Corrupt Apple Store Employees Come Forward

H

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
I don't know about you but I expect better from Apple. :mad:

Computers were traded for plastic surgery, iPhones were smashed like party favors, and employees outright stole from the back room for their own pleasure. It was a den of misuse and abuse, all under the gleaming white aegis of Apple Retail. The perfection is a myth. And now we know the store-gone-crazy is systemic, reaching from Tennessee to Vancouver, and across oceans.
Click to expand...

Just kidding, this sounds like every retail chain on the planet. We just point and laugh because it is Apple this time. ;)
 
It's an update on an old story... the problem is that Steve quoted the original article, not the updates. So it comes off as a repeat.
 
It helps to actually READ the article before posting about it. I know, it sounds crazy, but it works.

As far as quotes go, the purpose of a quote is to give you an idea what the article is about. From there, the reader can decide whether or not they are interested enough to click the link and read the article. Many times, especially in the case of reviews and original content, the website or person submitting the link provides the quotes I use.


Just FYI ;)
 
Old news since any place does this.

That said the corruption level talked about is impressive. Far worse than anything I've heard from friends who worked in retail shops like Geek Squad. Plus, if somebody expects privacy when you drop a device off at any workshop, well they need their head examined.

The letter about forging business sales was really impressive though. If that one is true holy crap...
 
Yeah, not much different from some retail stores, but not all. I worked retail for 7 years, mostly at Target, and Target runs a pretty tight ship. Good managers, not much inside theft, and what there was was mostly caught and prosecuted. It was a good place to work back then. They really took care of their employees. I don't know about now, though. It's been 16 years since I last worked there. I doubt it would have changed, though.

Best Buy was a nightmare. I had managers that would remove people's shifts from the time card computer to meet their labor budget, then restore them later and remove others. the employees would eventually get their rightful pay, but it was a constant struggle. I'd work constant overtime, on the order of 50-55 hours per week, simply because I could do it well, but I would never be considered for a supervisory position. I'd get floor jobs done in half the time of anyone else, and when I worked a register I was never off by more than a quarter, with absolutely no error more than 50% of the time. Yet when I worked two 12 hour shifts and a 14 hour shift while we moved the store, they didn't pay me for one of the 12s and the 14. I provided proof with the security sign in logs, which the store manager promptly 'lost'. That same store manager would frequently go out to a warehouse guy's van and get high with him during store hours. They had a great discount program, in theory, but getting anything with a discount was a struggle that took days to weeks. We'd get a discount of 5% over cost, which meant better than 40% off most of the stereo equipment and TVs, but management had to look up the cost in the computer and calculate the discounted price, and getting them to do that was like pulling teeth. Personally, I'm glad Best Buy is going under now. They deserved to go out of business long ago.

Good management reinforces good management. Bad management reinforces bad management. If a company has bad management, but takes a world of hurt to change it. Employee behavior mirrors the management style. Also, if it is true in one corporate location, it is likely true in all other corporate locations. There really is such a thing as ethical momentum. If Apple store employees are acting like this, it is because local management is like that. If local management is like that, it is because upper management isn't interested in taking care of the situation, or the employees. It is likely to stay that way, too. Nothing short of firing all the management and replacing them with ethical managers is likely to change it. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it would take a LOT of effort to make that change.
 
Yeah as others said above, it happens everywhere. About 25 years ago I worked at Wal-mart while in college and the back room was chaotic as hell. Lots of horseplay and goofing off going on.
 
That thing with the business revenue numbers is pretty major. It allows Apple to claim a certain amount of business revenue, and show that they supposedly can be used as business devices, just on what the stores report. However, since the stores are reporting false numbers, their claims at being a business capable company are false.
 
Interesting article and not surprised at all. Pedophiles get arrested at Best Buy on a daily basis because the employees look for photos and videos and then call police. And people are dumb enough to put photos videos on their phones thinking no one will see them. Idiots.
 
Azhar said:
Yeah as others said above, it happens everywhere. About 25 years ago I worked at Wal-mart while in college and the back room was chaotic as hell. Lots of horseplay and goofing off going on.
Click to expand...

I had a roommate that worked for UPS loading and unloading packages at the airport. He talked all the time about how they'd play soccer with the packages as they were unloading, and how they'd get especially riled up if they heard something break in a package as they were doing that. I avoid UPS as much as possible now partly because of that.
 
dgingeri said:
That thing with the business revenue numbers is pretty major. It allows Apple to claim a certain amount of business revenue, and show that they supposedly can be used as business devices, just on what the stores report. However, since the stores are reporting false numbers, their claims at being a business capable company are false.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the other problem is many businesses they sell to don't really use their devices in a business capacity. That is slowly changing as webmail systems become more interactive with iPhones and smartphones in general. Most of the Apple laptops and desktops still aren't used the same in an enterprise network. They are usually outliers that need admins to create specialized cases for to get them to work properly. The biggest issue is still that Apple doesn't develop any enterprise solutions, so it makes it difficult especially for larger companies to incorporate their products into the overall enterprise structure.

As for the rest of this, it is about par for the course for retail. I didn't really see much of this when I worked for a high end retail company, but I definitely saw it from people I knew who worked for Best Buy. I mean they would consistently do things like open up boxes on purpose and then immediately discount them down to the Open Box final price (which is supposed to take well over a week), so that their friends can then buy them for a huge discount. Also some of this has to do with policy. Again, using Best Buy as an example, who didn't get the Best Buy warranty on their iPods and Smart devices years ago when they had the exchange policy which allowed you to return the device for anything that couldn't be immediately fixed and then get a brand spanking new model for free? Similar with Nordstrom's return policy and we heard stories about people returning products that were never even sold at Nordstrom for cash.

Part of the issue is that Apple is making a ton of money even with faulty policies and poor oversight. So it is hard to convince management that any change needs to be made. If the company is making money, then why change the system? If you think Apple cares about their customer, then you really haven't followed Apple throughout their career. Rarely have I ever seen Apple care about the customer. They care deeply about their bottom line, but they don't give a flying f about their customer. I have heard far more Applecare complaints then any other care/warranty system. They will always try to find a way to bilk more money from a customer. But the employees then abuse the policies they do have to replace faulty/damaged items.

There does seem to be a sense that this issue is much worse at Apple than other places. But I think it is as some others have mentioned and I have heard from business analysts in the past. The higher the profit margin on your items, and the more lenient your policies, the more corruption there is. The fact is that Apple puts a huge premium on their products and they have pretty lax policies when it comes to returns. They are more concerned about people stealing ideas and proprietary information than they are about actual product. The correlation of Apple to Tiffany's is faulty. Yes, Tiffany's sells huge diamonds, but diamonds are worth what they are worth. The profit margin isn't necessarily as high with them, and they aren't selling them in the same numbers that electronic devices are being sold. Plus policies at Tiffany's are much more strict. It is hard to compare Apple stores to anything else because they are a unique niche. The closest would be Best Buy, but Apple stores are specialty shops that sell a single line, instead of lots of different products. Also all of their products have high profit margins where Best Buy will have a lot of items with much smaller profit margins. But I would guess you would see similar abuse of Apple products at Best Buy as well.
 
Must be nice if you are raking in so much cash you can let hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of goods and time evaporate off your floors like that.

This is just the end result of a totally lax (or non existent) work ethic. When you make it next to impossible to fire someone for crap like this, you are going to get LOTS of goofing off/theft/idiocy. Same rule applies to government and political offices.

My view is a bit different when it comes to labor, my first job out of college was in the oil and gas industry as a GIS/Map/Computer hardware guy... fantastic money, good people to work with, but if I F'd up on the job, came in late, high, or something retarded, I'd expect to be fired on the spot. I knew if I screwed up I was GONE.

The people at apple who were sexually harassing others, or violating personal privacy should be held accountable. Of course they won't be because it's all one circle jerk of corporate BS. None of this is surprising really, some corporate big wig hires his buddy who's a slimeball to be the regional manager, who then hires all his slimy manager friends. It's no wonder you are going to get a bunch of losers behind closed doors.

Just like our clogged court system, failing schools, broken patent system, and retarded national budget and deficit ... it goes on because people let it go on. When there are little if any consequences for stealing 50,000 dollars in iphones, why should there be any consequences for screwing of 50 billion dollars of government money on some piss poor program that will never work.

Doing things right means usually doing things that aren't fun or aren't popular. This concept is largely lost on the american people in all facets of their lives.
 
ust like our clogged court system, failing schools, broken patent system, and retarded national budget and deficit ... it goes on because people let it go on. When there are little if any consequences for stealing 50,000 dollars in iphones, why should there be any consequences for screwing of 50 billion dollars of government money on some piss poor program that will never work.
Click to expand...

It's not just that. This goes up and down the spectrum, from oil companies that strip off safety measures down to drivers that use the shoulder as a passing lane. If nobody even tries to stop them, people continue to do it and others join in. This country is going to pot because almost nobody cares to do anything better. Those who do work hard and do things right are getting fewer and fewer daily.
 
dgingeri said:
I had a roommate that worked for UPS loading and unloading packages at the airport. He talked all the time about how they'd play soccer with the packages as they were unloading, and how they'd get especially riled up if they heard something break in a package as they were doing that. I avoid UPS as much as possible now partly because of that.
Click to expand...
I never had any package problems with UPS (or USPS) but fedEX, now that is a poor service.. wet DVD player, smashed scanner. Basically I gotten about maybe 5 packages from fedex.. and 2 were a problem.
 
dgingeri said:
It's not just that. This goes up and down the spectrum, from oil companies that strip off safety measures down to drivers that use the shoulder as a passing lane. If nobody even tries to stop them, people continue to do it and others join in. This country is going to pot because almost nobody cares to do anything better. Those who do work hard and do things right are getting fewer and fewer daily.
Click to expand...
Its becoming like some sports where your almost forced to take performance enhancing drugs just to keep up. In college half my friends would pop an adderall the day before a final, dust off their textbook and cram all night and most did remarkably well, while I felt like a complete sucker for actually attending class and taking notes the right way. Now I hear the study drug epidemic is becoming much worse at my old college and I can't blame some of these kids who see this prevalent mentality of if you don't cheat your not trying going on all around them with practically zero accountabilty for their actions.
 
dgingeri said:
Yeah, not much different from some retail stores, but not all. I worked retail for 7 years, mostly at Target, and Target runs a pretty tight ship. Good managers, not much inside theft, and what there was was mostly caught and prosecuted. It was a good place to work back then. They really took care of their employees. I don't know about now, though. It's been 16 years since I last worked there. I doubt it would have changed, though.
Click to expand...

I have worked retail for over 24 years now and I am currently doing a seasonal gig at Target and I have to say it is the BEST company I have ever worked for. My first week I noticed Molly one of the leaders doing pulls and running trash and other jobs just like any other employee(rather than doing the typical manager thing of making some other employee with 400 jobs going do it too). I later found out she was the TOP manager at our store and that earned her alot of respect from me. I have seen our top HR person out doing other store jobs. As he said at Target they are leaders not managers and you lead by example. Why should he pass a job off to someone else if hes not currently busy and the job needs doing(hes not afraid to delegate but when he does you know its because hes really busy doing something more important and that hes not being lazy).

Target has their policy and procedures but they are actually sensable and reasonable. I worked for Dollar General and we had to do paperwork to do paperwork at times. It was really stupid the amount of work they had us duplicate because of policy.

At Target I have my job and rarely do I have to do more than that. Sure sometimes I get asked to fill other jobs but thats the rarity not the norm. They have payroll and hours they have to comply with but they are resonable and actually cover their needs labor wise.

Its been a huge morale boost and a wonderful workplace. I am actually happy at my job and love going into work for a change. I REALLY hope that I get a permanent position after the holiday(according to the guy that will make that decision I am one of the top two hes considering for any postitions that open so I have a good shot).
 
kodan said:
I have worked retail for over 24 years now and I am currently doing a seasonal gig at Target and I have to say it is the BEST company I have ever worked for. My first week I noticed Molly one of the leaders doing pulls and running trash and other jobs just like any other employee(rather than doing the typical manager thing of making some other employee with 400 jobs going do it too). I later found out she was the TOP manager at our store and that earned her alot of respect from me. I have seen our top HR person out doing other store jobs. As he said at Target they are leaders not managers and you lead by example. Why should he pass a job off to someone else if hes not currently busy and the job needs doing(hes not afraid to delegate but when he does you know its because hes really busy doing something more important and that hes not being lazy).

Target has their policy and procedures but they are actually sensable and reasonable. I worked for Dollar General and we had to do paperwork to do paperwork at times. It was really stupid the amount of work they had us duplicate because of policy.

At Target I have my job and rarely do I have to do more than that. Sure sometimes I get asked to fill other jobs but thats the rarity not the norm. They have payroll and hours they have to comply with but they are resonable and actually cover their needs labor wise.

Its been a huge morale boost and a wonderful workplace. I am actually happy at my job and love going into work for a change. I REALLY hope that I get a permanent position after the holiday(according to the guy that will make that decision I am one of the top two hes considering for any postitions that open so I have a good shot).
Click to expand...

That is actually quite amazing for Target. The ones around where I am, trying to get help is like trying to search for a needle in the ocean. Hellooooooooo????, (echoes as if in a cave). Then, when you can actually find somebody to ask a question to, they then have to go find somebody else that actually works in that department. Takes a good 20-30 minutes just for a stock check. And that is why I almost never go to Target.

It is especially bad around the holidays.
 
cyclone3d said:
That is actually quite amazing for Target. The ones around where I am, trying to get help is like trying to search for a needle in the ocean. Hellooooooooo????, (echoes as if in a cave). Then, when you can actually find somebody to ask a question to, they then have to go find somebody else that actually works in that department. Takes a good 20-30 minutes just for a stock check. And that is why I almost never go to Target.

It is especially bad around the holidays.
Click to expand...

That's pretty normal for Target during the day. The staffing policies are such that during the day there's perhaps 1 person in one cluster of 4 departments. At night, you'll get one person per department, mostly. However, recently, due to the recession and the slow sales, they've even scaled that back. Back when I was working for them back in 1993, I was frequently the only person in the hardlines (non-clothes, anything softlines is clothes) half of the store. I had plenty to do, that's for sure. I kept my eyes out for customers who needed help, but when you also have to rebuild a dozen endcaps, it's pretty hard. (In 1993, I had the record at T-49 in Aurora of 28 endcap rebuilds in a day, on a Saturday, by myself in HL2. I don't know how that would measure up in the rest of the company, though.) Target is meant to be more of a self service type of store. When I'm in there in the evenings, after work, I see employees all over the place.

If you're looking for help trying to find if something is in the stock room, you're likely out of luck. If it's not on the floor, it's not likely to be in the back. It's not even worth asking. They're pretty good about getting stuff out from the back and onto the floor. One of hte constantly recurring tasks is a "purge" from the stockroom. An employee is tasked with taking everything off a shelf, put it on carts, bring it out to see what can be stocked, and then put it all back in the stockroom. It usually takes about 2 weeks for the entire stockroom, and then it starts over. It's hard work, but it keeps things from sitting in the back when it should be out on the shelf.
 
I remember years ago in the place I worked we were low paid over-worked motor claims handlers. We were working flat out from 8am till 6pm and Saturdays overtime to catch up.

In order to not have your boss hassle you we all had to fill in work timesheets logging every single piece of work we did. Each item was allocated a set time, say 1 minute. But if you got a complex multi car pile up that could take a hour to do, but you only got 1 minute....

You can see the problem. The boss didnt care and wouldnt accept any excuses.

Essentially your timesheet had to work out that you were at least 75% efficient every day. You had to get 80%+ to make sure no comments were made.

We couldnt work any harder than we did. We worked so hard a day went by in what seemed an hour, no one took time off sick because you would fall behind. We were all suffering anxiety attacks and couldnt switch off. I have never worked so hard for so little. But boy we all stuck together, it was incredible.

So what did we do?

We fudged our timesheets of course. we basically made them up to come to around 85% efficiency. There was no real way of checking otherwise by the boss, as that would have required effort on their part. This was just so we could get on with our jobs without being put on disciplinary.

The rub was that the boss too was under pressure to get good figures.

So what did she do? She further fudged our results so we worked out 95% efficient.

Great, so on she passed them to her regional manager.

Who was also under pressure, so she would fudge the bosses figures so we were 105% efficient.

I'm sure this goes on all over the world.

Just let people get on with doing their damn jobs.
 
daglesj said:
I remember years ago in the place I worked we were low paid over-worked motor claims handlers. We were working flat out from 8am till 6pm and Saturdays overtime to catch up.

In order to not have your boss hassle you we all had to fill in work timesheets logging every single piece of work we did. Each item was allocated a set time, say 1 minute. But if you got a complex multi car pile up that could take a hour to do, but you only got 1 minute....

You can see the problem. The boss didnt care and wouldnt accept any excuses.

Essentially your timesheet had to work out that you were at least 75% efficient every day. You had to get 80%+ to make sure no comments were made.

We couldnt work any harder than we did. We worked so hard a day went by in what seemed an hour, no one took time off sick because you would fall behind. We were all suffering anxiety attacks and couldnt switch off. I have never worked so hard for so little. But boy we all stuck together, it was incredible.

So what did we do?

We fudged our timesheets of course. we basically made them up to come to around 85% efficiency. There was no real way of checking otherwise by the boss, as that would have required effort on their part. This was just so we could get on with our jobs without being put on disciplinary.

The rub was that the boss too was under pressure to get good figures.

So what did she do? She further fudged our results so we worked out 95% efficient.

Great, so on she passed them to her regional manager.

Who was also under pressure, so she would fudge the bosses figures so we were 105% efficient.

I'm sure this goes on all over the world.

Just let people get on with doing their damn jobs.
Click to expand...

That's not the same as corruption in a company, that's a policy being implemented with a good intention, but not thought out at all and just plain terrible.
 
Years ago I worked a a walmart store. There certainly was a lot of horseplay going on in the stock room when mgmt. wasn't around. Not the playing soccer with the packages type, but general screwing around that would sometimes result in items getting knocked around and hitting the floor as a result of incidental contact.

But back then we didn't have cameras in the stock room. I'd imagine that today it's much different, and as time goes by most employees will realize that they are being observed which will lead to less damage in these areas.

Look at Las Vegas casinos, they have cameras monitoring almost every public area of their casinos and hotels nowadays, and more and more people are becoming aware of that fact, including potential criminals.... Same idea.
 
How come every minor thing that pens involving apple or apple products ends up in the news?

iPads smashed at walmart. newsworthy
Apple employees horsing off at work, newsworthy.

I never made the fucking news chasing people around with fluorescent bulbs threatening to bash it on their heads (note: never would. Mercury is bad mmkay?) or smashing a bunch of stuff on the job.

But OMG someone smashes an iPhone and it's national news.
 
Absentee said:
How come every minor thing that pens involving apple or apple products ends up in the news?

iPads smashed at walmart. newsworthy
Apple employees horsing off at work, newsworthy.

I never made the fucking news chasing people around with fluorescent bulbs threatening to bash it on their heads (note: never would. Mercury is bad mmkay?) or smashing a bunch of stuff on the job.

But OMG someone smashes an iPhone and it's national news.
Click to expand...
Pens = happens. Not sure how I did that.
 
dgingeri said:
I had a roommate that worked for UPS loading and unloading packages at the airport. He talked all the time about how they'd play soccer with the packages as they were unloading, and how they'd get especially riled up if they heard something break in a package as they were doing that. I avoid UPS as much as possible now partly because of that.
Click to expand...

I should pay a visit to the local UPS center with my Assault Rifle. It's Christmas after all.
 
Apple is a corrupt company that is run by a bunch of criminals and aggressors. In many ways, it is similar to the mafia or any other type of organized crime. It is not surprising that this corruption would extend to the lower levels given the examples the "leadership" sets.
 
damicatz said:
Apple is a corrupt company that is run by a bunch of criminals and aggressors. In many ways, it is similar to the mafia or any other type of organized crime. It is not surprising that this corruption would extend to the lower levels given the examples the "leadership" sets.
Click to expand...

Um yeah ok.
 
Absentee said:
How come every minor thing that pens involving apple or apple products ends up in the news?

iPads smashed at walmart. newsworthy
Apple employees horsing off at work, newsworthy.

I never made the fucking news chasing people around with fluorescent bulbs threatening to bash it on their heads (note: never would. Mercury is bad mmkay?) or smashing a bunch of stuff on the job.

But OMG someone smashes an iPhone and it's national news.
Click to expand...

Well you help put a company and its products up on a pedestal and thats what happens.

You get shot down.

A journalist i know recently got his hands on an interesting tool that if you type in a name it will search all the way through Google for the main fifty or so key words associated with that name and present them in a size comparative chart.

He typed in Apple and the results for the first ten or so were -

Samsung, legal, damages, litigation, lawyers, patents, competition, courts, market, control.

There were another thirty or so words but none of them were -

Magical, wonderful, innovative, caring, technology, leading etc. The kind of words I suppose you would want to associate with what folks would have initially thought was a good guy type of company.

You would have thought it was the nazi party or the scientologists.

You reap what you............
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top