The increased traffic means staffers must sell, train and repair while elbow-to-elbow with colleagues, or even customers, and amidst more distractions and noise. Now, the company is changing weekend work requirements, and increasing the mandatory minimum hours for part-timers. The changes seem to have substantial benefits for Apple, but few for its employees, and could result in many resignations from employees who are unable to comply with the new requirements.
The first move from new SVP John Browett to create a more DSG-like environment. Step one, piss all over the staff. It might “just” be part-timers (primarily college students, one would assume), but they’re friends with the full timers, managers and so on. As such, they’re as much influencers on the culture within a store as a full time staffer might be.
Moreover, full timers have to work one weekend day. This is normal for retail, but soon Apple will consider Friday a weekend day. More than that, full timers will have to work two weekend days.
When you start pissing all over your staff, your culture is the thing that suffers. After that the culture affects customer spending, and before you know it you have an apathetic crew of people who couldn’t care less because they’re going to leave once summer hits (or some other big calendar event). Then you get boxes of printers stacked just inside the door.
Is this the legacy Browett wants? Again…?
(via ifoapplestore)
