Company: Apple
Date: 2014-04-21
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

A Retail Slave
Pros: Great Health Benefits, nice discounts, "fearless feedback" and open communication with managers. With the exception for Time and Attendance, it is a very secure job and hard to get fired.
Cons: You will be up for a ride working at a Apple Retail Store in NYC. Most of the customer interactions are negative and they have absolutely no respect  for you!! Customers, will scream and shout out you and will look down upon you like your less than a homeless person. The store was generally understaffed and several hundred customers were pulling me in every single direction at one time. Managers wanted us to follow the company policy 100% without no hesitation. However, if we were doing our part and a customer was angry, then they would throw a tantrum and the managers would give into them All the Time and make Us Specialists look like the Bad Guys!!! I have seen times when a customer caused a scene because they couldn't return their two year old phone. As a result, the manager would give in and also give them a free phone case. The policy is 14 days and the policy never sticks. When it came to making an exception for an employee. OOOO Noooo But the Policy!!! Many of my co-workers were frustrated with the mixed messages of management. 

During my time there, out store had a really harsh Time and Attendance Policy. If you were late or call out no matter the reason you would get an occurrence. The subway could of shut down or you might of had a death in the family, doesn't matter!!!  Many great employees were fired because of this broken policy.

They had system called the NPP where the customers can rate you. This was one of the reasons I left. Your raise is dependent on this. The store can be way understaffed and a customer can write a negative review about the experience ( not having control over it) so that effects your raise. Also, Management wants you to sell as much AppleCare or One to One as possible. You can convince a customer to buy it without being pushy at all. Then later on the customer will have buyers remorse and slam you by giving you a negative NPP score by saying "they were too pushy". Then I would be blamed by the managers for being too pushy and getting a detractor. If I didn't Applcare then they would ask me to please improve my numbers. Again, mixed messages!!!


The NYC Market is run by very poor management. I understand that other markets and stores are much better.