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>I was an Apple employee for nearly 13 years, and I loved helping people get the most out of their Apple products. All of that ended about 6 months ago when Ap

by jasode 6y ago

>I was an Apple employee for nearly 13 years, and I loved helping people get the most out of their Apple products. All of that ended about 6 months ago when Apple showed me its true colors. [...] I told him that yes I had in fact helped a friend with a data transfer (something Apple does for free) and that I had helped him on my own time. He told me that I had just admitted to a major conflict on interest, and that an official investigation in to my actions would now start, two days later I was suspended. Maybe I'm missing some context but it seems like something huge has to be omitted from author's narrative. There's just no way Apple Inc's ~137000 employees are all saying to friends & family, "nope, sorry, I can't help you with your iPhone/iPad/iMac because it's a conflict of interest and I'd get fired."

baddox 6y ago
Yeah, I hate to reflexively take the side of a huge corporation here. I don't doubt that Apple has abusive employer relations, but it really does feel like there's something missing from this story.
- rewq4321 6y ago
  It seems plausible that Apple has a policy against free-lance tech support and they over-applied the rule in this case when he was just helping out a friend - perhaps using work resources in some way (e.g. a work phone was involved).
  - baddox 6y ago
    It's certainly plausible, but it still feels like something is missing. How did the boss hear about this? "Someone told him." This all just sounds so very odd.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
      Even so, I can't imagine anyone actually being let go over this as described unless the company was actively searching for a reason to fire them.
  - netsharc 6y ago
    To follow the thread of skepticism about the whole story: it's a bit like the customs entry form you have to fill when entering some countries. One question asks "Are you a member of a terrorist organization?". People laugh when they see this, and say "Why would any terrorist check 'yes' here?!". But the idea is, if they do catch a terrorist, if they can't satisfiably prove he's done anything wrong, they can still say "He lied while filling a customs form" and jail him. So... maybe the company/boss has other issues with the guy, but no solid ground to fire him, until they caught him "violating" this "conflict of interest" rule.
    - baddox 6y ago
      How can you “catch a terrorist” without proving that they have done something wrong?
      - ncmncm 6y ago
        They lied on the form! What else do they need? Yes, this does not make sense. But that is the reality of law enforcement, and of border patrol. It doesn't take a conviction to cancel your visa and deport you.
      - tylerhou 6y ago
        Other people can tip you off to their plans, and you can arrest them with a backpack full of knives. That’s pretty reasonable suspicion that they were about to commit an act of terrorism. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/27/armed-police-westminster-arrest-man-backpack-knives/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/27/armed-police-wes...
        baddox 6y ago
        Right, but planning a terrorist attack isn't "they can't satisfiably prove he's done anything wrong."
      - true_religion 6y ago
        In the US, mere declaration of support for a terrorist organization isn’t illegal. It is free speech after all. Without being able to prove that you have given money, or undergone training by terrorists, or support or plan to commit a specific act then it would be otherwise difficult to remove someone from the country. However asking on the form grants two options.... first they can simply deny entry, and second they can deport you for lying if it turns out you are the press secretary for the IRA for example.
  - kube-system 6y ago
    Or they applied the policy exactly as they intended to. Some organizations simply enforce their policies without exception.
- emn13 6y ago
  That is, however, exactly what you're doing. We can see if apple responds, but until then, I'm assuming he's telling the truth.
  - donor20 6y ago
    Emn - did this guy sign a release so that apple could release his records. A lot of these types of complaints, they don't / won't sign a release allowing the employer to release their records.
  - vaxman 6y ago
    Apple won’t “respond”...it would become actual news (instead of “Hacker News”) if they made any comment. Nope, this is going down like firing the worker for letting his little girl blog from the lunchroom with a prototype within view or the kid who blew his brains out in the conference room etc.
aaomidi 6y ago
This is Apple we're talking about though. One of the most strict companies out there.
- oneplane 6y ago
  Nothing compared to the likes of Raytheon or Northrop Grumman. Everyone likes to bash the big ones, but they are far from unique, they are simply well known.
- actuator 6y ago
  From what I have heard I know FB, Google to be pretty vocal internally and with tough questions on policies, products and decisions. Amazon and Microsoft fall into the category where most employees don't bother with this behaviour. Is Apple even more restrictive than Microsoft or do employees don't even bother?
  - mdoms 6y ago
    I'm not sure what you think you know about Microsoft but I think you're off base here.
- virtue3 6y ago
  I love how everyone is forgetting about the employee that got fired for showing Woz the ipad early. https://www.cultofmac.com/39931/woz-accidentally-gets-apple-engineer-fired-for-showing-ipad/#:~:text=While%20Woz%20was%20waiting%20in,fired%20up%20the%20Numbers%20app https://www.cultofmac.com/39931/woz-accidentally-gets-apple-....
  - richardwhiuk 6y ago
    That's absolutely a fire-able offence.
    - bb88 6y ago
      I even like in the article how Jobs said it wasn't a big deal.
zwily 6y ago
Same thought I had. There must be more to it.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
latortuga 6y ago
This sounds a lot more like a vindictive or petty boss with an axe to grind than evil corporate policy gone awry. Corporate policies are like federal laws, there are multiple mutually exclusive ways to violate them, but you only get held to account if you are subject to some attention.
- adfm 6y ago
  Interesting thought. I wonder what the difference between a vindictive boss and a vindictive Siri would be. If corporations have all the rights of an individual with none of the responsibilities, how does that play out when Siri starts applying corporate policy on your iLife? Corporations can be criminals, but only bodies can go to jail.[1] [1]: https://consumerist.com/2014/09/12/how-corporations-got-the-same-rights-as-people-but-dont-ever-go-to-jail/ https://consumerist.com/2014/09/12/how-corporations-got-the-...
  - briandear 6y ago
    Corporations don’t have “all the rights of an individual.” You are making the common mistake of misunderstanding Citizens United. The majority wrote, "If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech." The key thing in Citizens United isn’t that “corporations are people,” but that an association of people be the same First Amendment rights as an individual person. And that makes sense: a newspaper is published by a group of people, spending money to distribute their message. A newspaper editorial is published by the paper, not by the individual. So restricting an association of people’s First Amendment rights, you would necessarily restrict the right of a newspaper to publish, unless the newspaper is completely self-funded by the writer/publisher. So no, corporations don’t have all the rights of an individual, they can’t for example, vote in an election, join the military, hold elective office. A corporation is nothing more than a group of people sharing a common goal. A corporation is no different from a club, a union, a rock band, or an activist group. It’s just a legal structure that allows people to join together for some common purpose.
    - 6y ago
crazygringo 6y ago
Agreed. Nothing here adds up at all. Sounds to me like the author was let go for different reasons entirely (and this was just an easy excuse for management), or that something else is missing here. The number of mentions about Apple providing the service "for free" makes it sound like the author perhaps actually charged their elderly friend, and honestly that would be a huge violation. I don't know exactly what the author's job was (can't find it on the site), but if their job is servicing Macs, it's very normal for their employment contract to forbid making money servicing Macs outside their job -- it's literally having your own employees compete with you. But if the author didn't charge... then there's got to be a separate "real reason" they were fired.
- mattigames 6y ago
  Yeah, there is just no way a trillion dollar gigantic company can be evil, they must have a real reason somewhere!
- hansvm 6y ago
  > I don't know exactly what the author's job was (can't find it on the site), but if their job is servicing Macs, it's very normal for their employment contract to forbid making money servicing Macs outside their job -- it's literally having your own employees compete with you. It still depends. Even if it's in the employment contract, the extent to which anti-moonlighting, non-compete, and other kinds of anti-competitive clauses that attempt to control the employee when they're not at work are enforceable varies drastically from case to case and jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Conflicts of interest and potential IP theft can affect the decision, but even doing the exact same job just outside of your normal working hours is not necessarily grounds for a breach of contract.
  - donor20 6y ago
    In places like apple doing password resets / account unlocks to allow data transfer, even if you do that for free on the clock, is very commonly prohibited off the clock and/or for "friends". I actually had a case recently where someone lost reset to a google account. They ended up (THANKFULLY) somehow getting a password reset through an enterprise account admin who had the pull of a huge contract to help out. But I'm sure it was cleared and on the clock for the employee side to do this because I immediately thought - awesome! and also thought - damn, whoever can do these transfers has a TON of power if they ever went rouge.
slg 6y ago
I have no insight into this specific situation and you may be right that something is being omitted by the author. However I don't agree with your reasoning for coming to that conclusion. Just because Apple treats one employee that way doesn't mean Apple treats all employees that way or that all Apple employees act in a way counter to how this employee acts.
- deleted 6y ago
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deleted 6y ago
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t0mmyb0y 6y ago
This is how apple operates and always has.
beervirus 6y ago
I'm guessing he charged the guy for his services. I don't see what the conflict would be otherwise.
reggieband 6y ago
I imagine an expanded story, based purely on speculation. Old guy comes into the store and buys a new iMac. This guy recognizes him as a neighbour or friend-of-friend and comes over to say hi while another Apple sales associate is checking him out. He overhears the sales associate mention Apple's free program to transfer data. The old guy says "nah, I don't want to leave my computer here" and the friendly guy says "hey, no problem, I'll just pop by your place later and do it for you at your house". The original sales associate might have thought that was a conflict of interest so he reports it to a manager. Now the manager is in a tough spot. This is some kind of official internal complaint and it is literally his job and his duty to investigate. He talks to the employee and the employee confirms the report. It's now out of his hands, has to go up a chain to a regional manager. It gets passed around a bit until someone unfamiliar with the employee looks at the policies and facts of the matter and they make a by-the-book call. I can totally understand the frustration. It reminds me of some kind of Kafkaesque nightmare where justice is run through an algorithm. At some point we'd all hope a compassionate judge would look over the human's involved in the situation and apply some magnanimity. Each person in a chain had an option to use their judgement to break the chain but nobody did. This isn't an indictment of Apple as some may want to see it. It seems more likely it is a pretty standard outcome of people following a bureaucratic process.
- someone7x 6y ago
  > Each person in a chain had an option to use their judgement to break the chain but nobody did. This isn't an indictment of Apple as some may want to see it. It seems more likely it is a pretty standard outcome of people following a bureaucratic process. Is it not Apple's bureaucratic process? Then is not the pretty standard outcome of that process Apple's as well? Also, who else but Apple can empower each person in the chain to actually exercise their judgment? And this doesn't even consider bad actors trying to socially engineer the system. Must each person in the chain now make the determination that they are actually helping a customer or being fooled by an adversary? I guess I just think it's naive to expect workers to unilaterally disobey the bureaucratic process because it is demonstrably imperfect. Just fix the broken process instead of punting liability to each individual. What ever happened to leadership?
hylaride 6y ago
Agreed. I've got a rant or three about how Tim Cook's Apple has become cold and calculating, but this guy was not fired for helping his friend. There was something between him and his manager. Maybe his manager is a dick who wanted to replace him with a buddy, but if that's the case it just means there's a few dicks in Apples' 140K employees. Maybe this guy has a long list of warnings. We won't ever know.
cmckn 6y ago
> I decided to help an elderly _friend_ > I had just been fired for helping _someone_ > they wouldn’t have fired me for helping a _customer_ This shifting language is suspicious to me; is this a friend or a customer you met at the Apple store and then helped off the clock? It sounds like this person was employed at an Apple retail store, and I can't imagine Apple having a policy that retail store employees are not allowed to help their grandparents set up a new Mac. There is 100% something else going on here. WAG: this guy told a customer at the store that he could get the data transfer done faster, and was effectively running a Genius Bar out of his garage. EDIT: I get that he's using different nouns in order to make his case in a few different ways. Ultimately, I think the writer did something shady and got fired for it.
- doodpants 6y ago
  I think "customer" in this context just means an Apple customer, which they obviously are if they have old and new Macs.
  - cmckn 6y ago
    Fair. I still think this person is being very selective with the facts of the matter; despite Apple not being incredibly nice, I don't think they're unreasonable in the way he implies.
- addicted44 6y ago
  What? He's obviously talking about the person in different contexts. The person is a friend to them, but they are also a someone, and for Apple they are a customer.
  - cmckn 6y ago
    Sure, you can read it that way. My point was that he isn't clear about the exact nature of his relationship with the person he helped, and those details are probably relevant to his termination.
vaxman 6y ago
He was caught being old and under the influence of Steve’s original creative spirit. Apple is run by mobsters again (not talking about Tim Apple) —only thanks to Steve coming back, they have nearly unlimited capital and capacity. The joke is on them though because Tim is a hardliner who will fry their butts when the revenues begin to falter. It’s all bad anyway tho because Apple stock tanking is enough to make the market crash of 2000 look like a cakewalk.
midnitewarrior 6y ago
Him helping that elderly person undermined Apple's highly engineered brand interaction with that customer. Apple is there to have you bring your computers in to the genius bar and interact with you to build brand loyalty and sell you more things. The customer is then supposed to go tell their friends how wonderful the Apple Store is. Instead, an Apple employee undermined the precision-crafted brand experience with this customer. Worse yet, if he would have messed up the transfer, he'd be making Apple look really bad when the customer told their friends about how unreliable getting a new Mac going can be due to their experience. This is possibly their narrative on this issue. Companies like Apple worry endlessly about this, which is how they have earned their reputation with customers. I can understand a warning or write-up being an educational opportunity for the employee to understand the problem here, but clearly there was no malicious intent here, firing someone over this is really poor management unless they are a repeat offender after a warning.

by jasode 6y ago

baddox 6y ago

Yeah, I hate to reflexively take the side of a huge corporation here. I don't doubt that Apple has abusive employer relations, but it really does feel like there's something missing from this story.

rewq4321 6y ago
It seems plausible that Apple has a policy against free-lance tech support and they over-applied the rule in this case when he was just helping out a friend - perhaps using work resources in some way (e.g. a work phone was involved).
- baddox 6y ago
  It's certainly plausible, but it still feels like something is missing. How did the boss hear about this? "Someone told him." This all just sounds so very odd.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    Even so, I can't imagine anyone actually being let go over this as described unless the company was actively searching for a reason to fire them.
- netsharc 6y ago
  To follow the thread of skepticism about the whole story: it's a bit like the customs entry form you have to fill when entering some countries. One question asks "Are you a member of a terrorist organization?". People laugh when they see this, and say "Why would any terrorist check 'yes' here?!". But the idea is, if they do catch a terrorist, if they can't satisfiably prove he's done anything wrong, they can still say "He lied while filling a customs form" and jail him. So... maybe the company/boss has other issues with the guy, but no solid ground to fire him, until they caught him "violating" this "conflict of interest" rule.
  - baddox 6y ago
    How can you “catch a terrorist” without proving that they have done something wrong?
    - ncmncm 6y ago
      They lied on the form! What else do they need? Yes, this does not make sense. But that is the reality of law enforcement, and of border patrol. It doesn't take a conviction to cancel your visa and deport you.
    - tylerhou 6y ago
      Other people can tip you off to their plans, and you can arrest them with a backpack full of knives. That’s pretty reasonable suspicion that they were about to commit an act of terrorism. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/27/armed-police-westminster-arrest-man-backpack-knives/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/27/armed-police-wes...
      - baddox 6y ago
        Right, but planning a terrorist attack isn't "they can't satisfiably prove he's done anything wrong."
    - true_religion 6y ago
      In the US, mere declaration of support for a terrorist organization isn’t illegal. It is free speech after all. Without being able to prove that you have given money, or undergone training by terrorists, or support or plan to commit a specific act then it would be otherwise difficult to remove someone from the country. However asking on the form grants two options.... first they can simply deny entry, and second they can deport you for lying if it turns out you are the press secretary for the IRA for example.
- kube-system 6y ago
  Or they applied the policy exactly as they intended to. Some organizations simply enforce their policies without exception.
emn13 6y ago
That is, however, exactly what you're doing. We can see if apple responds, but until then, I'm assuming he's telling the truth.
- donor20 6y ago
  Emn - did this guy sign a release so that apple could release his records. A lot of these types of complaints, they don't / won't sign a release allowing the employer to release their records.
- vaxman 6y ago
  Apple won’t “respond”...it would become actual news (instead of “Hacker News”) if they made any comment. Nope, this is going down like firing the worker for letting his little girl blog from the lunchroom with a prototype within view or the kid who blew his brains out in the conference room etc.

aaomidi 6y ago

This is Apple we're talking about though. One of the most strict companies out there.

oneplane 6y ago
Nothing compared to the likes of Raytheon or Northrop Grumman. Everyone likes to bash the big ones, but they are far from unique, they are simply well known.
actuator 6y ago
From what I have heard I know FB, Google to be pretty vocal internally and with tough questions on policies, products and decisions. Amazon and Microsoft fall into the category where most employees don't bother with this behaviour. Is Apple even more restrictive than Microsoft or do employees don't even bother?
- mdoms 6y ago
  I'm not sure what you think you know about Microsoft but I think you're off base here.
virtue3 6y ago
I love how everyone is forgetting about the employee that got fired for showing Woz the ipad early. https://www.cultofmac.com/39931/woz-accidentally-gets-apple-engineer-fired-for-showing-ipad/#:~:text=While%20Woz%20was%20waiting%20in,fired%20up%20the%20Numbers%20app https://www.cultofmac.com/39931/woz-accidentally-gets-apple-....
- richardwhiuk 6y ago
  That's absolutely a fire-able offence.
  - bb88 6y ago
    I even like in the article how Jobs said it wasn't a big deal.

zwily 6y ago

Same thought I had. There must be more to it.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

latortuga 6y ago

This sounds a lot more like a vindictive or petty boss with an axe to grind than evil corporate policy gone awry. Corporate policies are like federal laws, there are multiple mutually exclusive ways to violate them, but you only get held to account if you are subject to some attention.

adfm 6y ago
Interesting thought. I wonder what the difference between a vindictive boss and a vindictive Siri would be. If corporations have all the rights of an individual with none of the responsibilities, how does that play out when Siri starts applying corporate policy on your iLife? Corporations can be criminals, but only bodies can go to jail.[1] [1]: https://consumerist.com/2014/09/12/how-corporations-got-the-same-rights-as-people-but-dont-ever-go-to-jail/ https://consumerist.com/2014/09/12/how-corporations-got-the-...
- briandear 6y ago
  Corporations don’t have “all the rights of an individual.” You are making the common mistake of misunderstanding Citizens United. The majority wrote, "If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech." The key thing in Citizens United isn’t that “corporations are people,” but that an association of people be the same First Amendment rights as an individual person. And that makes sense: a newspaper is published by a group of people, spending money to distribute their message. A newspaper editorial is published by the paper, not by the individual. So restricting an association of people’s First Amendment rights, you would necessarily restrict the right of a newspaper to publish, unless the newspaper is completely self-funded by the writer/publisher. So no, corporations don’t have all the rights of an individual, they can’t for example, vote in an election, join the military, hold elective office. A corporation is nothing more than a group of people sharing a common goal. A corporation is no different from a club, a union, a rock band, or an activist group. It’s just a legal structure that allows people to join together for some common purpose.
  - 6y ago

crazygringo 6y ago

Agreed. Nothing here adds up at all. Sounds to me like the author was let go for different reasons entirely (and this was just an easy excuse for management), or that something else is missing here. The number of mentions about Apple providing the service "for free" makes it sound like the author perhaps actually charged their elderly friend, and honestly that would be a huge violation. I don't know exactly what the author's job was (can't find it on the site), but if their job is servicing Macs, it's very normal for their employment contract to forbid making money servicing Macs outside their job -- it's literally having your own employees compete with you. But if the author didn't charge... then there's got to be a separate "real reason" they were fired.

mattigames 6y ago
Yeah, there is just no way a trillion dollar gigantic company can be evil, they must have a real reason somewhere!
hansvm 6y ago
> I don't know exactly what the author's job was (can't find it on the site), but if their job is servicing Macs, it's very normal for their employment contract to forbid making money servicing Macs outside their job -- it's literally having your own employees compete with you. It still depends. Even if it's in the employment contract, the extent to which anti-moonlighting, non-compete, and other kinds of anti-competitive clauses that attempt to control the employee when they're not at work are enforceable varies drastically from case to case and jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Conflicts of interest and potential IP theft can affect the decision, but even doing the exact same job just outside of your normal working hours is not necessarily grounds for a breach of contract.
- donor20 6y ago
  In places like apple doing password resets / account unlocks to allow data transfer, even if you do that for free on the clock, is very commonly prohibited off the clock and/or for "friends". I actually had a case recently where someone lost reset to a google account. They ended up (THANKFULLY) somehow getting a password reset through an enterprise account admin who had the pull of a huge contract to help out. But I'm sure it was cleared and on the clock for the employee side to do this because I immediately thought - awesome! and also thought - damn, whoever can do these transfers has a TON of power if they ever went rouge.

slg 6y ago

I have no insight into this specific situation and you may be right that something is being omitted by the author. However I don't agree with your reasoning for coming to that conclusion. Just because Apple treats one employee that way doesn't mean Apple treats all employees that way or that all Apple employees act in a way counter to how this employee acts.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

t0mmyb0y 6y ago

This is how apple operates and always has.

beervirus 6y ago

I'm guessing he charged the guy for his services. I don't see what the conflict would be otherwise.

reggieband 6y ago

I imagine an expanded story, based purely on speculation. Old guy comes into the store and buys a new iMac. This guy recognizes him as a neighbour or friend-of-friend and comes over to say hi while another Apple sales associate is checking him out. He overhears the sales associate mention Apple's free program to transfer data. The old guy says "nah, I don't want to leave my computer here" and the friendly guy says "hey, no problem, I'll just pop by your place later and do it for you at your house". The original sales associate might have thought that was a conflict of interest so he reports it to a manager. Now the manager is in a tough spot. This is some kind of official internal complaint and it is literally his job and his duty to investigate. He talks to the employee and the employee confirms the report. It's now out of his hands, has to go up a chain to a regional manager. It gets passed around a bit until someone unfamiliar with the employee looks at the policies and facts of the matter and they make a by-the-book call. I can totally understand the frustration. It reminds me of some kind of Kafkaesque nightmare where justice is run through an algorithm. At some point we'd all hope a compassionate judge would look over the human's involved in the situation and apply some magnanimity. Each person in a chain had an option to use their judgement to break the chain but nobody did. This isn't an indictment of Apple as some may want to see it. It seems more likely it is a pretty standard outcome of people following a bureaucratic process.

someone7x 6y ago
> Each person in a chain had an option to use their judgement to break the chain but nobody did. This isn't an indictment of Apple as some may want to see it. It seems more likely it is a pretty standard outcome of people following a bureaucratic process. Is it not Apple's bureaucratic process? Then is not the pretty standard outcome of that process Apple's as well? Also, who else but Apple can empower each person in the chain to actually exercise their judgment? And this doesn't even consider bad actors trying to socially engineer the system. Must each person in the chain now make the determination that they are actually helping a customer or being fooled by an adversary? I guess I just think it's naive to expect workers to unilaterally disobey the bureaucratic process because it is demonstrably imperfect. Just fix the broken process instead of punting liability to each individual. What ever happened to leadership?

hylaride 6y ago

Agreed. I've got a rant or three about how Tim Cook's Apple has become cold and calculating, but this guy was not fired for helping his friend. There was something between him and his manager. Maybe his manager is a dick who wanted to replace him with a buddy, but if that's the case it just means there's a few dicks in Apples' 140K employees. Maybe this guy has a long list of warnings. We won't ever know.

cmckn 6y ago

> I decided to help an elderly _friend_ > I had just been fired for helping _someone_ > they wouldn’t have fired me for helping a _customer_ This shifting language is suspicious to me; is this a friend or a customer you met at the Apple store and then helped off the clock? It sounds like this person was employed at an Apple retail store, and I can't imagine Apple having a policy that retail store employees are not allowed to help their grandparents set up a new Mac. There is 100% something else going on here. WAG: this guy told a customer at the store that he could get the data transfer done faster, and was effectively running a Genius Bar out of his garage. EDIT: I get that he's using different nouns in order to make his case in a few different ways. Ultimately, I think the writer did something shady and got fired for it.

doodpants 6y ago
I think "customer" in this context just means an Apple customer, which they obviously are if they have old and new Macs.
- cmckn 6y ago
  Fair. I still think this person is being very selective with the facts of the matter; despite Apple not being incredibly nice, I don't think they're unreasonable in the way he implies.
addicted44 6y ago
What? He's obviously talking about the person in different contexts. The person is a friend to them, but they are also a someone, and for Apple they are a customer.
- cmckn 6y ago
  Sure, you can read it that way. My point was that he isn't clear about the exact nature of his relationship with the person he helped, and those details are probably relevant to his termination.

vaxman 6y ago

He was caught being old and under the influence of Steve’s original creative spirit. Apple is run by mobsters again (not talking about Tim Apple) —only thanks to Steve coming back, they have nearly unlimited capital and capacity. The joke is on them though because Tim is a hardliner who will fry their butts when the revenues begin to falter. It’s all bad anyway tho because Apple stock tanking is enough to make the market crash of 2000 look like a cakewalk.

midnitewarrior 6y ago

Him helping that elderly person undermined Apple's highly engineered brand interaction with that customer. Apple is there to have you bring your computers in to the genius bar and interact with you to build brand loyalty and sell you more things. The customer is then supposed to go tell their friends how wonderful the Apple Store is. Instead, an Apple employee undermined the precision-crafted brand experience with this customer. Worse yet, if he would have messed up the transfer, he'd be making Apple look really bad when the customer told their friends about how unreliable getting a new Mac going can be due to their experience. This is possibly their narrative on this issue. Companies like Apple worry endlessly about this, which is how they have earned their reputation with customers. I can understand a warning or write-up being an educational opportunity for the employee to understand the problem here, but clearly there was no malicious intent here, firing someone over this is really poor management unless they are a repeat offender after a warning.