Company: Apple
Date: 2017-10-30
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current

Specialist
Pros: -The pay is incredible. I work in New York City and I make $18.50 an hour before taxes. The amazing pay is actually also a con, because it's the way they trap you into not looking for other jobs (there are not that many part-time jobs that pay this much).
-Related: the benefits are amazing. Great health, dental, and visual insurance. They pay for a portion of your tuition, if you are a student. They pay part of your phone bill - I have the T-Mobile Individual Unlimited plan, which is usually $75/month, and with Apple it's $25/month! They even pay $100 a month for 
your friggin' transportation!!
-On purpose, they hire people who are either interesting or smart or funny or friendly or have good personalities. As a result, an unusually high percentage of your co-workers (as related to most customer service jobs) are people you will want to know and be friends with. This makes the soul-sucking, ultra-capitalistic work environment vaguely more tolerable and enjoyable.
Cons: -You will be subject to something called Net Promoter Score, which is straight out of an episode of Black Mirror. This is where customers rate you out of five stars and leave comments; if a customer gives you five stars they are a "promoter," four stars and they are "passing," less than that and they are a "detractor." Did I mention that the managers read literally all of the comments you get, and routinely bring them up? It's incredibly obnoxious.
-You will CONSTANTLY AND CONSISTENTLY be blamed for things that are not your fault. I have had customers blame me for misinformation which I got directly from my managers. 
-For the most part, the managers are horrible and do not care about you, or even their own jobs. They care about money and that's literally it.
-A tip for women: the company is ridiculously misogynistic. Every time I visit the Genius Bar I notice that there are something like 20 men working there to 3 women. Am I supposed to believe that that's a coincidence? Also, I am a female who worked in an IT position for a year and I was given the specialist role, whereas my male friend who has never worked in tech was given technical specialist.
-The company is also racist. A recent product was a line of Beats headphones called the "Neighborhood Collection," which was "inspired by the urban environment" (a verbatim quote I had to hear every day for about two weeks). The colors the headphones came in were red, blue, and "army green." Also, again, the vast majority of Genius Bar employees are white or East Asian.