Company: Apple
Date: 2018-02-27
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: former

Specialist
Pros: - AMAZING colleagues. The only reason I stuck it out so long was because the people there were great, and really made the job fun. 
- Solid above-average pay for retail, so great as a part-timer or student.
- Discounts on Apple products. 
- Free food for holidays was a nice perk.
Cons: - Serious favouritism by management, especially when it comes to promotions. There's a lot of talk about all these opportunities to move up, but if you're not one of the hardcore kool-aid drinkers, you won't get to move up no matter how good your results are. The jobs for higher positions are few and far between, and always go to the person who sucks up the most. You need to get permission to apply for new positions in the store. There's not really any retail to corporate growth (at least in my city).
- Like all retail, customers can be really challenging, especially because they have absurdly high expectations for Apple.
- Training on products was pretty poor. More service-based than technical or products based, which made interactions with customers very challenging. 
- Scheduling is a mess. Tough to get 2 days off in a row sometimes. Hours fluctuate a lot, some weeks you get 35, some weeks you get 8. NO paid sick days for part-timers, so if you're scheduled an 8 hour shift and its one of your only shifts that week, its either lose your paycheck or go into work sick. 
- Not much work-life balance on the retail schedule.