Company: Apple
Date: 2014-12-19
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Confirmed

A great job, but not quite a career
Pros: The company has great benefits (health/dental, 401K matching, stocks, discounts) for full and part time employees. The culture is very positive. It's easy to request days off, and there's good vacation and holiday pay. 

The work itself is relatively straight forward and easy, everything is streamlined and follows a scope of service. 

The coworkers are the best part of any store, they are the best people around. Friendships for life are often formed. 

Employees don't earn commission, so it reduces the pressure to have perform. 

It's possible to transfer to other stores in the US and possibly the world, so there's flexibility for people who want to move.

Management is very caring and attentive.
Cons: It's retail. That means retail hours (no weekends off, random work schedules every week, no consistency, no set days off). 

No sick time for part timers.

The stores often feel under staffed. The staff complains a lot about feeling overwhelmed when it's busy. Dealing with ebbs and flows is always an issue in the retail environment. It would be nice to invest the downtime back into the people's training rather than run a lean staff. 

Little to no training time during launches and holidays.

There's no direct route to Corporate, as people might expect. The two are worlds apart, and work in the stores may not appropriately prepare someone for work in the Corporate level (or other jobs, for that matter, other than tech support).

Management doesn't have a lot of leeway in terms of innovating processes. Because of brand consistency, it takes a long time for changes to happen across all stores.