
The Coolest Experience I Had as an Apple Store Employee - Gromble
http://unretrofied.com/blog/2013/3/1/the-coolest-experience-i-had-as-an-apple-store-employee
======
pud
The kids knew sign language?

The kids went and bought stuff (incl laptops) at multiple stores?

And wasn't there a long line at Apple? How'd they make it to so many other
stores?

The kids physically go to the store to buy school computers?

The kids are such good actors that they fooled the author & all other
salespeople?

A teacher would actually allow kids to pretend that they're disabled?

No bulk discount or pre-arranged deal?

All other employees in the mall were mean to deaf kids?

Author doesn't remember which Apple product was debuting?

I hate to be "that guy" -- but this story is most likely fiction.

~~~
snowwrestler
> The kids knew sign language?

No, but neither did the author so he couldn't tell they were making signs up.

> The kids went and bought stuff (incl laptops) at multiple stores?

No, it just says they browsed other stores.

> And wasn't there a long line at Apple? How'd they make it to so many other
> stores?

Apple lines are product-specific. If there is a line to buy the new iPhone,
you can still go in and buy other products. That is why they manage those
lines the way they do.

> The kids physically go to the store to buy school computers?

Sure, why not? Private schools can do things however they want.

> The kids are such good actors that they fooled the author & all other
> salespeople?

How hard is it to act deaf?

> A teacher would actually allow kids to pretend that they're disabled?

Sure, if the point is to give them a taste of what social interactions feel
like to disabled people.

> No bulk discount or pre-arranged deal?

Speaking of unbelievable...this is Apple, right? Not known for their eagerness
to cut a deal.

> All other employees in the mall were mean to deaf kids?

Not mean, but maybe not too psyched to have to deal with them.

> Author doesn't remember which Apple product was debuting?

Or maybe they don't want to reveal the exact timing of the story, which naming
the product release would do to the day.

> I hate to be "that guy" -- but this story is most likely fiction.

We just had a story on here the other day about a gay couple who found their
son in the subway. Life is strange sometimes.

I don't understand why someone would lie about this. For HN karma?

~~~
jd007
> No, but neither did the author so he couldn't tell they were making signs
> up.

I'm sure a bunch of high school students' pretend sign language would be quite
easy to spot for a decently intelligent adult, especially if you have to
interact with them one by one.

> No, it just says they browsed other stores.

Explains a bit about why other stores were not as nice to them then, if they
didn't actually buy anything...

> How hard is it to act deaf?

I'd say pretty damn hard if you were in high school, in a group, on a field
trip.

> Speaking of unbelievable...this is Apple, right? Not known for their
> eagerness to cut a deal.

Apple does give bulk discounts, and if it's for a school I'm sure they should
be in a program like that instead of paying retail.

> I don't understand why someone would lie about this.

People just do, for various reasons. Some you may understand, some you may
not, but that doesn't change the fact that people do lie (especially for HN
karma :P)

~~~
joycer
I had a similar situation while working at a hostel.

A couple walked into my hostel and they were both just beaming these beautiful
smiles. They were the kind of people who are just so happy to be on vacation
it makes me happy to tell them all of the crazy shit they can enjoy in the
city. I stood up and beamed a smile back to them asking them if they were
there to check in or if they needed a reservation. They looked at each other,
then me, and started to sign.

I panic'd... My mother was friends with a guy who lived in a retirement home
because a grenade had taken his eyes in world war two and I often spent time
with him and became acquainted with the blind and the nuance of interacting
such that we could both make sure we were completely understood, but there
have been very few interactions in my life with deaf people and so at this
moment in the hostel I was simply unprepared.

The couple saw my panic and laughed and the guy signed using his finger a as a
pencil and his other palm as a notebook.

No shit! Write it down. I got us some paper and everything was smooth from
there. I got them a room, a deal, and told them where the best place to catch
some romance in the city was.

The writer's reaction and feelings toward the interaction mirrored my own
quite well. I can believe it, but if it is a fiction, at least it is an
accurate one.

------
jurassic
Please don't do this. While this author seems to have enjoyed the experience,
many retail workers have enough to do without being jerked around by those
pretending to care about the experience of people with disabilities. It seems
ridiculous to me that the teacher thought it was a good idea to lead these
children in an extended "lie" in order to teach them about tolerance and
empathy.

Once when I worked in bookstore a man came into the store and faked being
deaf. My coworkers and I jumped through all kinds of hoops to accommodate him
and spent a lot of time writing notes back and forth to help this customer
find a particular type of book he said he was looking for. After half an hour
of scribbled notes, fetching books from the stacks, and iterating towards what
he was describing the man bust out laughing and declared "Hahaha! I'm not
actually deaf!!" and walked out without buying anything.

I felt stupid and annoyed that he had wasted so much of our time. Not only did
that man's behavior distract us from other legitimate customers, the
experience left me feeling guarded about whether to accept people at face
value. I never encountered any other customers with hearing disability while I
was at that job, but I'm sure I would have had skepticism from this hoax
experience in the back of my mind as I tried to help them.

You are not helping anyone by pretending to have a disability.

~~~
loupeabody
Although it sucks that you had a bad experience with someone who was
pretending to be disabled, I disagree that having the students pretend to be
deaf was a bad idea.

First off, they each bought a MacBook, so catering to them was hardly a waste
of time. Secondly, I feel like exercising one's empathy is always a good
thing, especially during those extremely formative high school years.

Of course, it's very easy to dismiss another person's life circumstances
(disabled or not) in passing. So, actually being treated differently as a
result of changing your behavior can open up a world of insight about human
nature. This article makes me wonder how I would've felt about having the same
experience (as one of the students) when I was in high school.

The author noted that there was a "troublemaker" and that the kids were
"mostly friendly", so maybe some of the students were of the same mindset as
the guy who tricked you. Perhaps the article was sugarcoated quite a bit, but
even so.

Pretending to have a disability solely to cultivate empathy can certainly be
beneficial for one's social life. Maybe it's not the best way to exercise
empathy, but I don't think it hurts.

------
jballanc
The coolest experience I had as an Apple Store Employee was saving
Christmas...no really, we literally saved Christmas. It was about 1:30 AM on
Dec. 25th, and a man comes in to the store out of breath. He needs two iPod
nanos. "My wife thought I was getting them, and I thought she was getting
them..." he explained. Not a problem. We got the nanos, and sent him on his
way.

That was fun...

~~~
artursapek
Wow, Apple Stores stay open that late on Christmas? They stay open that late
at all?

~~~
lilsunnybee
Is it really worth not letting employees be with their families on Christmas
so a forgetful dad doesn't have to wait an extra day to buy mp3 players for
his children? Is cheap electronic shit really more important than allowing
people to spend time with loved ones?

~~~
rdl
I love working on Christmas, since I don't really celebrate -- if I'm working,
then other people don't have to, and I get paid a premium. The Christmas-New
Years week is basically the most productive period in the world, followed
closely by Burning Man week.

Thanksgiving, in the US, has more market penetration than Christmas. Yet,
there's the huge Black Friday shopping thing, so stores pay people extra to
set up on Thursday too.

~~~
acchow
Oh Black Friday.

"Only in America do you celebrate being thankful for everything you have on
Thursday so you can go buy more shit on Friday" -Some wise netizen (a
paraphrase).

------
joejohnson
That was a sweet story. Now let's turn to the comments and hear all of the
cynical reasons I should be mad.

~~~
nolok
Not sure if you realize it, but comments like yours are also part of what's
going wrong on hn. Ignore the low quality comments and upvote what adds to the
discussion. Don't add more low quality comments.

------
typpo
Perhaps the students were treated better at the Apple store because they were
buying 15 macbooks. Surely they didn't spend that much money at all the other
mall stores.

~~~
bitops
What a cynical attitude. Do you think it's justified to give disabled people a
bad attitude and poor service just because they're not spending a lot of money
on your product?

~~~
mistercow
Where did you read that in typpo's comment? The was clearly no "ought"
implied. But it is a fact that people are treated more nicely by salespeople
when they're buying something (especially something expensive) than when
they're not.

------
davidedicillo
At the Apple Store in Santa Monica there's a deaf employee and he talks to you
typing on an iPad. It was actually a pretty cool experience and I particularly
appreciated it since both my dad's parents were deaf (but I do not know the
sign language, they were extremely good at lips reading)

~~~
therandomguy
Does this particular employee also have other motor disabilities? Because he
once helped me with check out. He was walking around the floor with what
seemed like a special software on an iPhone attached to a scanner. I was
amazed that the entire transaction took around 30 seconds and I was on my way.

------
jyap
It's a nice story but the MSRP of that 160GB MacBook was $1,499.00. So the
kids paid $22,485.

So it's comparing Apples with common everyday oranges. (Pun indended)

~~~
jonursenbach
How is the price of the laptop relevant at all to the story?

~~~
jmillikin
Retailers that sell more expensive products typically hire friendlier, more
capable, and more numerous salespeople. This is why many people prefer to buy
at an Apple store rather than Best Buy, even though they both carry Mac
computers.

~~~
lostlogin
I totally disagree. The most expensive things I've ever bought have been
terrible experiences. Car and house. Real estate agents are the devils spawn
where I live.

------
m_d
I had a similar experience while working at a big-box retailer in high school.
You don't get to have many "feel-good" experiences in retail, but using MS
Word to sell a deaf woman a computer was one of those rare occasions.

------
jmomo
Some time in 2007 I went to an Apple event in Scottsdale Arizona. I am a
network engineer/system administrator, and my organization was about 50/50
Mac/Windows. We spend somewhere between $200-600K a year on Apple products for
employees. I seem to remember that this was shortly before Apple killed off
their XServe products, but I could be mistaken about the timing.

There was a break in the presentation, after which I decided I was going to
bail. I took my phone, a Blackberry at the time, out of my pocket as I exited
the door so that I could check if anything was going on at work.

As I took those first few steps outside, I accidentally dropped my phone.

It wasn't one of those gentle drops. In the process of trying to catch it
before it hit the ground, I ended up pushing it with even greater velocity
downwards. It hit the concrete pretty hard and a mix of phone, battery cover,
and battery went skittering across the concrete walkway.

Three Apple Store employees were sitting outside, also on break. My phone had
gone flying right past their feet.

"Oooh!" they said with a wince.

Then one of them said, "Don't worry everyone! It wasn't a IPhone!"

And they laughed.

And that was it. I picked up the parts of my phone, took at a look at the
damage, put it back together, and walked away.

There was no offer of help or concern, but they thought it was pretty funny.

Fortunately, the phone survived pretty well off. There really wasn't anything
more than minor scratches, despite how I had practically thrown the phone
against the concrete.

Ironically, had it been an IPhone (or any modern touchscreen phone), it would
have probably been destroyed. I ended up destroying the screen on my Nexus One
a year or two later with a much less violent drop.

And, I'm afraid to say, most of my other experiences with Apple store
employees here in Arizona has been pretty similar. We regularly have our
helpdesk staff go in to pick up parts and do repair runs and I've had to call
up our regular Apple rep and comment on bad attitudes, poor service, and
outright rejection of service on in-warranty breakages for whatever reason-of-
the-day they could make up.

The story linked to is important: You really can make a lasting impression on
a customer that they will never forget, positive or negative.

I will never forget the way three Apple Store employees laughed at me as I
dropped my phone.

~~~
erre
When I read the "It wasn't an iPhone" bit, I thought they meant it as in
"Don't worry, it wasn't an iPhone, so it will probably survive the fall!".
Which puts a more positive spin to it :)

------
PakG1
When I was a kid, there was a girl I knew who was deaf and mute. But we always
had great fun talking with each other using pen and paper. I don't know why,
but it was so much easier to talk with her than it was a lot of other kids.
Obviously, some types of people are easier to talk with, but I think something
actually switches on in my mind that makes it easier for me to communicate
when I'm writing, rather than speaking.

<http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19991119>

~~~
mahyarm
They were probably more friendly since people didn't communicate with them as
much too.

------
thejsjunky
A little tangential to the story but a good thing to be aware of is that the
barrier of communicating between deaf people and hearing people is not always
that they simply can't hear the sounds you are making. Many deaf people
(especially those who are born deaf) are illiterate or have low literacy in
written language; so you can't expect to always be able to just pop out a
pencil/paper and write back and forth normally as you would with a hearing
friend while playing "the silent game".

------
lizzard
What is heartwarming about this other than this person patting themself on the
back for being a decent human being?

While it's nice when someone is reasonable and polite but it doesn't magically
make up for the other 100 people who acted like I don't have the right to get
on the bus.

------
yarou
It seemed to me that this fellow felt the same way colonizers feel about
natives of the lands they conquer. How noble of them to spare the natives any
thought! They are _clearly_ the better person than the average person that
pays no attention.

------
joeguilmette
I work as a skydiving instructors and had a similar experience. A group of
deaf college age students came in to skydive and I was paired with one of them
on a tandem skydive. Generally we have about five minutes to gear up and train
our students when it is busy (as it was that day).

During a lull I wrote up a quick briefing of everything I would usually say
and go over on my laptop. When it came time to jump I greeted the student,
smiled and then had them read the text while I geared them up. Them I made a
big show of pantomiming everything we'd be doing while we laughed and
conversed on the laptop.

It was a lot of fun :)

------
cafard
Weird. I worked for a couple of department stores before I was 20, not as a
sales clerk, but stocking shelves. I don't remember the sales staff as the
sorts who would snub customers. Of course, I wasn't treating them as lab rats
in a high school psych course.

I will also point out that retail sales staff get a lot more exposure to
anyone and everyone than your average hacker does. One can become jaded and
perhaps impatient fairly quickly. Should you? No, maybe not. But it's Friday,
your feet hurt, and some kid is social engineering you. Do you feel as if you
need that?

~~~
girvo
I've worked as a salesperson since I was 17 (I'm 22 now), on and off. Pays the
bills, you see. And you're 100% right about the amount of exposure you get to
every day people, however instead of making me jaded, I believe it's made my
life as a developer _easier_ ; it gave me insights into regular people I think
I would have otherwise missed.

And gave me a neat startup idea I'm working on ;)

------
mistercow
That school really should have dealt with the Apple store directly. I'm
guessing they would have gotten better than the standard educational discount
that way.

Also, wow, please don't map "escape" to cause navigation on your website.
That's super annoying.

~~~
Gromble
That's a Squarespace thing, can't be helped.

~~~
DHowett
It most certainly can be helped: don't use Squarespace.

------
gyom
It seems to me like almost nobody in the comments on HN believes his story to
be genuine. And yet, this guy updated his blog to add :

"Wow, I really didn't expect this story to blow up the way it has. I've never
had anything voted up on Hacker News before, much less gain the top spot. I'm
still not convinced it hasn't all been a fever-dream."

which just supports the hypothesis that he's just bullshitting everybody.

------
shellehs
At first, I thought why not take two colors, than make the kids who preferred
black stood left and the others on right side. There should be many simple
ways to deal with that situation quickly and easily. I

The story looks a little weird, even not true, like _I don't quite remember
which product had just released that morning,_ , is it true?

But at the end, I found I was misunderstood and also was touched.

------
jayzalowitz
The coolest experience I ever had at an apple store involved stephen colbert,
steve corell, anne hathatway and one particularly dirty joke.

You clearly win.

------
inaflashlaser
I would guess this (if true) was from 2008 on the release of the iPhone 3G -
based on the fact that the Black MacBook was discontinued in October 2008 (per
wikipedia). It could have been 2007 for the original iPhone, but the lines for
the 3G were more prevalent.

------
meerita
I really enjoyed this story. So human. I experienced some of this in the past
and acted the same.

------
NicoJuicy
So, the went on an experiment to the mall to check how employees responded to
deaf people.

All the students received a MAC from the school.

The author doesn't have any comments on his blog.

It's fiction, this dude is lying like hell :-s

------
nikolakirev
While I was reading the story, I kept thinking that the kids will start using
the "say" command in the Terminal to start talking. That would have been a
great story.

------
vonskippy
So you got pawned by some warped social experiment - yeah, that sounds about
right for the "best" that working at an apple store has to offer.

------
charlieok
I'm surprised that a whole class of kids who were not deaf knew enough sign
language to convince the author that they were deaf.

~~~
WiseWeasel
They only needed the first one to be somewhat convincing; the rest were
probably an easy sell.

------
darrenraj86
ok...if the story is true or not..I believe the message there trying to get
across is more important. For example who questioning the whole deal must
treat people as bad as the other stores treated the "deaf" kids...

------
JacobIrwin
you should add commenting capability to the page.. how neat would it be if
someone from the not-actually-deaf group were to share a self-confirming
anecdote (and possibly, an update on how they're doing now)!

------
JeremyMorgan
Not what I expected, and a really good read. Hope it's true.

------
swartz
Unique experience..

~~~
gala8y
Sorry, I have to ask... are you trying to be funny with your nick?

------
CallingIit
Calling it. They went store to store buying Macbooks. Multiple sets of laptops
just for a social experiement? What kind of IT department would allow the KIDS
to get the computers they need. And with no bulk discount, what school would
allow that? This happened in his dreams.

~~~
Gromble
They weren't asking for MacBooks at every store, that would be silly.

~~~
CallingIit
Still, KIDS were given thousands of dollars to buy stuff tech for their
school. This happens no where. Now if he said it was a coffee shop or such,
sure.

~~~
emidln
I purchased a couple switches and a new server for my high school when I was a
junior. I also was allowed to buy on the school's line of credit at a local
hardware store for things I needed for the stage.

I went to a private catholic high school in a small city. The administration
trusted the students. They also didn't have IT staff, so geek speaking
technobabble sounds better than paying actual staff. Walked out of high school
with independent study classes, real experience in IT and building control
systems, and without my parents paying expensive tuition.

