Company: Apple
Date: 2015-04-05
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: former

Apple Retail Australia, the good, the bad and the ugly.
Pros: Attention to detail: For an obsessive character like me I always loved the attention to detail. The way the tiles for each store come from a particular part of Apple's quarry. The way the own the forrest where they get he wood to make the tables. The way the guys that made the wooden tables, travel around and then stand and refinish them. This fine psychotic attention to detail is why Apple is Apple. This is why their products, packaging, stores, OS etc all are so far ahead of everyone else. They are uncompromising on this and it is a beautiful thing.

They were fairly dynamic in managements ability to make change with in the store. 

Some cool discounts on products (none on the iPhone when I was there).
Cons: Lets first of all state that this is Apple Retail and can in no way reflect on the experiences at Apple Inc. I always said that Apple Retail is like Apple's red head step child, so please take that into account when reading the following.

Pay: It is quite low (at the time they paid approx $18 an hour, people at Coles earn more then that. This has improved somewhat, but it is still about $21/hour). They pump you up on all this "we are Apple, we are different" buzz, expect you to go above & beyond, yet pay you less then a checkout person, all the while you read about executives getting bonuses in the half billion dollar range.

A toxic culture: Apple is like a religion, even if you don't believe then you need pretend, for fear of being ousted. See I really love what Apple stands for (and always will), the underlying principles, the history, the innovation, I know all of it, and it was that passion and difference that I relayed to customers. But am I going to cheer and run out yelling at an iPad lunch like Jesus has been resurrected? No, I find it fake and insulting. So what I found is that employees fall into two categories: #1 Drones. #2 Free thinkers. The free thinkers, who love the company eventually get over all the evangelistic fakeness and the yes-men, which only leaves one choice: leaving the company. The staff turnover was jaw dropping. This is a sign of a company with issues.

Drones: Apple Retail finds staff that are really passionate about the brand, which is a great starting point. Though when you get to Apple "Core" (the first week of training), things go off on a weird kind of superficial tangent where new recruits are exposed to the wacky insides of Apple, which means watching endless promo videos and listening to recruits try to perpetually out do each other's responses to empress the facilitators. I was shocked and communicated to family that it was like some crazy cult, where everyone talks about how amazing everything is but no one is being real. I found another person at my training who I sussed out and quietly asked "Is this crazy or what?" We both secretly discussed how odd and almost scary everything was. At my colleague's core, there was a guy that was so freaked out that he just stood up and said, "Sorry guys I am going to leave this just isn't for me" and walked out.

See finding passionate people is a good idea, but this should be paired with people that also highly value honesty. As where hyped up employees go wrong is when you promote a kind of fake positive environment that mirrors a toxic religion. People with strong personalities that choose to be honest and upfront, get over the way in which the retail arm is run and thus choose to move onto a more healthy environment. In my experience this leaves behind brain-washed individuals with little drive and ambition, who are willing to just do what they are told, use the lingo, get paid poorly and cheer like madmen at launches. For example a manager asked me to come and read an email he was about to send, when I asked why me he stated "Because I know you will tell me what you really think". During my time at Apple, I noted a lot of switched on and passionate employees leave as they just couldn't take the fakeness   anymore. So when all these people leave you get left with a bunch of yes-men. An example of drone behaviour is with the most recent pay increase the employees agreed to an increase that was BELOW the rate of inflation, which means with each passing year their purchasing power diminishes. Thats crazy thing to do for any rational person.

Apple lingo: They use a lot of Apple lingo for internal communication and provide guidelines for communication, this is good as it sets a benchmark and tone for communication that is supposed to be healthy. But you can't just have normal conversations with people, you need to use internal buzz words. I got corrected this a few times. I was also told that I was suitable for more higher management roles but I would need speak more Apple, I replied that I know all the terminology but I am not the kind of person to consistently regurgitate buzz words.

Poor internal promotion: If you want to progress your career in the ranks of a solid company, don't choose Apple retail. I watched people enter with this goal and eventually leave. I also know two guys that I work with that have stuck with that specific store only to stay at the same level. They tend to promote from outside and people stay static in their respective roles. Maybe that is a side effect of the drone issue that I stated above.