To me that looks like a bunch of Apple bods stuck in a lift, accusing the guy at the front of being the cause of the obnoxious smell .....
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Apple Stores Getting All-New 'Lead' and 'Schedule Planner' Positions
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To me that looks like a bunch of Apple bods stuck in a lift, accusing the guy at the front of being the cause of the obnoxious smell .....
OT: ...who was the all-new AppleStore Lead that just left 1 floor earlierTo me that looks like a bunch of Apple bods stuck in a lift, accusing the guy at the front of being the cause of the obnoxious smell .....
The Glasgow store, Buchanan St, was revamped last year and lost its Genius Bar ... now you check in, sit on a window ledge and wait to be taken to a seat at an empty table somewhere at the back of the store. Hardly a great experience.
Very cynical, as long as you get paid you don't give a damn about the people working to make your money?
Or maybe they had issues getting managers from within since there was such a large gap between their current employees and the requirements/experience to manage the store. So they create these bridge positions to train up select in store employees and when time comes to get new managers they have people with relevant experience to draw from. Companies like the idea of hiring from within because it's much cheaper in acquisition cost and is much faster than identifying external applicants. It's difficult to identify internal candidates though if there is no bridge position to the upper levels.
That's it. There must be some opportunity for gradual promotion at every level.
I've hardly seen any place that had so few lower-level promotion opportunities as the AppleStore; where the work/environment itself is supposed to keep people happy. That's doesn't work at the long term.
Apparently they're not the only ones
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Joking aside, it's from Ahrendt's twitter. https://mobile.twitter.com/angelaahrendts?lang=en
"Sept 17" is the date of the tweet. Mentions Australia and California.
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Ehh, Kim Yongh Un succesfully installed 10.3.3 !!
(failing to notice that James Bond is around the corner who hacked his BroadCom chip just seconds before...)
(failing to notice that James Bond is around the corner who hacked his BroadCom chip just seconds before...)
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You know those that can do, those that can't are found a position where they can't do too much damage.
More layers of employees. Apple Stores have added a lot of non-customer contact jobs in the past 2 years and created "titled" roles. 11 years ago there were Specialists, Genius, Creative, Back of House and Leader.
Now Specialist, Expert, Product Pro, Creative, Creative Pro, Genius, Technical Specialist, Technical Pro, Genius Admin, Backstage Specialist, Preservation Specialist, Visuals, Lead, Schedule Specialist, Leader, and Store Manager.
Every title comes with it's own ego.
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In a sense, Apple is trying to pull a " Starbucks Coffee " with their own store lingo and re-assigning staff to positions that make no sense. I can tell because I used to work for the coffee chain over 10 years ago and the similarities are there. Before 2002, the company was trying out a few things here and there and had one Coffee Master position which the barista had to wear a black apron to exhort 'coffee knowledge' to customers during a sampling run on the floor during a busy rush, or when there are less than 3-4 people working behind the counter. The company was shaving the staff to the bone to save money.
Anyway, the Coffee Master was an example of a BS position to work on the floor when this person should be spending time helping the rest of the crew during a rush. It was one of those things that I sensed phony intentions.
However, the dress code was fine as we had to wear black shirts and pants to exude professionalism. But sometimes t-shirts were allowed on certain promotional days. And the training we had back then was far better than what they got now especially using the old school La Marzocco espresso machine.
The company did even try to have some baristas volunteer 'off the clock' on certain functions, which would be around 2002-2005, right before Schultz came on board as CEO. I remember this well because 'volunteering' off the clock was illegal and it wouldn't surprise me if Apple tried to pull this in their stores.
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You nailed it. I had the exact same impression when I saw that keynote which disgusted me, even though I felt bad for Craig to have to present MBP touch bar. Having that DJ demo was sad and embarrassing. No DJ would ever do that in a nightclub. Ever. I go to nightclubs time to time and have seen them use turntables the proper way.
But I'm inclined to agree that the management in Cook's level are out of touch, focusing too much on the 'experience'. Almost like what Starbucks tried to do 10 years ago by creating a sense of 'theater' in the store ( just like what Apple is doing ) but dropped the ball with a cluster of a mess. They had to close many stores because the CEOs before Schultz pushed for a massive expansion. When I worked for that coffee chain in one store, I saw a huge list of stores that were about to open. My jaw dropped and I thought " You guys are expanding way too fast! This is going to bite this company in the rear ". Eventually, it bit them.
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Clearly, that's a mistake by the company to create more phony positions to add more breadth to the staff's responsibility. At Starbucks Coffee, you weren't forced to climb up but encouraged to. From barista, to shift supervisor, to store manager and regional manager. And then it goes up higher from there, if it happens but very rarely.
Apple should've kept the staff position names simple and focused. If they prefer to stay as staff/Specialists/Geniuses, etc, then fine. They'll eventually get weeded out or move on to another job or finish up college, or however they planned to do with their lives. But the titled roles are just plain stupid, contrived and phony.
I think it's going to get to a point where there will be a cluster of a mess and the stores will take a hit, forcing some closures. Apple can't keep these stores going forever. One Apple store I used to frequent years ago in Ohio closed down and relocated further out in the city, and I think it may have to do with the lease. It's in a more affluent neighborhood but the drawback is the traffic gridlock and parking congestion. The old location was much easier to get to since it was part of a bigger outlet mall.
Actually, if you look at my comment in totality, my point was that I don't want Apple to over pay employees.
There are a myriad of things that go into the valuation of a company, and for almost every company the largest expense is people.
Investors invest in companies because they are well-run and poised for the future.
Apple geniuses should be paid according to the value that they provide for the company and nothing more. If they provide a lot of value, then they should get high pay.
That's how the market for talent works. If you can provide more value than your current job can pay you for, you go to another job. What the company can afford is irrelevant.
Thank you for revealing the true plot. Apple is always trying to pull this evil stuff when the truth is they have a sinister motive. Here, Angela A is clearly lying about caring about devising a program to leadership and management development opportunities when she is simply using her retail employees to squeeze a few more dollars in profits. Hopefully the retail employees will read your post and none of them will take advantage of these so called "opportunities" to make more money and advance their careers. Sad.
If only there was a way for people who don't live near an Apple store to shop for Apple products on some sort of virtual store, and have them delivered to your door. Hmmm.. that would truly be revolutionary!
There are some states (like South Carolina) that only have two Apple Stores I. The entire state. Some people have to drive 3/4 hours just to get there.
Having an Apple Store is so much better. When you call Apple Care, you have to go through hours of troubleshooting sometimes because they don't believe you that something is broken. I've wasted so much time. Case in point is being an Apple developer and having a beta device that has a legitimate hardware issue. That same issue would take forever to get resolved over the phone, but takes minutes in an Apple Store because they can clearly see that it's a hardware issue. I know because I've dealt with these issues. My family lives in a bigger city so I sometimes take care of problem when I'm visiting. It's not at all anything to do with buying stuff and everything to do with getting things fixed. Our local Apple certified repair shop went belly up because they told me they couldn't make any money with the deals that Apple has in place. From what I've read, Apple has recently been getting better about things when it comes to that, so hopefully that trend continues. Even when I used local shops in the past before they were shut down, the experience at the Apple Store was so much better. Although my most recent experience was not great, so maybe customer service is just taking a nosedive across the industry and my whole point is invalid. But the nice thing about getting it repaired at the store is that they often have replacements that they can swap out repeatedly instead of waiting a week to get a replacement.
That's true. Simply the fact that you can often have problems diagnosed, fixed, and the device returned to you all on the same day makes the Apple Store very useful. On the other hand, I've always had pretty good experiences with Apple Care as well. If lived in a rural area and had to drive a couple of hours to get to an Apple Store, I think I'd just prefer to do things over the phone/web.
I guess you work for Apple since you know that these positions won't be getting a pay bump.
hey is it true that they are going back to giving you guys free ****. I hear come fall you are all getting the iPhone 8 even though it won't go on retail sale until 2020. and you are getting special 1TB iPad Pros as well as top of the line iMac Pros if you have been with the company more than 5 years. and you get to be first on the wait list for the Apple Car.
Not much, just like the rest of Apple Store positions. An average IQ there is 80, and brown nosing is highly required.
