Company: Apple
Date: 2018-03-18
Overall rating: 5/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Junior

Product Zone Specialist
Pros: Apple has a great retail atmosphere and it's an amazing opportunity to interact and work with all of their beautiful products. Coworkers are amazingly talented and super friendly, so work is never boring! It's a very engaging environment and you do feel like you are part of the company instead of just a 'subordinate' to management and corporate. You aren't bound to act a certain way or speak a certain way to customers; management encourages you to be yourself and make a connection with the customer on a deeper level before selling products. In the end, you get to meet some very interesting customers and make valuable connections with them.  
In addition to all of that, Apple provides great benefits, including insurance, reimbursements, and employee discounts. Hourly pay for retail employees is also very good. 
Overall, working for Apple was one of the best decisions I've ever made. I will cherish my experience there for years to come.
Cons: Very minimal work/life balance. Considering I was a student at the time, it was hard to work a nine hour shift on a weekend and still stay caught up with school work and make time to be social (just an example). I was part-time and I pretty much worked every single day I indicated availability for. Many full-time employees don't notice it, but for part-timers, it can be hard to balance a few different things when one weights so much more. Also, being that it is a retail store, you will also have to deal with irate/difficult customers on different occasions, especially if you break some bad news to them about their device. But, customer interaction aside, I feel that the minimal work/life balance hindered me from being a well-rounded student/friend/employee, and eventually caused my final decision to depart the company and pursue other routes.