After Apple

I can’t bite my tongue any longer. Even battling against the fear of uber secrecy that is Apple and the ‘don’t write in any blog or you will be sacked’ mantra that is told to us on a monthly basis, my two cents time has arrived. Imagine me standing up at an AA meeting right now. Hey everyone, I’m Quadrant and I’m a Mac Genius.

You know, sometimes the job title does make you feel like hanging your head in shame. You feel like a whipped puppy, you love your owner and even though you keep getting hit on from all angles eventually you erase the bad times from your memory, go running back and roll over. You even get bad jokes made every day from the very people you help at the Bar about your title – ‘So, you’re a Genius (sarcastic tone) then huh?’ like it’s a battle cry from the technically impoverished. Yes, you do need to be incredibly thick skinned to be a Mac Genius but we are only human and even the most resilient can only take so much before the cracks start to show. I’ve seen many a great asset to Apple leave the company because of the great unwashed alone. They simply can’t take it anymore. Then they leave to go to other jobs and take their great knowledge with them, which is a crying shame, but you can’t blame them. You really can’t and hopefully some of the following should help you to understand why.

We are only human. Sounds obvious I know but hear this. Whenever we read around the net some horror story about this moody Genius said this or that or what the hell do they know or whatever, you shake your head in disbelief. Yes, sometimes people get moody and yes it’s unacceptable but it happens sometimes. Why? More than likely because the previous customer has been a total asshole and some of that ass naturally rubs off on you! Even if it’s just for a few seconds whilst you regain your professional composure for the next customer that’s it, it takes just one person, ONE person, who happens to be at the Bar at that precise time to notice and then write it up on a blog like it’s the only kind of experience you will receive if you go to an Apple Store and the damage has been done. I repeat, we are only human.

Badly written blogs are causing more damage to Apple’s reputation and making the Genius job so much harder nowadays that it’s almost impossible to convey in a few words the problems they cause but I’ll try. What we do is our living, it’s how we keep a roof over our heads and put food on our tables so it’s in our best interest to serve you, the customer, to the very best of our abilities. What we simply can’t do (for example) is reassure a customer that the MacBook Pro they bought from us the other day is fine, it’s not a faulty product just because they read on a website that they all whine (even though the customers doesn’t and they have never heard it whine either), that the power adapter is going to melt on them, that the backlight keyboard won’t light up, that it won’t go to sleep properly, or any other random problem that a few, and yes let me make this totally crystal clear for you, A FEW Apple customers have experienced, nothing can reassure that customer that he doesn’t have a bad product and therefore wants a refund. Nothing at all, and it’s totally demoralising as you can’t do a damm thing about it apart from handing the money back over for what is a perfect working product. Yes, the Geniuses read internal documents about ‘Emerging Issues’ however they are absolutely not gospel until Apple say they are. Period. So some guy on a blog writing that Apple are saying that MacBook top cases are being replaced when they are not doesn’t help anyone. Not the pissed off customer who travelled thirty miles to the Store, not the Genius, no-one. So please blog writers, and yes, you know who you are, for the love of God stop writing this nonsense as if you know what you are talking about because you don’t and you are doing more damage than you could possibly imagine in your wildest nightmares. Seriously. Apple are damm good at admitting mistakes and when there is a need for a product recall everyone will know about it on the support pages of the website or if you have registered your product correctly a direct email will inform you. Even if the product is out of warranty Apple will honour the repair if it’s been officially announced. Most electronics manufacturers don’t do this sort of thing for their customers, Apple do. Most electronic manufacturers don’t have a free tech support area in their Store, if they even have a Store in the first place, Apple do. Blog writers are not the authority, Apple are, that’s not arrogance, it’s a fact.

iPods. Never has a product caused more dissention amongst the ranks of the Geniuses than the humble iPod. We have to make an instant decision at the Bar about the state of an iPod as we don’t have the time or resources at the Store to delve deeper. We are sorry about that, truly sorry. So if you bring us an iPod that has blatantly been mistreated don’t be surprised when we refuse to swap it out for a new one straightaway. Having said that, if we see no visible signs of damage but you tell us that you dropped it then we will admire your honesty and turn a blind eye, you simply wouldn’t believe the amount of ‘cheek-turning’ that goes on behind the Bar you really wouldn’t. Why do we do that? We don’t have to but Geniuses are really nice helpful people, honestly we really are! So when you do a good turn for someone and save them a lot of money then read some drivel about how a Genius did something bad in that writers eyes remember how much cheek-turning we actually do. You were probably wrong if that was you that didn’t get the result you expected. If you don’t like our opinion then that’s fine, send it in as a mail in repair, see what AppleCare have to say, believe me when I say they are far less lenient than we are.

Geniuses have come from various backgrounds. Some of us from industry, some from repair shops, some from field engineering and some from the Store floors who have shown an aptitude for the job, some of us will have more experience than some of the others though. Apple do train everyone up to the same level but that really is just the very basics, it’s what you bring to the job from previous experience that really counts. So bearing that in mind the one thing that really drives us insane is when we read that ‘they only work in a mall, what do they know, they get paid crap so what kind of service do you expect’ etc. We work in a mall because that’s where Apple put the Stores! Would you think more of us if we were at a trading estate or if you phoned us up or if we visited you? I mean come on! Like most jobs you get paid for how good you are at the job so some Geniuses get paid around $30,000 others get paid around $64,000, just because we work from a mall doesn’t mean it’s a standard retail gig, it just isn’t. Be grateful that we choose to work for Apple at a retail store and not elsewhere because the number one reason that Geniuses leave is because they can’t stand certain attributes of the public, and it’s a sad time when that happens it really is the customers loss.

Play nice please, we are only human.