Company: Apple
Date: 2013-10-07
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Junior

Two years of being a specialist at Apple Retail
Pros: - You'll be working with a group of great people – a great chance to make meaningful friends and connections.

- You'll meet interesting customers too, and along with this comes good opportunities for networking. It's how I, and a lot of people, got their next job.

- In most stores, when it isn't too busy, it can be laid-back and fun!

- Wages are good for retail, and benefits (in terms of discounts and health insurance) were pretty fantastic.

- You get to work with and learn about amazing, fun new technology. Or at least tell customers about it...

- You're never expected to do anything off-the-clock, including emails. Good work/life balance in this sense.
Cons: - Scheduling is usually inflexible, especially a problem if you're part-time. Hours fluctuate between 15 and 40 hours a week for PT throughout the year, and you have no say in this.

- Incredibly sales and attachment driven, vastly more so than Apple will ever publicly say. If you can't hit your targets, management will give you a hard time and in some cases try to push you out.

- Management take the customer service culture very literally. For example, some will almost always side with the customer and not with you as an employee, leading many to feel undervalued and disrespected. Often you have to go with policy and give the customer a hard line, and when they ask to see a manager, they'll do almost whatever the customer wants and make you look like the bad guy. Probably common in retail, but seriously demotivating.

- The whole process of career advancement and development is very opaque and shrouded in mystery. If managers like you and you have good numbers, they'll give you opportunities – if not, you'll have to fight very hard to even hear about them in the first place and even more so to be considered. At my store the vast, vast majority of people never advance or get promoted, and many are trying very hard to.

- Customers at times can be brutal. At Apple you're the front face, up against people who have crazy expectations of what Apple can do for them. Free replacements of broken phones, discounts on purchases, six-month-later returns, free training, you name it – you're always the one who has to give them the bad news, and it doesn't always go well. I've been pushed, screamed and sworn at. Don't underestimate this one.

- When it gets busy, it really gets busy. It really tests your ability to deal with pressure and stress to the extreme when customers are pulling you in five different directions and managers are telling you do 'one to many' sales and support. Most of my managers became stressed out at these times, hyper-intense and irritable – and because they're so focused on making customers happy, they invariably take it out on the employees. I've seen unbelievably unfair and unprofessional behaviour from management to employees, and many have left because of it.