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Over the past couple of weeks, we've been receiving reports that Apple has been laying off a number of recently-hired staff members at its retail stores. Most of the reports have been coming from Apple retail employees in the United Kingdom, but several of these reports claim that similar actions are taking place at stores around the world. We've also been receiving reports of long-term cutbacks in hours for part-time staff in the United States and Canada.

According to one report, all employees at a certain store in the United Kingdom with less than six months of service have been laid off, including a group that had been hired only one month ago and had just completed their training program. New hiring has also been halted, and internal company transfers between stores have been placed on hold.

Another report similarly indicates that a number of newly-hired employees have just been laid off, while several longer-term employees who had recently been promoted never received their pay increases and are now being demoted back to their previous positions.

http://www.businessi...-freezes-2012-8

Oh oh.. not everything rosy in the land of magic and unicorns? ;)

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Confusing given that they continue to harvest astronomical profits.. maybe some stores haven't been performing well? The UK economy is struggling a bit and maybe they're finding they're just not generating enough sales?

I like Apple and their products. While, I don't agree with everything they do, I don't agree with everything anyone does. However, I do believe that the next iPhone really holds Apples fate. People are starting to realize that they are buying the same phone over and over and there are better phones out there..

According to one report, all employees at a certain store in the United Kingdom with less than six months of service have been laid off, including a group that had been hired only one month ago and had just completed their training program.

What a bunch of douchebags, pardon my French.

Confusing given that they continue to harvest astronomical profits.. maybe some stores haven't been performing well? The UK economy is struggling a bit and maybe they're finding they're just not generating enough sales?

Since the Apple Store in Amsterdam opened I've been puzzled by the vast majority of employees present. It's hard to imagine the store actually making a profit. I've always seen the Apple Store as a huge advertisement pillar, not as something that directly makes Apple money.

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I guess times really are hard all over, even for Apple.

God forbid they should have to spend some of their billions in petty cash in keeping hard working front line employee's on. It's not as if these guys play a big role in promoting Apple to the user base, after all... :rolleyes:

If they need to save money, cut execs wages.

Maybe they have finally realised that the staff at the apple stores are really ****!! Especially in Belfast, they are absolutely useless, ignore customers, fixing their hair in the ipads and talking amongst themselves. Stupid wee ********.

This was a few years ago though.

If it was laying off proper jobs within Apple it would maybe be time to show some concern but for this segment........big deal lol

Since the Apple Store in Amsterdam opened I've been puzzled by the vast majority of employees present. It's hard to imagine the store actually making a profit. I've always seen the Apple Store as a huge advertisement pillar, not as something that directly makes Apple money.

*Vast amount of employees I meant.

Since the Apple Store in Amsterdam opened I've been puzzled by the vast majority of employees present. It's hard to imagine the store actually making a profit. I've always seen the Apple Store as a huge advertisement pillar, not as something that directly makes Apple money.

That's what I thought. Even stores like Bestbuy are doing this. They know that online retail is where the money is at once your name is big enough. Apple's stores are nothing but advertising and ****ing wars with Microsoft. There biggest selling products don't need their own brick and mortar store to sell when they are now sold a nearly all mobile phone companies as well as department stores. These stores should only be staffing the minimum required. Just because you have billions of dollars stashed away doesn't mean you should be wasting it. You don't get that kind of money wasting it on random things just because they are small in comparison. That is how you lose that amount of money. Overtime, the small things add up.

I've always thought the Apple stores were overstaffed by about 300%. Last time I got an iPhone, 3 people came over to do the transaction. :huh:

Not to mention, the products basically sell themselves. There's very little upselling there these days, even on the computers, and they don't have boxed software any more.

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