How Apple Brainwashes Its Store Employees


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While I agree that it's a strange ritual, it's actually more common than you think. I remember when I was first looking for a job, I came across several businesses that had the exact same clapping and chanting routine every morning. Of course I ended up avoiding working at those places in favor of something a bit more normal.

Yeah, I've honestly never seen this type of cult like routine and I've been working or been around other Fortune 500 companies.

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What did I modify? Control your irrational outbursts

opps, sorry, you linked it already... modified by copy and pasting select parts.
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Shop floor staff making almost 60k a year? Come on. No way. If that's the case, I should give up designing for a living ;)

If retail staff bring in profits of hundreds of thousands per head, they should be compensated accordingly. Naivety of believing that you are doing a good thing would not pay bills, put roof over your head or food on a table.

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Brain washing? cult? it is clear that many of you have never worked a day in your life - Yum Brands own brainwashing (yes I worked for them, KFC as a shift manager) and the indoctrination is stomach churning. What you see Apple do is nothing 'new' or 'innovative' but the same old happy-clappy crap that all American companies do.

As for $30K a year - from what I understand there aren't any sales targets that you have to meet thus there isn't the pressure there like many other retailers where employees are told they MUST sell $10,000 worth of product per-month and if they fail then they end up losing their job. Sorry, but I'd sooner have a stable job without the pressure from those higher up to put the 'hard sell' on customers than the potential to earn more but have insane targets to meet.

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All companies brain wash in some way or another and I don't see what apple doing is anything different than working in a supermarket. Here the uk minimum wage is

?6.08 - the main rate for workers aged 21 and over ($9.47)

?4.98 - the 18-20 rate ($7.76)

Most jobs in the area that I live in are seasonal based where you jsut about get the min wage so earning ?19 k a year PLUS health benefits, staff discount and such really isn't that bad. No pressure from comission based targets either. Take all that into account its not that bad.

You could take that article and almost implant it onto another business, unhappy workers, things getting busier, glass ceilings... Hardly a surprise there.

** Obviously here in the UK we are subject to different costs of living etc. So it's probably all relative.

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$30K for doing the same **** I'm doing for under ?13K? Standing Ovation for walking through the door?

Shut up and just give me my contract!

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Microsoft, Amazon Amongst Top Tech Employers

http://www.forbes.co...tech-employers/

Looking for a job in tech? If money matters most to you, consider Microsoft as one of your top choices. According to new research from PayScale, the Redmond-based software (and potential future hardware)giant offers one of the highest starting salaries, with a median of $91,500 per year for workers with 0-5 years of experience. (Nvidia is #1 with median starting pay at $99,400.) Microsoft also offers some of the best perks, including paternity leave. Amazon, also based in Seattle, offers great benefits as well, including some of the best stock options.

http://www.payscale....-over-the-geeks

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thing is those areas are really expensive so that doesn't go as far as 30,000 would be in an area like Columbus,OH or Akron,oh (both have apple stores and are very cheap areas). 30,000 will have you live nicely in Akron but you can't even make it on that in the bay area or Seattle. so please consider that when looking at those pay scales.

80,000/yr will get you a studio apt in those areas and basic lifestyle.

30,000/yr in akron you live like middle class and have a 3-4BR 2BA house in an ok area and lots of spare cash. I lived decently in Akron,OH on get this 8,000/yr! I even ate out 4 times a month at red robin in canton and even bought a good bit of stuff for my PC and we had a mid-tier connection.

if anyone wants advice on streamlining thier lifestyle ask me!

I could prolly live off 80,000 in the bay area nicely but many cannot.....

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tons of people i know would be (and are) happy with $30 k a year. The only people that aren't happy with that are people with super huge high expectations out of a temporary thing called life. Typically no matter how much money they end up making they are never "happy" and always complain that they are always broke.

k, you provide for a family of 4 on 30k a year, its fine for people like me who are in or graduating from college, but anyone with real aspirations and dependents will know this is not enough. So no - you are attempting to be self righteous when in reality it is sheer ignorance.

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they'r happy and satisfied with their jobs i dont see a problem with that

(this is coming from a guy who dont like apple products :) )

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k, you provide for a family of 4 on 30k a year, its fine for people like me who are in or graduating from college, but anyone with real aspirations and dependents will know this is not enough. So no - you are attempting to be self righteous when in reality it is sheer ignorance.

Depends what country you're living in though. EU salaries tend to be somewhat lower than States but they're usually compensated otherwise.

For example when I switched over to medical line of work, my salary went down by over 30% compared to my old IT job, despite doing evening shifts nowadays. But then again the job itself is more rewarding than IT ever was and I'd never switch back.

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Brain washing? cult? it is clear that many of you have never worked a day in your life

What a naive comment. Just because it sounds like brainwashing and cult like behaviour to clap at new employees for several minutes until they join in we are naive and never worked a day in our lives?

Fact is I've never worked in an environment where the other employees clapped as I joined on. Maybe because I don't live in the United States of America but whatever it still sounds like a weird cult like thing to do. I wouldn't want to work in an environment where psychological games are being played to make people conform to weird clapping and other **** like that.

I just wan't to do my job and get paid. Not be a Freudian experiment.

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Microsoft, Amazon Amongst Top Tech Employers

http://www.forbes.co...tech-employers/

Looking for a job in tech? If money matters most to you, consider Microsoft as one of your top choices. According to new research from PayScale, the Redmond-based software (and potential future hardware)giant offers one of the highest starting salaries, with a median of $91,500 per year for workers with 0-5 years of experience. (Nvidia is #1 with median starting pay at $99,400.) Microsoft also offers some of the best perks, including paternity leave. Amazon, also based in Seattle, offers great benefits as well, including some of the best stock options.

http://www.payscale....-over-the-geeks

That rate of pay for Amazon does not include it's shipping warehouses, I used to work next to one, they were paying $10 an hour with a $.10 shift differential and maybe a $.25 pay increase if you survived the 90 day probationary period, I almost bit and took a small pay cut to work there, then I found out my better paying job treated us better, I still worked my ass off, but Amazon was worse, if you didn't have a list to do your job you were practically running up and down the aisles your hole **** trying to keep up with your quota, the wife worked for a while in their shipping dept and it was even worse there, and the pay was less.

And yes this was an Amazon branded warehouse, not a third party warehouse, it was THE East Coast warehouse they specially built in PA

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What a naive comment. Just because it sounds like brainwashing and cult like behaviour to clap at new employees for several minutes until they join in we are naive and never worked a day in our lives?

Fact is I've never worked in an environment where the other employees clapped as I joined on. Maybe because I don't live in the United States of America but whatever it still sounds like a weird cult like thing to do. I wouldn't want to work in an environment where psychological games are being played to make people conform to weird clapping and other **** like that.

I just wan't to do my job and get paid. Not be a Freudian experiment.

sorry to let you in, but everything done at an organisational level is to do with psychology at some level, your organisation design, job design, corporate structure all lead to preferential behavior and psycho social outcomes, and especially how they tie to organisational goals/objectives... I'd say clapping must be a nice thing then!

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I find it odd people are deviating from the subject content, and talking less of the brainwashing and more of the crap pay. It's a sales job, of course the pay sucks.

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That would be over ?19,000 in the UK for working in a shop, am i the only one who doesn't think that's bad?

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I guess this is a more realistic sounding brainwashing. The way the anti-Apple zealots make it sound I always thought the Apple sales staff orientation went more along the lines of something like this:

images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTOK_L87qcL2Ga8-5UV5TVJ11Hlwhb6nrj3aULFuvNYi9lnTU_H

Yes, I kid.

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sorry to let you in, but everything done at an organisational level is to do with psychology at some level, your organisation design, job design, corporate structure all lead to preferential behavior and psycho social outcomes, and especially how they tie to organisational goals/objectives... I'd say clapping must be a nice thing then!

You make it sound like I said I don't know this stuff goes on. That isn't what I said. I said I've never worked at a place where people clapped at me when I signed up and put pressure on me to clap with them so I conform.

I never will work in a place like that.

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There are other aspects to this that no one is talking about. The article also mentions about the family and loyalty system where colleagues want to stay and help others. Rather than being worried about leaving as how it reflects on them. Tesco in the UK works on the same principle, building on the emotional bank balance to get more hours of each person (tho this prolly is more at the managerial, teamleader type)

Clapping as you walk in has been known about for ages and isn't really new but it's still good to hear an article that speaks to ex employees and bar the old "its too busy" lines there really isnt that much negativity (but then again I did speed read it).

It may be a little silly, possibly contrived and awkward yet I can see the plus points of it.

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You make it sound like I said I don't know this stuff goes on. That isn't what I said. I said I've never worked at a place where people clapped at me when I signed up and put pressure on me to clap with them so I conform.

I never will work in a place like that.

no no, i'm just saying the concept of clapping here and conforming isn't as weird as it sounds, their are many rituals/practices in another regard which replicate this concept which alternates for each company/corp. culture. I think models of encouragement, especially clapping and compliments is a nice thing people need more in their life!

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There are other aspects to this that no one is talking about. The article also mentions about the family and loyalty system where colleagues want to stay and help others. Rather than being worried about leaving as how it reflects on them. Tesco in the UK works on the same principle, building on the emotional bank balance to get more hours of each person (tho this prolly is more at the managerial, teamleader type)

Clapping as you walk in has been known about for ages and isn't really new but it's still good to hear an article that speaks to ex employees and bar the old "its too busy" lines there really isnt that much negativity (but then again I did speed read it).

It may be a little silly, possibly contrived and awkward yet I can see the plus points of it.

A friend of mine used to work at Sainsburys and they had a policy where if you worked there three months or something like that you got a large discount on all the food purchases you made in the store. I imagine incentives like that would keep employees.

I know that Apple gives their employees a large 25% discount that they can use towards a computer every three years and if they don't use the discount it stacks so in another 3 years they have a 50% discount if they never used the first 25% one. And this is on top of their normal employee discount that they usually receive. I'm not sure how much of a discount is their normal amount but I imagine it's a lot smaller than 25% for the 3 year discount to be noteworthy.

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"Well sure you could pay a lot of money for a product that has been hyped up by the media and Apple themselves. Seriously, be my guest. There's millions of people who spend this kind of money on Apple products. I think they're stupid, but eh... what are you going to do?"

- Me as an Apple store employee

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