Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community - View Single Post - Anyone Here Work at the Apple Retail Store?

Stumptown · 07-17-2009, 02:39 PM

I've been drinking the Apple kool-aid for like 25 years, but I can't stand the Apple stores. My most recent experience didn't help. My old G4's fans crapped out on me over the 4th of July weekend, and I had to get a new machine to be up and running by the next monday (I was planning on a new machine this summer anyway). All the usual Apple resellers I go to were closed for the holiday, so I had no choice but to go to the Apple Store in the mall.

I'm standing in front of the highest price tag in the store for about 5 minutes before someone asks if I need help. All the iPhone gawkers are getting help right away. They have to send someone up from the back to help me with the MacPro - I guess the front-room sales people are all just for the consumer-grade stuff. Whatever, they probably don't sell a whole lot of the MacPros in the mall. Then it takes three other "geniuses" to figure out if I can run my beloved Studio Display CRT monitor off the MacPro. They sell me a cable for $99 that's supposed to work.

Take everything home, get it set up. Monitor no worky. So on my laptop I poke around in the online specs for the cable, and nowhere in the documentation does it say it works with CRTs, only with the first generation LCD monitors. So, back to the store to return it and go to BestBuy to get a monitor (no way I'm paying $1000 for one of Apple's, they're not that good). Return process is fine, but the Apple Store salesperson didn't even know what a CRT was - had to look it up in wikipedia.

I don't even know why they bother selling the high-end stuff through the mall stores, the sales staff are obviously not equipped. They should just stick to iPods, iPhones and the MacBooks and let the resellers deal with the Pros.

So - in short, there's probably not much to learn working in the Apple Store, even as a "genius." You'd spend most of your time helping people install apps on their iPhones and setting up Bootcamp to play games. No idea how much upward mobility there is in that.

07-17-2009, 02:39 PM	#44
Stumptown Crash and Bang Winger Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Portland, OR Exp:	I've been drinking the Apple kool-aid for like 25 years, but I can't stand the Apple stores. My most recent experience didn't help. My old G4's fans crapped out on me over the 4th of July weekend, and I had to get a new machine to be up and running by the next monday (I was planning on a new machine this summer anyway). All the usual Apple resellers I go to were closed for the holiday, so I had no choice but to go to the Apple Store in the mall. I'm standing in front of the highest price tag in the store for about 5 minutes before someone asks if I need help. All the iPhone gawkers are getting help right away. They have to send someone up from the back to help me with the MacPro - I guess the front-room sales people are all just for the consumer-grade stuff. Whatever, they probably don't sell a whole lot of the MacPros in the mall. Then it takes three other "geniuses" to figure out if I can run my beloved Studio Display CRT monitor off the MacPro. They sell me a cable for $99 that's supposed to work. Take everything home, get it set up. Monitor no worky. So on my laptop I poke around in the online specs for the cable, and nowhere in the documentation does it say it works with CRTs, only with the first generation LCD monitors. So, back to the store to return it and go to BestBuy to get a monitor (no way I'm paying $1000 for one of Apple's, they're not that good). Return process is fine, but the Apple Store salesperson didn't even know what a CRT was - had to look it up in wikipedia. I don't even know why they bother selling the high-end stuff through the mall stores, the sales staff are obviously not equipped. They should just stick to iPods, iPhones and the MacBooks and let the resellers deal with the Pros. So - in short, there's probably not much to learn working in the Apple Store, even as a "genius." You'd spend most of your time helping people install apps on their iPhones and setting up Bootcamp to play games. No idea how much upward mobility there is in that.