A Review of Bartending
04.8.2012
kate It's a funny thing, working at the Apple Store.
I just finished reading Bartending: Memoirs of an Apple Genius, which is effectively everything promised in the title. It's a very brief read, and I'd encourage anyone interested in the day-to-day of life as an Apple Genius to check it out.
Or, alternatively, I could tell you about Apple life.
Now, I was also behind the Bar for some of the same time that Stephen Hackett was--as a GYO tech specialist to handle the influx of new iPhone customers--and also out on the floor as a sales rep at the launch of the original iPhone, and the launch of OS X Leopard. A lot of the stories are brief sketches that ring hilariously true to me--like how most Geniuses get accidentally exposed to rather a lot of customer porn--but this format feels more like the stories pretty much all of us Ungenuised folks can tell at the bar (the one with booze). They're context free vignettes, for the most part, and while that's entertaining, it's not particularly unique to Apple or retail in general.
My own Apple story isn't especially interesting--though I do have the added filter of being referred to as Hawaii's only "Girl Genius" at the time--but I feel like the book skips a few of the things that happen to you when you join Apple.
The first thing that happens is immersion in the Apple community. Apple's training program for new employees is very, very good, and in addition to giving you some pretty incredible Jedi Mind Tricks for working with customers, it ratchets up your enthusiasm for Apple to dizzying levels. I went from a pretty standard Mac geek to a Kool-aid drinking Apple evangelist. At that time, nearly everyone at my store was the same way, as were quite a few of our customers. I knew members of the local MUG; I spent the majority of my days demoing cool features, talking about Apple products, speaking with people who really believed their computers and phones and iPods had changed their life for the better. It's kind of an incredible community of people to belong to. The book really bypasses that process, and combined with a lot of the negative stories in the book, it reads a bit as bitterness.
Not that it was all puppies and sunshine at Apple--I did quit after just six months, during the holiday season (albeit for fewer hours, better pay, and a tuition waiver for grad school)--and everything the book lays out is true: customers, sometimes, can be really obnoxious. I had a woman start screaming at me on the floor (involving two managers) because I asked her if she was going to get Applecare for her laptop. A man once dumped an entire bubble tea onto a peripherals display when I informed him his jailbroken, unlocked iPhone clearly running on T-Mobile was not in warranty. Casual racism and sexism from customers was pretty much par for the course. And, of course, out in the Red Zone (main sales floor), pretty much every day we'd have at least a few customers try to buy somewhere north of 20 iPhones in cash for resale overseas (in Honolulu, we had a large international tourist community), and who would ask to write down serial and IMEI numbers so they could check their viability with their funders. One of whom, after hearing me say "no," proceeded to berate me in Tagalog and follow up with "You are bad at your job, bad woman, bad person." I had a guy try to use a stolen credit card (passed off as "my girlfriend's") to purchase about $10 grand in laptops (three tricked out 17" MacBook Pros).
So, you know, it was retail, not magic. Some things are just true any time you work with The Public--the hours suck, the attitudes suck, the benefits suck, and quite often all you can do is stand there and deal with someone else's temper tantrum. I know very few people equipped to work retail long term, as a full-on career choice, and coming to that realization--breaking up with Apple, as the book puts it--is a more compelling story than just reciting the funny, the heartwarming, and the frustrating anecdotes.
The other core thing I think the book is missing is some necessary table-setting. Apple stores have their own lingo and ops, and while much of that's under NDA (which many of us treated as if Steve Jobs was going to come and burn our house down if we violated it), other things work to set the scene and fill in some background. At my store, the back of house was always pretty bumping. With folks on their lunch breaks or 15 minutes, Geniuses, the Biz team, one or two MODs, the inventory guys, and team members constantly clocking in or out, it would have been great to get a sense of that flow. It also serves to highlight, a bit, some of the reasons behind what Apple does in the retail space, and why it works.
So, it's an entertaining read, but not necessarily insightful--you won't find out any deep secrets of the Genius Bar, or how to get your computer replaced out of warranty, or learn anything particularly unique about Apple's retail operations. You'll get some fun stories about one guy's job.