Apple allegedly disgraces from within, and you turn your cheek

Gizmodo ran a more disturbing than interesting piece on some highly unacceptable things supposedly happening behind the scenes at the Apple store. I use the word supposedly because not much of this has been proven to be true. The article went into some extreme moral issues like theft, employee abuse and even violation of customer privacy going on behind Apple’s closed doors.

Gizmodo first ran the piece when they were contacted by an Ex-Apple employee detailing a ton of inappropriate behavior happing at his/her local store. Since then, Gizmodo received numerous correspondence from both former and current Apple employees pretty much outlining the same behaviors and even worse. See the screen shots below:

My most apparent respect for Apple exist in the retail space, not only do I find the layouts of the Apple Stores to be simply amazing. I am often times awed by their hostel take over of the retail market, it was as if stores like Walmart and Best Buy were doing it wrong all along. These messages from within completely rattles my respect for the poster child of American businesses.

If you are ever to understand how Apple works, the one thing you should know is “culture” is everything to them. Things are they way they are in Apple-verse because they were meant to be this way and will continue to be this way. So many different testimonies all leaning in the same disgraceful direction? Is this now culture? Is it now culture to completely disrespect the trust of the consumer buy poking around their personal information and then making fun of them? Is it now culture to swap out consumer parts with cheaper grade equipment? Is it now culture to have management staff sexually harass employees? If these things are culture, I fear they will not be easily reversed or remedied.

With over 11 years of IT experience under my belt, I find it personally appalling to violate the privacy of a client. I come from the Corporate America grade of support, where a client’s experience if first and for most, and fore the most part, Apple has always done a good job at this. But professionalism must be consistent all the way through. Never should you snoop on a clients machine or device, never should you pass judgment on something you saw. To know that I’ve been sending people with good faith to the Apple store to be taken care of for years, makes me feel a certain way about these testimonies. Apple’s best weapon against the PC OEM crowd was the fact they had a physical store consumers could walk into the have issues fixed, this now changes everything. A physical store means very little when it isn’t one that can be trusted.

But hey, like I said, there is no way to confirm any of this, for all we know Gizmodo might be pulling some sort of Anti-Apple stunt for what ever reason. But here is the part i find scary. I took to my Facebook to do some friendly trolling, I posted a link to the Gizmodo article with the following quote: “wow…. this is sort of crazy! genius bar employees digging through your computers, ipads and phones and poking fun at you? WOW!!!!! so…. what were you people saying about apple?.” The response from a friend was over the top scary. He simply said “That’s everywhere bro.”

What’s so scary? He owns an iPhone 5, and before that an iPhone 4S and before than, an iPhone 4 and a 3GS before that. He also owned an ipad, he also bought bulky expensive cases for them all, and official chargers, and official car accessories, all from the Apple store. Yet, he read the post, read my comment, and completely missed all and any take-aways there were to be had. He just passes it off as being the norm at every other retail company in the world? Its people like him that are being mistreated, taken for granted, and are in danger, but still, they don’t care. They don’t even understand an ounce of what is going on to care. Does this mean this “culture” will continue to cultivate?

And finally, here is the part that annoys me to no end. If Microsoft were to be rumored to stop selling Diet Coke in the vending machines on their campus, it will make the nightly news as “Evil corporation takes away employee benefits,” if Apple gets supposedly exposed on a powerful internet conglomerate for internal mischief, sexual harassment and consumer privacy and trust violations, no one cares to read, comment or acknowledge it. ANNOYING!