Confessions of an Apple Store Employee | Hacker News Reader

Confessions of an Apple Store Employee

popularmechanics.com

110 pointsghurlman42 comments

>"We usually have to tell them that if they unlock their iPhone, it won't work. That it's going to be like a $700 paperweight, and that the antenna will fry itself on T-Mobile. Of course, that's not true, but that's what we tell them."

I didn't know Apple stores have an Evil Genius bar.

Reminds of when Cablevision was first rolling out broadband internet and the tech who came to set it up insisted that attempting to connect the modem to more than one computers would "knock out cable TV for everyone on your block."

To which my reply would be: "and why would I care?"

Yea, I know that top-down control of customer service agents is fundamentally flawed for a while now.

>eventually get to the Genius Bar

that answers the question that puzzled me a bit about that name. In itself it isn't a bad marketing targeted for customers, yet it happens to be also successful marketing targeted at the employees. That's really genius, pun intended, as usually help/support desk is very unpopular, churning job leading nowhere and here they turned the tables and made other jobs leading to it instead.

I bet the average first-year help desk employee at an investment bank is making a lot more money than the senior "Geniuses" at Apple Stores. Retail is retail.

first-year help desk employee at an investment bank is at the bottom of the bank's barrel, nobody at the bank would want their job.

I think that was his point, "genius".

> That's really genius, pun intended

Sorry that this is off topic, but thank you for saying "pun intended". It sometimes saddens me when people try to cover up a perfectly good pun or act like they are above being amused by puns.

The thing I found most interesting about this article was actually an omission. The hiring process at Apple retail is the most insane thing I've ever experienced. First fill out the application in store. Then follow up with the manager of the store for weeks on end. Then have a quick interview in store. Then go to a group interview with 50 other people. Then go to a panel interview with 3 others. This process took 6 months start to finish and I didn't even get the job. The reason why people want to be a "genius" in store is they already went thru hell and back just to get in the store.

Psychologists say the harder it is to gain entry to a group (club, frat, union, guild, company) the more irrationally positive folks feel about it once they're a member. Human nature -- if they went through all that trouble to get in, it must be worth it.

I like Eliezer's take on that regarding science and cults - scientific knowledge is given away so freely it must be worthless, at least with cultish bullshit you have to work hard before they tell you about each bit, so it feels really substantial and valuable.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/p0/to_spread_science_keep_it_secret/

The Public Computers section is really interesting. Homeless people that come in to do webcasts? Kinda cool.

People changing keyboard settings to Russian? Pfft, everyone knows the real evil genius is in setting it to Arabic -- not only is it illegible, but the screens are flipped

Or Hebrew.

If you have ever studied both of them, even briefly, you know Arabic is much less legible than Hebrew. It takes a lot of work even to figure out what the letters are in Arabic (they all look like parts of a doctor's signature).

The thing I found by far the most interesting is about the sales process / incentives.

On the one hand, Apple is not encouraging dysfunctional competition within the team:

> We aren't paid on commission, but you fear for your job if you're not selling enough.

And yet on the other, they are:

> We have a posted list of our metrics, and you can see everybody else's. It shows you how much money each person is pulling in for the company. If you aren't doing very well, you start getting manager meetings, and they sit you down and try to figure out why you aren't selling more.

The best explanation of this I've seen is in the work of W. Edwards Deming. His Red Bead experiment demonstrates that in any system, there will be variation that is due to the system itself, and not due to the individual efforts of the staff themselves. Because of this, league tables and metrics randomly and arbitrarily punish people for performance variation that is out of their control.

http://www.redbead.com/what/

Deming even listed "evaluation by performance" as one of the seven deadly diseases afflicting the western economy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming#Seven_Deadly_...

On that basis, I find it strangely contradictory that a company with such ongoing quality efforts as Apple has produced a sales process absent of the disease of sales commission, yet still suffering the disease of Evaluation by Performance.

It's possible, however, that Apple is being more sophisticated than the post author realises. If they have statistical control charts, for example, there may well be no contradiction here at all (they would only be reviewing exceptional outliers). But with Apple's tight-lipped nature, I don't know if the evidence to decide that is out there yet.

I was always under the understanding that working retail is a pretty unglamorous job.

Exactly my reaction. This was posted a few weeks ago.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2241132

You mean you've actually managed to escape working in retail at some point in your life? How did you pull that off?

eh, it's not that hard. For some of us, it's actually easier. I've never had a difficult time finding technical positions, but retail jobs? As a young person, I tried and was rejected. Front-line tech support is appropriate in the same career stage as a retail job. The minimum skills required are not that different[1], however, as far as I can tell, if you are willing to learn, tech support offers a better upward path than retail, so it does make long-term sense to choose level 1 tech support over retail.

[1] The minimum level for both jobs, as far as I can tell, consists primarily of explaining simple things and dealing with angry people. If you want to climb the ladder in tech support, obviously, you need to go somewhat beyond that, but you won't get fired if you can do those two things.

You were trying to make a clever point about the realities of the workplace and I think it's valid. No matter what you are doing with your life your job is to sell yourself... And I get that... and I think most people here get that. But it's not especially relevant to the topic at hand and just makes you seem like a smartass.

I write software for a living. My job definitely hinges on selling myself... But it's fair to say it's nothing like a traditional retail workplace...

You need a verifiable SSN to get an iPhone?!?

Attn drug dealers, you can get BlackBerries and Droids from Boost or Cricket without giving any personal information.

Not for the iPhone itself, but for the account with AT&T or Verizon.

They don't really need the SSN. If they press for it, tell them you're on a visa and you haven't been assigned one. Verizon entered 123-45-678 for mine and it let them create the account :P

Be prepared to put up a $400 security deposit if you have no credit/ssn

I got that with AT&T, not Verizon though.

That is... odd. I'm pretty sure that was an exception, not the rule. You must have caught the customer service rep on a good day :)

But they don't match the chrome wheels on your cadilac esplanade!

Drug dealers are fashion victims too

They're probably on Tracphones or similar pay-as-you-go phones.

Those are pay as you go services are they not? The reason they are asking for an SSN is so they can do a credit check.

this all is largely positive - not really a confession, more bragging...

be curious how other customers have fared in the store, for me it has rarely been great http://www.mikolayczyk.com/2010/02/quotes-from-apple-store.h...

certainly rings true that they get power hungry and very arrogant as a result

I've always gotten comped stuff: Backlight went out, they replaced the keyboard part of the case (dents), iSight went out, they replaced a lot of worn keys, iPod was broken, it was replaced free. I'm a plain-looking dude with old equipment, I highly doubt the amount of effort put forth for my sake was to impress me personally.

Quote from your link: "doesn't that say something about the quality of your products"

You were snippy, they got snippy.

I would say it the other way around, they got snippy so I got snippy.

I do think there is a relationship between how over worked the are, and how friendly they are. The Regent's St. store in London is mobbed whenever it's open, hence the poor treatment. The other store I've been to is in Stamford, CT. where my interactions have been much better - not as good as yours with getting comps, but certainly I left feeling happy.

This is too bad really, as the Regent's store is more of a flagship store, and that's where things should really be working.

I've had much better luck taking my computers to an indie Apple certified shop in town. I can drop the computer off with the friendly receptionist and go back to work, and their tech calls me back later to tell me what's wrong and get me to authorize a repair. Then I go and pick it up without having to wander through a shopping mall. Warranty work gets billed back to Apple so I don't pay. The service has typically been better, it keeps money in my community, and best of all I don't have to make an "appointment" only to still have to wait around 15-30 minutes. Everyone wins.

Something about the Genius Bar concept rubs me the wrong way. They really seem to try too hard to be that hip friend of yours who "knows computers." Maybe that helps take the edge off the experience for some people, but I'm not there to stand around and make friends, I'm there to get my stuff fixed with as little trouble on my part as is possible.

The Apple store in Philly just opened recently and they've been wonderful so far. Ex.: A few weeks ago I spilled water on my iPhone, rendering it unusable in important respects. I went to the genius bar (unscheduled), told the genius guy I spilled water on it. He was a bit surprised, said that no one ever admits to doing that, and gave me a new phone, for free.

iPhones and iPods have LCI (liquid contact indicators) built into them. It's a little white spot that turns red if exposed to moisture. Often, the LCI can be triggered for all sorts of reasons (not just dropping your phone in a puddle either, think a few drops of rain etc.)

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3425 (applies to macs and keyboards but the same point remains)

People tend to get very hostile when there's some problem with their iPhone and get denied service due to the LCI being triggered, even if that isn't the root cause of the current problem. Hence the genius guy's surprise and over-generous response.

(Disclaimer: former Apple employee)

I dropped my iPhone on cement and it died. Took it in and told the guy I dropped it. He responded with "what? I didn't catch that, did you say it just stopped working? That must be what you said." and then gave me a new phone for free.

I bring all my apple products to the apple store for this very reason. Spilt water on my iPod, they handed me a brand new one.

Since the front-line genius bar employees have so much discretion to go beyond the minimum required, it's really worth treating them well.

Showing up on-time for your appointment, not being a pain if they have a backlog and you have to wait a few minutes, having everything backed up if possible first, and being consistent and clear in describing what the problem is (at whatever level you know -- you don't need to actually know what the problem is, but describe the symptoms) -- will probably go a long way to getting a better than expected result.

My 3,1 MBP fan broke while I was in Iraq, and I bought a new i7 MBP to replace it. When I brought the 3,1 MBP in the day after AppleCare expired, they were great, and basically replaced the entire system, incidentally fixing cosmetic case, keyboard, etc. damage.

They've been equally good every other time I've gone in with a problem. They also have a great program for business users which gets you expedited service.

My only complaint with the AppleCare service model is that it's not so great outside the USA.

> They also have a great program for business users which gets you expedited service.

Yes, be sure to setup a business account, they'll expedite, etc. Plus a meager 3-7% discount over time.

> it's really worth treating them well.

> Showing up on-time for your appointment, not being a pain if they have a backlog and you have to wait a few minutes

Sweet juicy Jesus, that's not treating them well - that's just the bare standard minimum expected behavior, isn't it?

It is retail and it is customer support. The minimum standard for acceptable human interaction is several sigma above observed behavior, unfortunately.

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