I worked in an Apple store for 2 years and really really enjoyed it. It’s a really great company with really great people, at least in my experience. The pay is decent considering it’s retail. There is also a great stock purchase plan where you can put 10% of your pay check towards purchasing stock. It is purchased every 6 months for 15% less than the lowest price it was at the beginning or end of that six month period. So, basically you are automatically making money unless the stock just tanks, which it doesn’t do. The employee discount is 25% off any computer for personal use (1 per year) and 15% off for family and friends. Most third-party accessories are 10% off. Some of the best deals came in reselling old demo units though. Not long after the black MacBooks came out I picked up a demo unit for $700 when the new ones were still going for $1500. We also got additional special discounts with third-party suppliers and tons of free software that people would give us in hopes that we would recommend it to customers. We’d also get little bonuses here and there like free iPods for Christmas and every Apple employee got an iPhone when they first came out.
The work environment was very upbeat and positive for the most part. I really liked 99% of the people I worked with and making friends was easy considering you all had a major interest in common: Apple products. Of course that depends on which store you work at and the people that work at more than anything, but I made some really good friends at my store. They made everything fun from sales contests to quarterly meetings that we had in the store with fancy video presentations, food, prizes, etc.
I was a Mac Genius Admin at the store, which basically means I worked in the back assisting the regular Geniuses with administrative tasks like swapping out iPods, handling part orders, shipping the laptops back and forth to the repair facility, researching problems when they didn’t have time to, doing data transfers, calling customers, doing simple repairs, and sometimes helping out at the Genius Bar if they got behind. I started out in a sales position but didn’t do very well because I really don’t like selling people things they don’t need like .Mac and ProCare, etc. As soon as the Genius Admin position came open though I jumped on it and it was perfect for me. I got to work in the back all day doing technical stuff without having to deal with the customers very often. The Genius Admin position is basically there to make the Genius’ job easier, which they are very appreciative for if you do it well.
Apple is open to suggestions for improving processes and things. There were several tools that we used in the back that were developed by retail employees in retail stores. While I was there I streamlined a lot of processes and created an internal web site that we used at our store to lookup part numbers more quickly and access other frequently used information.
Many of the people there are experts in their respective fields but choose to work for Apple part time for fun and for the discounts. The store I worked at had a lot of professional sound engineers, musicians, school teachers, programmers, network engineers, graphic designers, photographers, web designers, etc. This was especially true when the store first opened. Our initial team was very impressive. As time went on we seemed to hire a lot more students for part-time sales positions and some of the more experienced people left or were promoted, but a lot of them still stayed around.
It is definitely true that the Mac Specialist (sales) positions are not technical at all. Some of our sales people didn’t even own Macs. I guess they figure it is easier to teach people about Apple products or teach them where to find answers than it is to teach them to be good, friendly, outgoing sales people. Everyone knew the other employees enough to be able to send a customer to a different person to get their answers though. If someone had a technical question about Garageband or Logic I knew which musician to send them to. If someone had a question about web design or games people knew to send them to me. It was great for the customers and allowed them to almost always find their answers.
There are only a few downsides that I can think of. The main one being customers, which sounds bad I guess since we wouldn’t have jobs without customers. But, we had to deal with some really really nasty people on a daily basis. We were sued multiple times and it seems like every day there was some jerk customer that was causing problems. On multiple occasions some of the female sales staff would come to the back in tears from the way they were treated by a customer. One bad customer can really ruin your day and take down the morale of the entire store pretty quickly.
Another problem is career progression. Since it’s a retail job the career opportunities are a little more limited. Most people start out as Mac Specialists working part-time, just to get their foot in the door. From there you can move up to a couple of full-time specialist positions, lead Mac Specialist, or assistant manager/manager and eventually regional manager. You can also branch out to the Creative position, which are experts in the pro apps like Final Cut Pro and Logic, or move to the Genius position for the technical side. There are a few other positions like Inventory Control Specialist and the Business Consultant, but that’s about it for most stores. You can become a Lead Genius and then eventually probably move up to other Genius positions covering more stores, but that is about it. It can be a foot in the door to move to Apple HQ though, which is where you’d really want to be for a career. They even had a program where they picked some retail employees and moved them to Cupertino for 3 months on a trial basis. Someone from our store was selected for this and ended up getting hired permanently out there, so he now works at Apple HQ in California, from a retail store on the other side of the country.
I really enjoyed my time there though and the only reason I left is that I decided to join the Air Force to get the education and other benefits that it provides.
Composing members:
0
Composing members:
0
