me, me, me, meeeeeee!
Oh, what a complex world you weave when Fiction as a Service becomes the killer application of sugar-laced independence.
That's a classic line from all over the oil industry. Though I've never heard it used in a serious way. Normally we just use that line to emphasis that we're taking the piss.
My favourite line from my boss: "I have an opportunity that you need to volunteer for."
My teammember next to me said "You just got voluntold!"
Going to prison, you are too soft, he must be executed by hanging, sorry, I meant he must be stopped from responding.
berkeley software distribution. it was funded by the university of california system, berkeleye, and released to the public. its a public university.
We call bugs "issues" over the phone. Customers don't care about that, but they do care that I diligently follow up with them and let nothing fall through the cracks. And if we can't fix something soon, I tell them straight up and then follow up with updates.
We weren't allowed to say one of our computers "caught fire" at my company.
It was a "thermal event".
Editors, how do they work?
Welcome to it!
Youâ(TM)d have better luck getting fair or reasonable reporting about Apple from almost anyone but The Guardian. Even if what they write is true, itâ(TM)s always going to be framed in such a way as to make Apple appear evil. The Guardian hates Apple almost as much as Forbes does. The Guardian hates Apple almost as much as it hates Julian Assange. Almost.
I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it
Lingua Tertii Imperii
Dialectician. Archology.
She carelessly changed her password, got locked permanently out of her phone, never bothered backing up, didn't know most of her other passwords, and was not in a fit state for human company.
The Apple staff smiled, jollied her along, and she left only moderately unhappy about loosing everything. They had the patience of a saint.
Any grumpy Slash Dot reader would have taken a different line, and not been successful selling to the mass public.
(Daughters need iPhones because all their friends use iMessage groups. No choice.)
Customer: I have this issue [goes on to describe said issue].
TechSupport: Yes, ma'am, you have *indeed* found a cruglem in the applicateion.
I heard, years ago, that Apple had certain rules of what employees should say/not say to customers. I wouldn't want to work under those conditions, myself. But I'm also a middle aged guy who isn't going to do retail anyway, unless things get REALLY bad for me.
At the end of the day? I don't see why it should affect anything, if the "Apple Genius" says "does not work with" vs. "incompatible"? What matters is if you can get answers to your questions when you go there, and if they're providing adequate service.
Considering most computer products have no way to visit a retail establishment owned by the manufacturer at all? Apple already has a edge in this regard. Yes, Sony had some stores and Microsoft did a copy-cat thing. But I've purchased PC gaming system gear from the likes of Gigabyte or ASUS and had zero help when things were defective. They'd go so far as costing me postage to repeatedly mail in things as RMA, only to hold them for weeks, not even touching them, before returning them as "fixed". There's no network of retail stores for a Dell or an HP.
Honestly though? Apple retail has taken pretty good care of my Mac issues over the years. Just recently, I brought in a keyboard cover for an original iPad Pro because it started causing the iPad to repeatedly say "accessory not found" while it was attached. They gave me a brand new replacement one free, once I explained the problem. (Apparently, it was a known quality issue.)