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Comment by whalesalad | Hacker News Reader

Seriously?!? When I worked at Apple Retail it took all of 10 seconds for the security search. This was at one of the busiest stores in the nation and during the booming period of the iPhone 3/4.

EDIT: Y'all are completely smokin me with these downvotes. I am not against this decision, I am just surprised that the issue grew to be this severe.

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Well then they can pay for 10 seconds of work. If Apple is that efficient then this will cost them nothing and it’s a wonder why they fought it in court in the first place. At that efficiency a 100,000 workers would cost them 250 hrs a day. So Apple went to court to avoid paying $5000/day? They went to court to avoid paying people 5c more per day. Right.

Clearly in many cases the Apple stores aren’t that efficient which is why this has come up in the first place.

>Employees are supposed to find a manager or security officer to do the searches after they clock out. Employees estimate that waiting for and undergoing the searches can take five to 20 minutes, or, on busiest days, up to 45 minutes.

lol, I guess apple shouldn't care too much about paying them for the 10 seconds then.

I'd wager to bet that Apple's inventory is much more diverse and smaller (in physical size) compared to the iphone 3 days. I don't remember Apple having as many SKUs as they do now that are expensive and highly-wanted and very small, e.g. Apple Watch and Airpods.

Apple has always had a metric ton of accessories ... so I would posit their SKU count is actually not that different than before. Technology is also greatly improved -- runner is accessible via an iPhone/iPad and that is also integrated with payments and whatnot. Previously it was a hodge podge of Windows CE devices.

I would imagine store operations are vastly more efficient than they were when I worked there -- so I am more surprised that this got worse rather than better.

Yeah, it's not like Apple stores have changed or become busier in the past 9 years.

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