Apple slammed by former employee

• Apple Store staff make very little money
• No training to deal with grumpy customers

 

APPLE Inc likes to advertise its products as 'think different.' But when it comes to employee satisfaction and management practices, the company appears to be the same as any other multinational manufacturer.
 
Business Week has interviewed a former employee whom it has not named because of Apple's strict NDAs Non-disclosure agreements). In the United Kingdom, Apple pays its staff just £8 per hour and many store workers cannot afford the products they sell.

They also receive no sales bonuses even when they sell hundreds of thousands of pounds of equipment per day. In fact, they are expected to sell about 10 devices a day.
 
According to the employee, “One of the managers had to leave because his landlord wouldn’t renew his lease. He had to leave the store because he couldn’t afford to even move into a new studio flat on an Apple manager salary. I think he went back to live with his parents. He was in his late 30s. Maybe 40.”
 
Managers are usually bought in from outside, so there is little opportunity for staff on the floor to get promoted. “There are other jobs in-store that can earn you more money, but they’re technical jobs, like working at the Genius Bar, which a lot of people absolutely hated because you’re dealing with really angry customers,” the former employee said.
 
Apple apparently has very little training to deal with angry customers. There are strange rules called the three Ps: “Position, Permission, Probe.”
 
The source also said that Apple pressures the sale of AppleCare even though the most users don’t need it. AppleCare costs £79 a year. But if you’re an average user who just wants to use his or her Mac for Facebook or the Internet, you don’t need it. It’s only for people who want to use a specific application they may not know how.

This is not the first time that Apple has been criticised for its employee failings. It has been reported previously that Apple used 'sweatshop' factories in China where employees are paid as little as £1.12 an hour.
 
Many of the staff perform monotonous tasks like wiping down screens or shaving aluminium from the edge of the Apple logo for 10 hours at a time. Even if the lowest earners do the maximum available overtime of 80 hours per month, they still do not earn enough to pay tax.
 

 

The situation became so bad that Foxconn, Apple's contractor in China, had to install suicide nets at the factories to prevent employees jumping off buildings to meet their creator a bit too early.
 
That is definitely one way of thinking different.
 
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