The Worst Apple Store In America — An Employee Confession 310
Cutting_Crew writes "Gizmodo has a piece that describes one of the worst and most corrupt Apple stores. Two employees recount management exchanging brand new computers for face-lifts (and other things), not just from customers, but also from businesses. Other common activities ranged from destroying devices repeatedly and ringing up new ones (for themselves and friends as fake customers) to outright stealing merchandise and cash. Customers may have also lost their data if they weren't polite when coming in for a repair, or the 'Genius' help may have been intoxicated."
Gizmodo has been banned for life from Apple events (Score:3, Insightful)
Consider the source always. This is not the first hack piece written by them. They were caught knowingly purchasing stolen goods but got off on the technicality of being part of the "press". It is not supposed to be a license to get out of jail.
Re:Gizmodo has been banned for life from Apple eve (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly, how credible is this source and the source that they are quoting?
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Even if the source is not credible does not mean that types of crime as outlined in TFA does not take place in Apple shop (or any other store)
Re:Gizmodo has been banned for life from Apple eve (Score:4, Insightful)
Really, my response here has nothing to do with the credibility of Gizmodo in this article (they may or may not be, I honestly don't know). I just want to say that any time we defend an incredulous source of information because there might be a tiny nugget of truth buried in their lies, we only serve to give more credibility to those lies. Sort of like the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth.
Re:Gizmodo has been banned for life from Apple eve (Score:5, Insightful)
Ahh yes, "we" are the reason other people have no morals or ethics.
Some people always try to find a way to blame the "fanboys"...
The only people to blame here are those engaging in the acts mentioned.
Re:Gizmodo has been banned for life from Apple eve (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, swoosh with your comprehension skils and those that modded you insightful. He said the reason you are "reading" about them and the article, not that you agree or disagree with the content of the article or someones doings. Gizmodo posts a non story, fan boys all read it and get excited about it and discuss it. Gizmodo will repeat these type of non stories because you the fan boy will read it and get excited about it again and again.
If this same story was posted about a local 7-Eleven store, no one would give a shit, no one would read, and no one would comment on it.
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An AC got upvoted +5 for a blatant troll? I'd say there are some people who are definitely not "true believers" on here!
Re:Gizmodo has been banned for life from Apple eve (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Gizmodo has been banned for life from Apple eve (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Gizmodo has been banned for life from Apple eve (Score:5, Informative)
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Not that I disagree that Canadians have it better than us in many ways, but to be fair, my experience has been that purchasing power is lower per dollar because goods tend to be more expensive in Canada. Has anyone done the math on purchasing power of minimum wage workers in Canada versus the US? That would be very interesting.
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Not that I disagree that Canadians have it better than us in many ways, but to be fair, my experience has been that purchasing power is lower per dollar because goods tend to be more expensive in Canada. Has anyone done the math on purchasing power of minimum wage workers in Canada versus the US? That would be very interesting.
That is why we can just drive over the border for milk and cheese. Now that the Canadian dollar is floating between par and above par with the US dollar, anyone living close to the border can use their Canadian dollars converted to US in neighbouring states
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The cell plans from the big guys, internet, and gas are higher but natural food (not cookies, crackers) and prescriptions tend to be a lot cheaper. If you`re a resident, certainly you don`t have to pay for the doctors or hospitals. Stuff that is handled by the state (such as car insurance) tended to be cheaper when I lived there.
Re:Gizmodo has been banned for life from Apple eve (Score:5, Informative)
Well to be fair, Macs don't have a BIOS system and UEFI is largely irrelevant to their ability to do their jobs. While I agree with your notion that their title has nothing to do with their knowledge, at the end of the day they're able to solve most people's problems and tend to do so in a way that doesn't leave a sour taste in people's mouths (unlike your typical help desk workers).
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This has got to be the single stupidest thing I've read all week, and if you knew what I've been working on this week, you should be pretty embarrassed. Well, you're likely already embarrassed since you didn't even have the stones to post this without checking the anonymous box, but whatever.
Just because some people like a particular company's products, does not create immoral employees. If it did, Google would be burning down churches right about now, because the Fandroid community is starting to be very
Re:Gizmodo has been banned for life from Apple eve (Score:4, Informative)
Wages that cause people to feel exploited seem to have a huge effect on employee behavior.
There was a fairly believable story from a Walmart store manager that she stole things like diapers from inventory to give to employees with babies to help compensate for the wages that were to low for them to support their families.
"What was immoral about the Walmart store managers actions?" is an essay question that would probably get you forty different answers from twenty people.
Costco pays their employees well and has negligible product shrinkage, Walmart skimps on pay and has one out of nine items damaged, destroyed, stolen, or is otherwise unaccounted for.
To quote Milton Friedman "People will do what they have to do to survive." Morality is a luxury of the middle class.
Re:Gizmodo has been banned for life from Apple eve (Score:5, Informative)
What does it have to do with mactards? People making at or near minimum wage won't take their job seriously because it is easy to find a similar crappy job somewhere else. This isn't news. Now to the extent that people think that their company of choice is infallible you can be right. But Gizmodo as mentioned has a reason to not like Apple and has a history of illegal activity so not exactly a reliable source of news. Not saying it doesn't happen at Apple stores, heck this crap happens at most stores I suspect. Just I wouldn't necessarily trust this site to report facts on anything not device teardowns.
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Re:Gizmodo has been banned for life from Apple eve (Score:5, Informative)
They did not attempt extortion. Apple made a request and Gizmodo said yes provided it was a formal request, in writing not a phone call. Steve Jobs considered that extortion, because he believed rightly, the purpose of the formal request was to generate a story which would generate page views. That's not remotely extortion.
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Extortion requires coercion. Asking for an official on the record request doesn't come remotely close to extortion. Apple may not like the idea that Gizmodo is going to make money from the return but that isn't extortion.
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I have something that belongs to you, but I won't give it back unless you do what I say. How is that not coercion?
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So now we are moving t
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I did not mean a condescending tone towards you. By "obvious you like Gozmodo", I meant that you are defending them pretty hard and I think we would be wasting our time trying to convince each other that the other side is somehow incorrect. I did not intend it to mean that you were a Gizmodo fanboi.
For the record, I meant coercion in the literal sense (as in by definition) and not necessarily the kind that warrants prosecution. While you try to portray a rational conversation between Apple and Gizmodo, the
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Re:Gizmodo has been banned for life from Apple eve (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly the kind of story that a blog about Apple should be covering. You may be questioning whether journalists should be covering Apple but given the high level of public interest I don't see any reason they shouldn't be covered.
As for intimidation. Every small town newspaper publishes stuff that the mayor or the police chief doesn't like. Everyday journalists covering the national story go up against big corporations and government officials with tremendous power and budget. Go abroad and their are journalists in China reporting on abuses who get sent to forced labor. There were journalists in Egypt that got taken in by government forces and shot.
No Gizmodo shouldn't back down because Apple is unhappy.
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Not saying Gizmodo needs to get out of Dodge or anything like that but they really really should avoid doing things like publishing this that only serve to rub salt in the wounds of the 800lb gorilla. Its not as if this is a story that needed to be brought to light. Its no secret that low wage retail employees tend to engage in this type of behavior.
Uh.. they aren't doing it out of some high-minded desire to spread truth to the masses. This type of story is a page-view goldmine which means ad dollars. Of course they're going to keep doing them.
Re:Gizmodo has been banned for life from Apple eve (Score:5, Interesting)
I can, if you like.
I used to own a small company (myself and 2 others started it, it grew to 8 people when we sold it, so it was never large.) By far the largest expense every year was the trade show budget. Even building (as far as union labour allows) our own booth / tearing it down / manning it ourselves / sharing hotel rooms, a trade show averaged to ~$50k, and we did two per year (NAB in Vegas and IBC in Amsterdam). if you consider the time taken out of normal working hours for all that, as well as how long we sweated over making sure the demos were as good as we could make them, it's a lot more than that.
If some clueless moron went around sabotaging the equipment that we set up "just so" to highlight what we were trying to show, I'd be furious. You get about 20 seconds to 'hook' someone hovering around your stand at a trade show, then a max of ~5 mins to show off your wares if they are interested. If *anything* goes wrong, it's game over, which is why we worked so damn hard to make our (very complex) system look effortless for every demo.
When a sale is worth ~$20k+, you have to come over as competent, what you're selling has to demonstrably do its job, and you generally have to give a good impression. None of that is achieved if you are suddenly scrambling to find why the fucking TV has turned off. You look like an incompetent maroon, and you've lost the potential sale.
To a large company, this is an inconvenience; to a small company, trade shows are lifeblood. You *need* word of mouth to consistently generate sales, and more people will talk about "that little company that made best-of-show" (which we did, twice) than something they saw in an ad, or something that a cold-call salesman phoned them up about.
Ours was a happy story, we wrote the asset management that still (to my knowledge) runs ILM (amongst others) today, and we got a pretty good deal for the company, but it was touch and go for a year or two and during those years something like this could have pushed us over the edge. Word of mouth works both ways. ... ("they don't even know how to turn on a TV"). If it had, then thats a whole bunch of people out of work, as well as a massive financial mess for me and the other two owners.
You go into business knowing it is a risk, you try to minimise that risk as much as possible, but you don't plan for self-aggrandizing idiots intentionally trying to break your company for their own financial gain. Everything the bastards at Gizmodo do is about getting more page hits and therefore more ad revenue. For them, it's all about money in their pocket, and frankly they don't give a shit about how they do it or what consequences will fall on others because of their actions.
So yeah. They're a bunch of assholes as far as I'm concerned, too.
Simon.
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"Anyone time someone says "consider the source," they've just committed argumentum ad hominem. Think about that for a moment."
I just did, and it's bullcrap.
Argumentum ad hominem is a concept that applies only to a debate based on formal logic. This is not a debate based on formal logic. The source is not a text which constructs an argument from universally-agreed principles, where only the logic of the argument is up for debate: it's an assertion that certain events took place. The concept of argumentum ad
Re:Gizmodo has been banned for life from Apple eve (Score:5, Informative)
But were any of their previous hack pieces about Apple? Last I read Gizmodo, they were still massive Apple fanboys, to the point of unreadability.
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They're fanboys of Apple products but have largely been highly critical of the company itself.
Re:Gizmodo has been banned for life from Apple eve (Score:4, Insightful)
Awesome. That kind of attitude potentially bolsters a source's credibility. It's easy to be critical of those we despise; being critical of those we adore is a hallmark of introspection.
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Return without Gosub
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They were caught knowingly purchasing stolen goods but got off on the technicality of being part of the "press". It is not supposed to be a license to get out of jail.
Actually, being a member of the press is supposed to help you stay out of jail.
Even judges think so, otherwise we'd be locking up every journalist that published classified documents.
I think your understanding of the First Amendment needs refreshing.
Re:Gizmodo has been banned for life from Apple eve (Score:4)
We try to... see wikileaks.
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No one involved in wikileaks as a journalist has been jailed for wikileaks. Both the NYTimes and the Guardian have offices in the USA.
Re:Gizmodo has been banned for life from Apple eve (Score:4, Insightful)
The first amendment was never intended to be license for just any misbehavior or licentiousness or criminal misdeeds. It's protection specifically, with regard to the press, protects them from prosecution for things they say or print. It doesn't permit them to lie, cheat, and steal... by which I mean they cannot perjure themselves, commit fraud, or commit larceny with impunity. Freedom of the press is not a blanket permit to do whatever they feel like.
Re:Gizmodo has been banned for life from Apple eve (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't permit them to lie, cheat, and steal... by which I mean they cannot perjure themselves, commit fraud, or commit larceny with impunity. Freedom of the press is not a blanket permit to do whatever they feel like.
As far as I know it is not illegal to lie. Making lies illegal would cause a problem as soon as two stories differ from each other, for example when the government says one thing and the press another. Since the government controls the law they can pretty much conclude that the official story is the truth and say that anyone who claims that the official story is false is a liar.
Re:Gizmodo has been banned for life from Apple eve (Score:4, Funny)
Since the government controls the law they can pretty much conclude that the official story is the truth and say that anyone who claims that the official story is false is a liar.
Hmm. Instead I'd say that there's a 50/50 chance of either telling lies. Ergo, imprison them both for half the standard sentence length.
I divide babies for breakfast.
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The government accepts your offer and imprisons the journalist, and you for lying when you said the government lied.
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In theory that would only be a problem if the burden of proof was on the government to establish the actual falsity of the so called lie.
In practice, we've already seen that not to be the case.
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So if a member of the press commits murder, you'll let them walk?
Ever since Judy Miller went to jail for that noblest of causes the Bush Administration, the US media has loved this idea that being part of the press exempts you from criminal prosecution. I am not a lawyer, but as far as I know it does not, has not, and should not.
I believe strongly in a free press and I disagree with many excuses made for keeping information hidden ("national security", "intellectual property", etc.), but I among other thin
Re:Gizmodo has been banned for life from Apple eve (Score:5, Informative)
How does the First Amendment protect you from purchasing known-stolen goods?
As far as my "limited understanding" that may need refreshing, the first Amendment protects your right to free speech in the face of the government.
Buying stolen goods that you know are stolen is not free speech.
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Generally the possession requires the goods were part of commerce to qualify for the crime. Using the goods for purposes of notifying the public may not be considered commerce. Otherwise lots of journalists who get information could be charged under the stolen goods clauses.
Cigarette companies used to make a similar argument about executives who violated their contracts and spoke about chemical additives to cigarettes to journalists. Since they were under an NDA the journalists was engaging in tortious i
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Being a member of press doesn't give you free reign to commit crimes. The first amendment isn't some shield that lets you do whatever you want.
It means you can write about whatever you want, and you can protect your sources, but blanket immunity? Nope.
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I believe freedom of the press applies to all Americans, and not just journalists - unless you can point me to any such similiar wording in the Constitution.
Re:Gizmodo has been banned for life from Apple eve (Score:4, Insightful)
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Being a member of the press does not shield you from all laws. Shield laws protect journalists from disclosing sources only; however, Gizmodo bought property they knew to be stolen. Now if they had quickly returned it to Apple, that would have been another story. Instead they dismantled it, reported on the component, and held it ransom until Apple acknowledged that they had a prototype. So you can add extortion, violation of trade secrets, etc.
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Unless you run a whistleblower organization that pisses off the world's governments.
Re:Gizmodo has been banned for life from Apple eve (Score:4, Interesting)
Doesn't mean what they're reporting isn't true.
Re:Gizmodo has been banned for life from Apple eve (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh I don't know about that... there are lots of licenses to get out of jail.
I won't just consider the source. I'll consider my experience. It surprises me not at all that Apple is nothing more than a really shiny Best Buy. There may be a good number of tech savvy Apple users, but the majority are not. And those people are begging to be exploited. Corruption isn't a crime of character as much as it is a crime of opportunity and it's a human condition. That this happens within Apple's doors only speaks of a variety of side-effects of their image, customer base, and of course, their cool and relaxed manner.
The story also smacks of "Waiting" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0348333/). It's not a crowd I feel comfortable with. I do, however, understand the risks of doing business in organizations with images like these. So yeah, for some things and in limited amounts, I will risk my dollars and time in limited amounts at Best Buy. Apple stores? Not so much... the prices are too high for the risk.
It makes me wonder... it has always made me wonder why Apple gear is increasingly a completely sealed box with no removable anything. That is the main reason I will not buy any more Apple stuff unless it is user servicable. Is Apple's reason for doing so their employees? Or customers? Both? My initial thought was to prevent creating 3rd party markets for batteries and other compatible parts... and I still think so. But this practice also puts customers at further risk of exploitation... and as has been acknowledged since time immemorial... ...corruption is a crime of opportunity.
It's not only a matter of "if" it will happen, it's a matter of when and how often and it should be a given that it WILL happen. So I'd like to say this happens "everywhere, not just at Apple" which is kind of true. But I'd like to add that Apple make is more possible for a wide variety of reasons.
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That's the image they're selling, but it's certainly not always (or even mostly!) true, and "by far" goes a little too... far. Even going into an Apple store to simply buy an extra laptop charger has been more frustrating, to me, than visiting the Target or Fry's nearby.
In my limited experience, Apple store employees are focused heavily on attempting to sell the new, expensive products on people that come in, while more pedestrian needs (checking o
Bypass the sales drones; use the Apple Store app (Score:3, Interesting)
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How exactly is a willingness to purchase stolen goods to get information not consistent with a source being a good source of information? As a consumer of journalism I want journalists that go the extra mile.
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Kinda like the "stolen/leaked" iPhone story.
Marketing genius. If I'm making a gadget that looks exactly like the last gadget, I'll cook up a story with a reporter about how this amazing top secret gadget got stolen from my secret Bat-lair and exposed to the public... thus generating the storm of publicity that will get millions of hipster douchebags to camp out in front of my stores for 3 days to buy my latest indistinguishable-from-my-last-one gadget. I mean, how about that? My company's biggest fans re
what?!? (Score:5, Funny)
OK, I can believe the management is a bit corrupt, but are you seriously trying to tell me a bunch of hipsters barely making minimum wage goofed off and stole from their employer??
this is an outrage!
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And can "corruption" even occur in private industry? I mean, I know that technically the usage is correct (you can even "corrupt" a person's soul) - but generally private corruption isn't newsworthy: the only people who suffer when Apple has corrupt employees are people financially tied to Apple. Generally we are much harder on government officials... hell, one of our vendors just dropped off a big pile of doughnuts for us.
My Experience (Score:5, Funny)
That's not the worst of it. One of them tried to sell me a computer with two year old specs at twice the price of a new one anywhere else.
I love Apple and I believe it (Score:4, Interesting)
A bad store manager can leave a lasting trail of damage. Sounds like this store had a bad one and it rubbed off on the employees.
I don't see how this is a noteworthy story though... In any large retail operation you will have some bad "apples". It also sounds like Apple found out and fired most of them.
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I love Apple
Lol. I'm sure Apple loves you too...
Re:I love Apple and I believe it (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair, it does raise questions as to what the fuck the point is in Apple's extremely rigorous and invasive recruitment process such as multiple credit checks etc. though.
If they go to such extremes when hiring but can still get away with the excuse that "Well, this happens in any store", then maybe they could at least stop subjecting potential employees to such an awkward recruitment process, or at least stop pretending the recruitment process in any way improves the quality of employee they hire in their stores.
Re:I love Apple and I believe it (Score:5, Insightful)
the arduous hiring process is actually part of the new employee's conditioning, not really a screening mechanism at all.
making them feel like the accomplished something simply by being hired is an important early step in the corporate mandated mental manipulation.
notice the quote in the article from the disgruntled employee:
"...statistically speaking, it's harder to get a job at the Apple Store than it is to get into some Ivy League schools," he says
This isn't something he just came up with. It's a "fact" he was taught during the indoctrination process, designed to make the iPeons feel like they are somehow special for obtaining a low paying position in retail.
as you pointed out, it's largely ineffective at preventing crappy people from being hired, but that's not what its about.
What are you saying? (Score:2)
That I am NOT special despite it clearly saying so on my corporate mug? Well, DAMN!
Does that also mean all my co-workers are also not special? ALRIGHT!
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Does that also mean all my co-workers are also not special?
Depends. Do they wear Helmets and/or Depends?
Note: Depends as a Helmet is a dead ringer for "special".
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Don't worry. You're a totally special, unique individual, just like everybody else.
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Do you mean when the Navy told me I was among the "best of the best" it wasn't true?! OMG!! I don't know who I am any longer!!!
Hehe... yes. I wish more people realized the simplicity of how things work. It's a classic method and has been used by countless organizations which exist primarily on pride.
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"best of the best" might have been a stretch, regardless you did a generally dangerous thing that probably helps make my life better, as far as I can tell. It's all a bit murky but that certainly puts you a world ahead of the iPeople in my book and I thank you for your service.
THIS IS NOT NEWS! (Score:4, Insightful)
People steal from work! News at 11!
This is what infidelity insurance is for!
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Your notion of how insurance works is pretty unrealistic. You can't just insure against a potential problem and then consider it a non-issue. If you do, you soon won't be able to afford insurance.
Those Apple stores with their "geniuses" (my scare quotes are based on a less enthusiastic evaluation of their intelligence) are a big selling point for a corporation whose market cap is slightly greater than God's. If one of them is as badly run as this article claims, it's news all right.
Re:THIS IS NOT NEWS! (Score:5, Informative)
Is it? I've run businesses and if I know one thing about infidelity insurance it's this: they will not pay out if they can show that you saw it coming.
Q: What's the difference between a wage slave and a convicted thief?
A: One of them got caught.
My policy has always been the same: if I catch you thieving, YOU'RE GONE. BOOM! DONE. IMMEDIATELY. From that point you're a trespasser. If you want to fucking argue with that, I've got a bit of CCTV that'll very quickly find its way to Youtube. Do not fuck with me.
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Is it? I've run businesses and if I know one thing about infidelity insurance it's this: they will not pay out if they can show that you saw it coming.
That sounds suspiciously like you two are agreeing.
Re:THIS IS NOT NEWS! (Score:4, Insightful)
I love this day in age where someone thinks loading something on youtube is the ultimate stopping power.
In my day, if you did something like that to an employee, we would light your car on fire.
"What's the difference between a wage slave and a convicted thief?"
I'm sure you ar a pleasure to work for.
To be fair (Score:3)
Genius is a relative term. These sales clerks work in Apple Stores. Compared to their customers, they are most certainly geniuses. People give monster cables a bad rep but compared to Apple cables, they are a BARGAIN! Why yes, a DVI to dsub connector, that be 20 euro please. COME ON! You fall for that, your knuckles are dragging across the floor.
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> People steal from work!
Indeed they do. Whether this particular story is accurate, speaking as someone who has run a small business, it's a constant and real problem.
In fact, here's a life lesson, something to keep in mind no matter where you shop: if you go into my store and are waited on by a not-especially-quick employee, you might wonder why I hired him or her. It's simple: because they're HONEST. I'm not looking for Betty Blaze or Stormin' Norman. Just give me someone who'll keep their hands off in
Stores... Really? No... Really?! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Stores... Really? No... Really?! (Score:5, Interesting)
If you think this is an example of how bad the Apple hype is getting, then you have no idea. Head over to Apple fan sites for any or all of the following:
- Review of an iPhone, with a lengthy description on the orgasmic joy of taking an iPhone out of its packaging.
- An exited article about rumours on what the new iPhone's dock connector is going to look like.
- Pictures of "leaked" parts intended of the new iPhone 5, such as the logic board, the battery, and said dock connector. Popular enough to prompt criminals to circulate these pictures in a PDF that has been infected with some malware.
- "Apple working on red iPhone bumper".
All actual articles taken from Apple fan sites. Not quite up there with Woz' balls, but still...
Re:Stores... Really? No... Really?! (Score:5, Funny)
Popular enough to prompt criminals to circulate these pictures in a PDF that has been infected with some malware.
To be fair, one can hardly construct a PDF that doesn't infect computers with malware.
Adobe's razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by vulnerability.
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This story is actually relevant; anyone using Apple products may have dealings with these stores at some point.
That would only be relevant if every other fucking electronics store on the planet didn't suffer the same issues.
Idiotic cunts work in retail. Get used to it. Don't blame Apple for this one.
This is a story?! (Score:5, Interesting)
So, I broke Slashdot tradition and read TFA.
Short version:
This store was staffed by, and managed by, a bunch of power-mad dicks who were all either fired or left. Several employees were caught stealing or scamming the system, and fired and forced to pay for what they stole, and now the system is harder to scam.
Isn't that how it's supposed to work? Bad people are forced out, and system is improved to limit the behavior of bad actors? I mean, I get it, we all hate Apple, (STEVE JOBS WAS AN EVIL THIEF!) but I don't quite see the story here. Tellingly, the main storyteller, "Ronald" is still unemployed, presumably because his past references are something to the effect of "this guy stole our stuff and abused our customers" and now trying to get some some of satisfaction by trashing his employer for not stopping him from being a huge dick?
Considering the premium on Apple Hardware (Score:3)
Couldn't Apple have payed their wage slaves better so they wouldn't want to risk their jobs by thieving?
Also, Apple has very invasive hiring practices with the excuse to stop bad Apples. Doesn't work at all it seems, so why the invasive hiring practices?
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Couldn't Apple have payed their wage slaves better so they wouldn't want to risk their jobs by thieving?
Psychology works against you. Most criminals are notoriously bad at evaluating the consequences of their actions, so the risk of losing their jobs doesn't come into it. The other problem is that the more you give a person, the more they will think that they deserve to get. If paying more would help, then there would be no dishonest CEO anywhere in the world.
Also, Apple has very invasive hiring practices with the excuse to stop bad Apples. Doesn't work at all it seems, so why the invasive hiring practices?
Where do you get this information about "invasive hiring practices" from?
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Couldn't Apple have payed their wage slaves better so they wouldn't want to risk their jobs by thieving?
Right, because well-paid people and employees never [wikipedia.org] steal [cbsnews.com] from anyone [wikipedia.org].
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Could be Gzmodo's strange slant at work, but Ronald comes across as being an unstable and bitter obsessive. Doesn't mean he's wrong. Does suggest an agenda.
The fact that he is a bitter obsessive is a pretty strong indication that he was in the wrong, as well has having an obvious agenda.
Scandalous (Score:3, Insightful)
The gluttony. The vanity. The greed. The envy. The fear. The partying. The debauchery. The sex. The humanity.
We have it all.
Apple geniuses.
---
How is that for a commercial?
With great power comes... (Score:2)
.... great douchebaggery.
How is this any different than the Geeksquad v1.0 fiasco where they were systematically violating privacy rights and stealing porn [slashdot.org]? There may be a difference as far as who was on the short end of the stick (as far as my porn stash vs. Apple's iPod stash), but regardless, it's a pretty classic case of giving low level workers high level authorization, without the proper regulations/oversight in place (think about the recent photos of morons stepping on the food they've prepared, etc
Musical Corporate Roles (Score:2)
-Apple patent trolling samsung like a champ
-Apple stores being reported as corrupt
Apple has taken microsoft's place as dominant bully in the pc market, and microsoft seems to be fading quickly into a still important but not exciting company, like IBM.
So who is the new apple? We need a rebel alliance, right? Well, maybe this will finally be the year of the linux desktop.
But.... probably not.
Unless we get something radically new, we're going to keep up this t
This isn't just Apple... (Score:2)
Ronald and Jake and the Aluminum Demigod (Score:3)
Only good experiences from real Apple stores (Score:4, Informative)
But. My wife's macbook came from Computers Now in south Melbourne [compnow.com.au]. When it started running slow we took it back to the store. They dragged their heels on the job and I eventually decided to take the machine back. The computer they returned to me had a different metal top cover which was badly scratched. They faked up the sheet which I signed which had purportedly shown the damage when I dropped the laptop off. We argued with them about it but eventually had to accepted a damaged and not repaired computer.
And the Apple store in Doncaster fixed the problem (a broken SATA cable) for 30 bucks as well as upgrading the OS. It took one day.
Tips for employee fidelity (Score:2)
Anybody want to share any tips? What are the checks & balances that can help detect problems such as those in the article?
Re:Tips for employee fidelity (Score:4, Informative)
I own a medium-sized computer store in South Carolina. I had problems with inventory mismanagement and theft a while back, so I installed surveillance cameras in the employee work areas. Every repair bench has an overhead camera that monitors what the employee does to the computer, and monitor and keyboard data at each repair station is logged and recorded to document what each employee does with the customer's software.
The cameras ultimately caught the employees who were stealing from me, and they are now serving time for felony grand larceny.
But, what really solved the problem for me was being more selective in my hiring process, and breaking down and paying for more exhaustive background checks.
Oh, and one other neat trick is never to use the references given by applicants, but ask those references for contact information for other people who know the applicant. The applicant will never give references who know the bad stuff they do.
Re: (Score:2)
Poor pay = Employee theft = Sick company (Score:2)
uniforms can do it as well hollywood video (Score:2)
uniforms can do it as well Hollywood video used to have really bad ones and store employee theft was high.
Now at apple be forced to wear one that says genius can get old fast and it makes people ride you for free apple stuff as well.
Duh (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
When did we start letting middle managers be the most stupid people in the organization?
We never did. Some of the people at the bottom are really quite thoroughly stupid, in a can-hardly-spell-or-do-math sense.
But the real problem is that the qualities to do well in one post are not necessarily those needed to well in the manager of that post. They're different jobs after all. Now, when someone is promoted into a new role, it's rather random as to whether they'll have the skills to do well at that role. Sometimes they do, and then they can thrive (well, potentially), and sometimes they don't.
Re: (Score:2)
I can't drink vodka. It's just nasty.
Now, a nice drop of whiskey might go down more smoothly.
Re:The price of ignorance... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, if you want to be dick, snarky, or a condescending prick you deserve what karma serves you.
Sorry, you only have the options to take my money or not, you don't have the option to fradulently offer but not deliver goods or services.
Re:The price of ignorance... (Score:5, Insightful)
Willful destruction of data is illegal in the UK. I don't care much of a cock I am to someone in a store, they break the law if they delete the data off my hard drive.
This is no different than getting spit in your food
You may think that's acceptable. I do not. I've worked in a restaurant and I'd expect any member of staff to get sacked if they tried that.
There are excellent ways of dealing with difficult, rude or tardy customers. Breaking the law and illegally abusing them are not excellent ways.
Don't be a cock.
Re:The price of ignorance... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not buying it.
You might deserve it, but that still doesn't make it right for the guy dishing out the revenge in the first place.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
If I caught someone spitting in a customer's food I would fire them immediately and I would also report them to the health department because inserting bodily fluids of ANY kind into a customer's food is a SERIOUS health code violation. I don't care if the customer was being a jerk or not. I have a business to run, and the last thing I need is a cleanliness scandal, or worse, having my permit revoked because I stood by and let my cooks contaminate meals.
As for the condescending prick bitching to my wait staff, he would soon find himself 86'ed from the premesis if he failed to heed my warnings. Being a customer doesn't entitle you to be a dick to my staff.
I wouldn't put up with crap from either side.