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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-

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?
- reggieband 6y ago
  > Then is not the pretty standard outcome of that process Apple's as well? We can't say that based on this single incident. How often has a manager in a similar position decided to handle it themselves by having a word with the employee and not documenting it? I can't know and I don't think you know either. > Just fix the broken process I'm of the opinion no such fix could be perfect. It is the reason we have a common law system with precedents and judges interpreting laws with respect to them. And even then a judge may decide to throw the book at someone and an appeal can be lost. Same thing happens in almost every single avenue of life. A cop has discretion to let you off a ticket and decides not to. A teacher refuses to accept late work. An employee stands-firm against a customer on a store policy like the wearing of a mask instead of letting it slide. Even if these things are statistically rare, it still stings if you are on the receiving side.

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?

reggieband 6y ago
> Then is not the pretty standard outcome of that process Apple's as well? We can't say that based on this single incident. How often has a manager in a similar position decided to handle it themselves by having a word with the employee and not documenting it? I can't know and I don't think you know either. > Just fix the broken process I'm of the opinion no such fix could be perfect. It is the reason we have a common law system with precedents and judges interpreting laws with respect to them. And even then a judge may decide to throw the book at someone and an appeal can be lost. Same thing happens in almost every single avenue of life. A cop has discretion to let you off a ticket and decides not to. A teacher refuses to accept late work. An employee stands-firm against a customer on a store policy like the wearing of a mask instead of letting it slide. Even if these things are statistically rare, it still stings if you are on the receiving side.