Company: Apple
Date: 2013-04-30
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Great company, great resources, excellent job to carry you through to next step but not a career place.
Pros: Apple retail offers great health benefits, product discounts, free software, lots of technical and leadership training. The store management empowers the workers to grow themselves professionally and personally. They would rather be helping you to get what you want out of life than getting reamed out by an angry customer. The pay significantly above average for retail employees.  

They seem to be listening to the employees and some changes have reflected that. 

When they say you can get whatever you want out of your time at Apple it is largely true but takes a lot of work and usually very creative thinking on your part.
Cons: The #1 con is that most customers lack the skills to use the products. People don't take the time to understand Apple's technology so they blame the store employees when their computers or iPhones don't work. On a daily basis customers don't know their email addresses or passwords and expect you to do a more thorough investigation than Sherlock Holmes in order to help them download an app. 

Some co-workers don't try at all or pass their problems around and the result is the good employees clean up the messes.

Performance is not incentive based. The guy who has the highest sales could technically earn as much as the guy with the least amount of sales. 

To get a promotion is difficult because there are many people vying for one spot. 

Different roles in the store are very stressful. Sometimes we have to help multiple customers at once with very diverse problems. We have to turn people away from tech support because they don't have an appointment to meet with a technician. It gets very difficult after the 20th time in an hour. 

Your hours will vary because of the stores longs hours. Sometimes you work early in the morning and sometimes late at night. Usually you will be working on a weekend. Not very fun and not very conducive to family based or social people.