Apple Struggles to Fix iPhone, MobileMe Problems

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Apple's Biggest Problems

Apple has a serious problem with some of their Retail Store Managers lacking leadership ability. They are provided a set of written Apple policies (which they cannot interpret) and spend too much time documenting points against their part-time and permanent employees. Although Apple offers sick leave and annual leave as a benefit to their permanent employees, Store Managers and Assistant Store Managers follow a NO-VAULT absentee system of simply writing employees up for being out of work for any reason. In other words, despite the benefit of sick and annual leave for permanent employees, if an employee arrives late for work due to any emergency, unavoidable or not, such as a traffic accident or their car breaks down, they are sick or undergoing doctor's care, their wife is having a baby, or a family member dies, POINTS are documented in the employee's personnel file. If an employee happens to become sick or have any emergency which requires them to be late for work or absent for any reason at all and they acquire more than 3 points (1 point equals 1 absence) in any one quarter, they are given A Final Warning Letter and placed on probation for 1 year. During the following 12 month period if they become sick, or want to take annual leave due to a death in the family, or because their car breaks down and they have to be towed to the garage for repairs, they can be terminated immediately. How many people can go an entire year without being sick or having any emergency? Apple does spend a significant amount of money training their employees who are in APPLE GENIUS positions. They handle the Genius Bar in the Retail Stores and are the greatest asset Apple has in providing customer support and satisfaction with all Apple products. Since APPLECARE seems to be subcontracted out to India there is little else to keep U.S. Apple customers coming back to buy new Apple products. Without highly educated and highly trained technicians to keep Apple customers happy, Apple Retail Sales would surely drop drastically. Apple must do something to either change this unfair labor practice of documenting POINTS for legitimate absences, or properly train their managers to make wise decisions before writing up their highly trained employees, who are APPLE's most valuable asset. Although, I am somewhat taken back by the appearance of Apple's sales staff, technicians, and managers with regard to their personal appearances and the dress code, I can appreciate the "casual" approach that Apple has taken to allow employees a more relaxed atmosphere in which to work. WHY NOT take a more relaxed approach to this PETTY POINT SYSTEM which causes APPLE to lose valuable pernament employees. OR, TRAIN APPLE managers to be leaders, not simply TIMEKEEPERS! APPLE does offer employess the right of appeal, however, they cover bad management decisions with the statement "APPLE POLICY WAS FOLLOWED". Meanwhile, employees must come to work SICK! How about Steve Jobs??

J. Edgar of VA @ Mar 04, 2009 03:37:28 AM

the main thing apple should learn about this is how stressful updates can be.

i used to buy apple cause it causes only a few probs.

now it causes a lot of probs due to the massive updating all the time, everything gets updated all the time. i dont want to spend so much time updating, regardless if the updating procedure itself is elegant. its the problems that occur afterwards, liked failed syncs, program incompatibilities etc.

somehow, most works gets done with my old g5 which was not updated to leopard - and therefore is out of the update procedure. but the stress will begin again if the new logic 8.5 or what wont run on tiger anymore

maybe one needs to have a bad exeperience to learn. apple has done this a few times to customers that their .mac and adressbook would only work if they updated their computer. an update should be more an improvement option, but not something you are being forced to do all the time, especially when it comes to such basic things like email and adress book

heiner kruse of @ Sep 22, 2008 16:38:50 PM

Steve Jobs

Dear Mr. Jobs:

You have done a great job over the years. Apple has been a company that YOU made sure always delivered what you told us. WHAT HAS HAPPENED? The iPhone and Mobileme HAVE TOO MANY PROBLEMS Mr. Jobs. I have had to call or chat for support more then any product that I ever kept using. Apple is disappointing many of us life-long Apple customers everyday we continue to use these two products. Be straight with us. What the heck is going on?!

Steve J of CA @ Sep 13, 2008 17:28:30 PM

Mobileme is a joke

.MAC worked fine. Mobileme has been a disaster. I was told to upgrade to OS 10.5 which I did and I still have tons of problems. The only saving grace is GMail has been able to get the e-mails. The sooner I move from Mobileme to complete GMail the happier I will be. The MAC store personnel are not even using Mobileme for their iPhones because of problems. I don't want extra months, I want my money back.

I have been a huge advertisement for Apple since switching 3 years ago. Now I am embarrassed due to all the e-mail problems.

W. Fingas @ Sep 12, 2008 00:08:20 AM

iphone mobile me

after purchasing mobile me - the apple salesman offered to update my phone purchased in August '07 & set up the new account. The result was my loosing all my data on the phone- a years worth of important notes , pictures, calender schedules, personal information that I cannot replace.

of NY @ Aug 22, 2008 05:43:34 AM

Lower prices?

If Apple doesn't get these problems corrected and it hurts their reputation for being an industry-satisfier, you'd think they'd have to lower their prices a little bit. People only pay big bucks for Apple products because of the reputation. Take that away and you're left with... Microsoft. Crap.

Daniel Fowler of GA @ Aug 20, 2008 08:59:29 AM

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Our in-house gadget guru, Senior Writer David LaGesse, checks out the latest technologies and gizmos, from computer software to GPS systems -- and reports back to you in plain English.


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