9 ms·

The Coolest Experience I Had as an Apple Store Employee

• typpo 14y ago
  Perhaps the students were treated better at the Apple store because they were buying 15 macbooks. Surely they didn't spend that much money at all the other mall stores.
  • whatshisface 14y ago
    Well, it wasn't the employee that was getting the money. However, on a larger scale, I would tend to agree that stores that sell expensive things hire better salesmen.
  • niggler 14y ago
    I'm surprised the school didn't work with Apple's education group (which you have to do over the phone)
    • hkmurakami 14y ago
      Well there was a significant secondary motivation to see how salespeople reacted to the faked "deafness", so in this case contacting the Apple education group would have rendered this secondary purpose moot.
      • unreal37 14y ago
        I doubt many schools would forgo saving $1500 of expenses (15 laptops at $100 savings each plus whatever free software the Education group throws in) for a small pointless lesson like this. Also if I was a student, knowing this experiment wouldn't affect my grades at all, I'd be rebelling against this forced lie and talking out loud "accidentally".
        • dktbs 14y ago
          education discounts can be applied in store, as well as the other education offers they occasionally do, like the free iPod touch during the back to school season.
          • niggler 14y ago
            the public education promotions can, but when you purchase for a classroom you get additional discounts (and the stores are not authorized to give it)
            • protomyth 14y ago
              If they are each keeping the machine then you are not allowed to use the school discount, you must use the student rate.
  • bitops 14y ago
    What a cynical attitude. Do you think it's justified to give disabled people a bad attitude and poor service just because they're not spending a lot of money on your product?
    • mistercow 14y ago
      Where did you read that in typpo's comment? The was clearly no "ought" implied. But it is a fact that people are treated more nicely by salespeople when they're buying something (especially something expensive) than when they're not.
    • jiggy2011 14y ago
      No, but it's what tends to happen. You'll usually get better service just about anywhere if you look like a big spender or if there is PR at stake.
    • hkmurakami 14y ago
      This is the case whether or not a person is physically challenged or not.
    • ntr42 14y ago
      Cynical, yes. But the author raises an intriguing point about the intersection of class and treatment.
  • dktbs 14y ago
    In the case of the Apple store, these kinds of sales are the last thing a salesperson wants. Apple salespeople are not paid on commission, and since the guy was told exactly what the students were buying and that they already had the money distributed to them on gift cards, he knew he couldn't upsell them on a warranty or in-store training. Selling a baseline macbook is easy, people line up to buy them. It is the upselling that determines an employee's performance. So I don't think it had any bearing on this guy's behavior.
    • hkmurakami 14y ago
      Out of curiosity, how do Apple stores track how well an employee upsell products? Is there an expected model that sells for each product line, and if an employee exceeds this level on average (say, the EV is a Macbook Air 13 inch and 10% chance of warranty contract but the employee "averages" a 13 inch MBP + 25% success on a warranty), does she get a bonus?
      • bones6 14y ago
        I don't think it's a bonus rather a not-getting-yelled-at perk (or pat on the back bonus perhaps). They can track it rather easily since every employee's ID is tied to the little iPad or iPod they are completing the sales with.
      • nsp 14y ago
        Apple tracks a bunch of different metrics regarding sales. There are no bonuses for performance on any of them, and its quite difficult to get fired lack of sales. The metrics they use are (in rough order of decreasing importance): Net Promoter Score ~25ish% of people who purchase a 'hero product' (iPhone, Mac, iPod, or iPad) get an email asking them to rate their experience. One of the questions asks how likely you are to recommend apple based on your experience on a scale of 1 to 10. People who give a 9 or a 10 are considered promoters, and those who give below a 7 are detractors. Your net promoter score is % of people who give a 9 or 10 minus % percent below 7. The 5th avenue store's average score was around a 52. This matters a lot, consistent negative reviews are one of the few things that can get you fired. - AppleCare %- This is the extended warranty apple offers. This is emphasized pretty hard, managers frequently cite studies that show higher satisfaction for people who buy warranties etc. The official target for this is 50%, but getting over 20% puts you in the top tier, and anything below 10% gets you negative attention. Store average was around 13-17%. Its pretty rare you actually changes someone's mind on buying it, most people come in decided. - 1 to 1 % - this is % of computers you sell with one to one, which is a year of as-many-as-you-want hour longs training sessions on basic computer stuff. A 6% 1 to 1 rate was outstanding and over 10% was unheard of, but official corporate expectation was 25% - Sales $ - personal setup % - how many people you can get to sit with an apple employee and be walked through setup of iDevice. While I was at Apple, they were pretty good about just letting you do whatever you felt was best for the customer. There's was never any pressure to force a sale, and you were encouraged to talk to customers for as long as they wanted. source: I worked at 5th ave, Apple's busiest US retail store for 6 months in 2011-2012. The store gets over 50% international customers (who often can't use the warranties/upsells in their home countries) so %ages may be drastically different from other stores.
  • rdl 14y ago
    There are some stores that just treat their employees better, even though they're selling similar products, as a matter of culture. In the low end/mall type environment, look at In-N-Out or Chick-Fil-A vs. a badly-run Arby's franchise. Essentially the same product, but different culture. (McDonald's is even more interesting; they have great systems and generally hire younger or less experienced and more short-term workers, but don't seem to be as happy as the other places. McDonald's does do a great job of hiring disabled people, though -- and for a McDonald's job, a developmentally disabled person who is motivated and happy and has worked there 5 years is probably going to be a far better employee than a normal high schooler who is bitter about having to work.) Generally "better" stores have higher margins, but not always higher prices -- Trader Joe's and Whole Foods both beat Safeway as a place to work. If I lived in Iowa, I'd love to work for a place like Brownell's or in Colorado, Magpul, even for a lower wage than a company with less-good internal culture.
• deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
• jyap 14y ago
  It's a nice story but the MSRP of that 160GB MacBook was $1,499.00. So the kids paid $22,485. So it's comparing Apples with common everyday oranges. (Pun indended)
  • jonursenbach 14y ago
    How is the price of the laptop relevant at all to the story?
    • nbashaw 14y ago
      Don't you expect better service when you're buying something more expensive?
    • jmillikin 14y ago
      Retailers that sell more expensive products typically hire friendlier, more capable, and more numerous salespeople. This is why many people prefer to buy at an Apple store rather than Best Buy, even though they both carry Mac computers.
      • lostlogin 14y ago
        I totally disagree. The most expensive things I've ever bought have been terrible experiences. Car and house. Real estate agents are the devils spawn where I live.
  • chrischen 14y ago
    Yea imagine if they sent them all to a car dealership...
    • guptaneil 14y ago
      To be fair, a more apt comparison would if they were all sent to a car dealership, and the dealer was told they will all buy a car and just need help picking a color. I'm sure they'd get fantastic service. Having said that, Apple is pretty well known for offering great customer service, even when it's clear you're not purchasing anything.
• lizzard 14y ago
  What is heartwarming about this other than this person patting themself on the back for being a decent human being? While it's nice when someone is reasonable and polite but it doesn't magically make up for the other 100 people who acted like I don't have the right to get on the bus.
• swartz 14y ago
  Unique experience..
  • gala8y 14y ago
    Sorry, I have to ask... are you trying to be funny with your nick?
• joejohnson 14y ago
  That was a sweet story. Now let's turn to the comments and hear all of the cynical reasons I should be mad.
  • deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  • nolok 14y ago
    Not sure if you realize it, but comments like yours are also part of what's going wrong on hn. Ignore the low quality comments and upvote what adds to the discussion. Don't add more low quality comments.
    • acchow 14y ago
      You should check out reddit.com/r/circlejerk Or better yet, reddit.com/r/circlejerkcirclejerk
• davidedicillo 14y ago
  At the Apple Store in Santa Monica there's a deaf employee and he talks to you typing on an iPad. It was actually a pretty cool experience and I particularly appreciated it since both my dad's parents were deaf (but I do not know the sign language, they were extremely good at lips reading)
  • therandomguy 14y ago
    Does this particular employee also have other motor disabilities? Because he once helped me with check out. He was walking around the floor with what seemed like a special software on an iPhone attached to a scanner. I was amazed that the entire transaction took around 30 seconds and I was on my way.
• CallingIit 14y ago
  Calling it. They went store to store buying Macbooks. Multiple sets of laptops just for a social experiement? What kind of IT department would allow the KIDS to get the computers they need. And with no bulk discount, what school would allow that? This happened in his dreams.
  • derefr 14y ago
    > What kind of IT department would allow the KIDS to get the computers they need. I would guess that this is something more like a 20-kid Montessori school, than a regular big-building public institution. The kind where there's one teacher (who does things like run field trips as sociological object lessons), and no IT staff to speak of, but which has a big budget nevertheless due to the high tuition cost of private education paid by the (rich) parents.
  • Gromble 14y ago
    They weren't asking for MacBooks at every store, that would be silly.
    • CallingIit 14y ago
      Still, KIDS were given thousands of dollars to buy stuff tech for their school. This happens no where. Now if he said it was a coffee shop or such, sure.
      • emidln 14y ago
        I purchased a couple switches and a new server for my high school when I was a junior. I also was allowed to buy on the school's line of credit at a local hardware store for things I needed for the stage. I went to a private catholic high school in a small city. The administration trusted the students. They also didn't have IT staff, so geek speaking technobabble sounds better than paying actual staff. Walked out of high school with independent study classes, real experience in IT and building control systems, and without my parents paying expensive tuition.
    • lilsunnybee 14y ago
• mistercow 14y ago
  That school really should have dealt with the Apple store directly. I'm guessing they would have gotten better than the standard educational discount that way. Also, wow, please don't map "escape" to cause navigation on your website. That's super annoying.
  • Gromble 14y ago
    That's a Squarespace thing, can't be helped.
    • DHowett 14y ago
      It most certainly can be helped: don't use Squarespace.
• cafard 14y ago
  Weird. I worked for a couple of department stores before I was 20, not as a sales clerk, but stocking shelves. I don't remember the sales staff as the sorts who would snub customers. Of course, I wasn't treating them as lab rats in a high school psych course. I will also point out that retail sales staff get a lot more exposure to anyone and everyone than your average hacker does. One can become jaded and perhaps impatient fairly quickly. Should you? No, maybe not. But it's Friday, your feet hurt, and some kid is social engineering you. Do you feel as if you need that?
  • girvo 14y ago
    I've worked as a salesperson since I was 17 (I'm 22 now), on and off. Pays the bills, you see. And you're 100% right about the amount of exposure you get to every day people, however instead of making me jaded, I believe it's made my life as a developer easier; it gave me insights into regular people I think I would have otherwise missed. And gave me a neat startup idea I'm working on ;)
• jballanc 14y ago
  The coolest experience I had as an Apple Store Employee was saving Christmas...no really, we literally saved Christmas. It was about 1:30 AM on Dec. 25th, and a man comes in to the store out of breath. He needs two iPod nanos. "My wife thought I was getting them, and I thought she was getting them..." he explained. Not a problem. We got the nanos, and sent him on his way. That was fun...
  • artursapek 14y ago
    Wow, Apple Stores stay open that late on Christmas? They stay open that late at all?
    • jballanc 14y ago
      I worked the overnight shift at the 5th Avenue Apple Store. I got to spend two Christmas mornings (and two New Years Eves) in a row with some of the best people I've ever worked with...hell, some of the best people I've ever met!
      • nsp 14y ago
        When were you there? I worked twilight shift fall 11 - spring 12 at 5th ave
        • jballanc 14y ago
          I was actually part of the store opening crew. Worked there March '06 to May '08, but I'll bet you worked with some of my good friends.
      • artursapek 14y ago
        Wow. NYC brings enough traffic in the middle of the night that it stays open, huh.
        • acchow 14y ago
          I think of it as a public service: you're working on your Operating Systems assignment at 1am and discover your AC adapter has malfunctioned and you have 5% of battery left. 24/7 Apple Store. They're doing god's work.
• jurassic 14y ago
  Please don't do this. While this author seems to have enjoyed the experience, many retail workers have enough to do without being jerked around by those pretending to care about the experience of people with disabilities. It seems ridiculous to me that the teacher thought it was a good idea to lead these children in an extended "lie" in order to teach them about tolerance and empathy. Once when I worked in bookstore a man came into the store and faked being deaf. My coworkers and I jumped through all kinds of hoops to accommodate him and spent a lot of time writing notes back and forth to help this customer find a particular type of book he said he was looking for. After half an hour of scribbled notes, fetching books from the stacks, and iterating towards what he was describing the man bust out laughing and declared "Hahaha! I'm not actually deaf!!" and walked out without buying anything. I felt stupid and annoyed that he had wasted so much of our time. Not only did that man's behavior distract us from other legitimate customers, the experience left me feeling guarded about whether to accept people at face value. I never encountered any other customers with hearing disability while I was at that job, but I'm sure I would have had skepticism from this hoax experience in the back of my mind as I tried to help them. You are not helping anyone by pretending to have a disability.
  • mikeash 14y ago
    It sounds to me that you simply encountered an asshole who happened to pretend to be deaf, and incorrectly blamed the pretending bit for the asshole bit.
  • loupeabody 14y ago
    Although it sucks that you had a bad experience with someone who was pretending to be disabled, I disagree that having the students pretend to be deaf was a bad idea. First off, they each bought a MacBook, so catering to them was hardly a waste of time. Secondly, I feel like exercising one's empathy is always a good thing, especially during those extremely formative high school years. Of course, it's very easy to dismiss another person's life circumstances (disabled or not) in passing. So, actually being treated differently as a result of changing your behavior can open up a world of insight about human nature. This article makes me wonder how I would've felt about having the same experience (as one of the students) when I was in high school. The author noted that there was a "troublemaker" and that the kids were "mostly friendly", so maybe some of the students were of the same mindset as the guy who tricked you. Perhaps the article was sugarcoated quite a bit, but even so. Pretending to have a disability solely to cultivate empathy can certainly be beneficial for one's social life. Maybe it's not the best way to exercise empathy, but I don't think it hurts.
• m_d 14y ago
  I had a similar experience while working at a big-box retailer in high school. You don't get to have many "feel-good" experiences in retail, but using MS Word to sell a deaf woman a computer was one of those rare occasions.
• PakG1 14y ago
  When I was a kid, there was a girl I knew who was deaf and mute. But we always had great fun talking with each other using pen and paper. I don't know why, but it was so much easier to talk with her than it was a lot of other kids. Obviously, some types of people are easier to talk with, but I think something actually switches on in my mind that makes it easier for me to communicate when I'm writing, rather than speaking. http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19991119 http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19991119
  • mahyarm 14y ago
    They were probably more friendly since people didn't communicate with them as much too.
• charlieok 14y ago
  I'm surprised that a whole class of kids who were not deaf knew enough sign language to convince the author that they were deaf.
  • WiseWeasel 14y ago
    They only needed the first one to be somewhat convincing; the rest were probably an easy sell.
    • deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
  • johnpowell 14y ago
    I took a year of sign language in high school to satisfy the language requirement. This is the sort of thing I could imagine a instructor doing. It was a public school so our outing would have probably been to Burger King.
• meerita 14y ago
  I really enjoyed this story. So human. I experienced some of this in the past and acted the same.
• jayzalowitz 14y ago
  The coolest experience I ever had at an apple store involved stephen colbert, steve corell, anne hathatway and one particularly dirty joke. You clearly win.
• pud 14y ago
  The kids knew sign language? The kids went and bought stuff (incl laptops) at multiple stores? And wasn't there a long line at Apple? How'd they make it to so many other stores? The kids physically go to the store to buy school computers? The kids are such good actors that they fooled the author & all other salespeople? A teacher would actually allow kids to pretend that they're disabled? No bulk discount or pre-arranged deal? All other employees in the mall were mean to deaf kids? Author doesn't remember which Apple product was debuting? I hate to be "that guy" -- but this story is most likely fiction.
  • 69_years_and 14y ago
    I am sorry to have agree with you, but yes the contradictions did start piling up. As they say, photos, please, or it didn't happen.
    • darkchasma 14y ago
      A picture of a bunch of kids and a teacher would prove what exactly?
      • 69_years_and 14y ago
        Sorry dark, that bit... was a joke. It was playing on a common internet saying that people say to their friends (and others) when they say something, you know, like, I meet the Prezz, surly you have run into it before. Jezz I hate having to explain my jokes. I'll need to get that looked at.
        • darkchasma 14y ago
          As was my comment, so we're even. ;)
          • 69_years_and 14y ago
            Touché my friend ;)
• thejsjunky 14y ago
  A little tangential to the story but a good thing to be aware of is that the barrier of communicating between deaf people and hearing people is not always that they simply can't hear the sounds you are making. Many deaf people (especially those who are born deaf) are illiterate or have low literacy in written language; so you can't expect to always be able to just pop out a pencil/paper and write back and forth normally as you would with a hearing friend while playing "the silent game".
• vonskippy 14y ago
  So you got pawned by some warped social experiment - yeah, that sounds about right for the "best" that working at an apple store has to offer.
• joeguilmette 14y ago
  I work as a skydiving instructors and had a similar experience. A group of deaf college age students came in to skydive and I was paired with one of them on a tandem skydive. Generally we have about five minutes to gear up and train our students when it is busy (as it was that day). During a lull I wrote up a quick briefing of everything I would usually say and go over on my laptop. When it came time to jump I greeted the student, smiled and then had them read the text while I geared them up. Them I made a big show of pantomiming everything we'd be doing while we laughed and conversed on the laptop. It was a lot of fun :)
• JacobIrwin 14y ago
  you should add commenting capability to the page.. how neat would it be if someone from the not-actually-deaf group were to share a self-confirming anecdote (and possibly, an update on how they're doing now)!
• yarou 14y ago
  It seemed to me that this fellow felt the same way colonizers feel about natives of the lands they conquer. How noble of them to spare the natives any thought! They are clearly the better person than the average person that pays no attention.
• nikolakirev 14y ago
  While I was reading the story, I kept thinking that the kids will start using the "say" command in the Terminal to start talking. That would have been a great story.
• vicks711 14y ago
  Was the teacher smoking hot good looking?
• roflcoptar 14y ago
  you know as someone that likes working there, awesome customers are awesome. thats all. <3
• JeremyMorgan 14y ago
  Not what I expected, and a really good read. Hope it's true.
• darrenraj86 14y ago
  ok...if the story is true or not..I believe the message there trying to get across is more important. For example who questioning the whole deal must treat people as bad as the other stores treated the "deaf" kids...
• shellehs 14y ago
  At first, I thought why not take two colors, than make the kids who preferred black stood left and the others on right side. There should be many simple ways to deal with that situation quickly and easily. I The story looks a little weird, even not true, like I don't quite remember which product had just released that morning,, is it true? But at the end, I found I was misunderstood and also was touched.
• jmomo 14y ago
  Some time in 2007 I went to an Apple event in Scottsdale Arizona. I am a network engineer/system administrator, and my organization was about 50/50 Mac/Windows. We spend somewhere between $200-600K a year on Apple products for employees. I seem to remember that this was shortly before Apple killed off their XServe products, but I could be mistaken about the timing. There was a break in the presentation, after which I decided I was going to bail. I took my phone, a Blackberry at the time, out of my pocket as I exited the door so that I could check if anything was going on at work. As I took those first few steps outside, I accidentally dropped my phone. It wasn't one of those gentle drops. In the process of trying to catch it before it hit the ground, I ended up pushing it with even greater velocity downwards. It hit the concrete pretty hard and a mix of phone, battery cover, and battery went skittering across the concrete walkway. Three Apple Store employees were sitting outside, also on break. My phone had gone flying right past their feet. "Oooh!" they said with a wince. Then one of them said, "Don't worry everyone! It wasn't a IPhone!" And they laughed. And that was it. I picked up the parts of my phone, took at a look at the damage, put it back together, and walked away. There was no offer of help or concern, but they thought it was pretty funny. Fortunately, the phone survived pretty well off. There really wasn't anything more than minor scratches, despite how I had practically thrown the phone against the concrete. Ironically, had it been an IPhone (or any modern touchscreen phone), it would have probably been destroyed. I ended up destroying the screen on my Nexus One a year or two later with a much less violent drop. And, I'm afraid to say, most of my other experiences with Apple store employees here in Arizona has been pretty similar. We regularly have our helpdesk staff go in to pick up parts and do repair runs and I've had to call up our regular Apple rep and comment on bad attitudes, poor service, and outright rejection of service on in-warranty breakages for whatever reason-of-the-day they could make up. The story linked to is important: You really can make a lasting impression on a customer that they will never forget, positive or negative. I will never forget the way three Apple Store employees laughed at me as I dropped my phone.
  • erre 14y ago
    When I read the "It wasn't an iPhone" bit, I thought they meant it as in "Don't worry, it wasn't an iPhone, so it will probably survive the fall!". Which puts a more positive spin to it :)
• NicoJuicy 14y ago
  So, the went on an experiment to the mall to check how employees responded to deaf people. All the students received a MAC from the school. The author doesn't have any comments on his blog. It's fiction, this dude is lying like hell :-s
• gyom 14y ago
  It seems to me like almost nobody in the comments on HN believes his story to be genuine. And yet, this guy updated his blog to add : "Wow, I really didn't expect this story to blow up the way it has. I've never had anything voted up on Hacker News before, much less gain the top spot. I'm still not convinced it hasn't all been a fever-dream." which just supports the hypothesis that he's just bullshitting everybody.
• inaflashlaser 14y ago
  I would guess this (if true) was from 2008 on the release of the iPhone 3G - based on the fact that the Black MacBook was discontinued in October 2008 (per wikipedia). It could have been 2007 for the original iPhone, but the lines for the 3G were more prevalent.