Company: Apple
Date: 2010-08-20
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current

Long hours, random schedule, just another retail store
Pros: Great benefits from day one. Co-workers are generally nice and pretty enthusiastic.
Cons: Despite all the talk about "positioning" and "expectations" in the interview process, it all seems lost in the store environment. The CORE training says Apple encourages feedback across management lines, but in practice it seems like feedback in all downstream. The mantra is "this is retail" which is at least a shot at honesty. Training time for creatives is not a priority even though pro certifications are high on the priority list. So I guess I expected to get the opportunity to learn more in-depth stuff about Apple pro software and then teach it to customers who are using those products. Instead creatives at our store are used as fill ins anywhere else in the store when we are not training.  There is also some subtle sexism from  management, including the women (most of whom seems to be from some other mall store management position), and they don't approach me with technical or software questions the way they do my male co-workers.  Work/life balance is not on anyone's balance sheet either, so expect to make attempts to rearrange your life around a totally random schedule. No matter how hard you work, you have to self motivate, at least at this store, because that is the only motivation you will get. I am really disappointed this has turned out like this and am using my few days off, and I mean that literally, we often work eight in a row, to look for more reasonable work (even in this tough economy).  My work ethic is huge, and I will continue to work as hard as I can to make the customers in my store happy and make them feel valued until I move on.