Death Threats Are A Thing At The Apple Store
Providing customer service is a notoriously difficult job, as it seems impossible to please certain people. Even at the glitzy Apple Store, workers have to deal with unruly customers and even on the rare occasion, a death threat.
According to Business Insider, a former Apple Store employee in the U.K., who wished to remain anonymous, shared to reporter Jim Edwards about her time as an employee from 2011 to 2015. She mentioned that the worst part of this “disheartening” job wasn’t management or the low salary, but the customers.
“You’re a retail employee who gets treated like s**t most of the time,” said the employee. “Not necessarily by the store, but by the customers.”
While she said that she had some great customers, there was usually about one uncomfortable customer interaction with an employee a day. A manager would typically then have to intervene. One of the more surprising incidents that happened was an incident where the employee received a death threat from an irate customer.
“I had someone, I can’t even remember why — it may have been an out-of-warranty fix — who told me that because we wouldn’t repair it for free that they would wait outside until I finished work to run me down with their car,” she said, noting that death threats aren’t such a rare occurrence at the Apple Store.
She continued, “I don’t know if they actually waited outside or not. Luckily I didn’t see them again.”
“Apple fanpersons are, it seems, not the most charming,” said Chris Matyszczyk, of CNET, who reported that many customers come into the store just to complain, according to the former employee.
He continued, “When it comes to Apple products, the existence of a convenient retail outlet seems to serve as a convenient emotional outlet for frustrated customers.”
“Maybe 60 percent of the time there’s actually something wrong, but the point is, they’ll come to you,” she said. “About once a day I was called a bitch for not knowing how something worked.”
The former Apple Store employee noted that her hourly pay was about £8 (equivalent to $11.70) meaning she or any other employee wouldn’t be able to afford the expensive devices she was selling to customers. Even on days, when she would sell a plethora of merchandise, she wouldn’t receive a bonus for it, just recognition and a handshake.
“The whole point about Apple, the whole ethos, is that we’re not pushing people to buy,” she explained. “You want to educate people about the products and get the right product for them.”
Apple Insider reported that another unusual aspect of working at the Apple Store is the cult-like atmosphere. There is said to be a worship of the company’s products, as well as the late Steve Jobs and “Fearless Feedback,” where employees give their co-workers both positive and negative feedback once a day. This type of feedback will come up regarding the AppleCare warranties that managers want the customers to have.
She continued, “Every time a customer purchases something from you, they have the option to give feedback.”
Despite all the supposed craziness of working for the Apple Store, the employee declared that it was her co-workers that made working at the store bearable for those four years.
“The people you work with are awesome,” she said. “The managers were cool too. Most people who work at Apple are either musicians or graphic designers. They do really cool stuff.”
[Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images]
