ZERO work life balance. Avoid at all costs.
Pros
Pays better than other retail Jobs.
Cons
You will never get a weekend free. Management is petty and vengeful. The work is non-stop. You start your day with a “download”. This is a thinly veiled attempt to reinforce corporate groupthink so you can hit the floor and be a company shill. You start taking Genius Bar appointments immediately and the work is relentless. One angry customer after another, every ten minutes. And if you manage to find a small moment of peace with a funny or reasonable customer the lead genius will come over and force you to “multi-task”. That is, since you’re smiling, that means you have the capacity to attend two customers at once. And god forbid you have a five minute chat with a coworker to vent and clear your thoughts. That will get you reprimanded. Make no mistake, this job WILL burn you out. Having two days off in a row is a fleeting luxury, coming usually once a month or two. and Apple does this on purpose. Unless you have won a genetic lottery and are attractive. Then you can sleep with a manager and “earn” a merit increase or have some weekends approved. This happens CONSTANTLY. Employees will often sleep with each other, as well. Mainly because your erratic schedule will alienate you from everyone you care about, and prevent you from meeting new people. Once you are hired, your life becomes about one single purpose: get people to give their money to Apple and if they’re unhappy with their product, you have to fawn over them until they’re willing to spend more. Also, if you stand up for yourself and set boundaries of what kinds of unreasonable and abusive customers you are and aren’t willing to interact with? Or what kind of work / life balance is acceptable? Boom. That’s it. You’re never getting a raise again and everything but the legal minimum for time off is what you can expect to see. Then you will clock out for lunch. And if you are literally one minute late, and I do mean literally, you will be taken into the office and reprimanded. Clock in early all you want, but if you’re one minute late, you’re in trouble. But the creepy middle aged dork in sales that is a sexual predator and corners young women and tries to convince them to sleep with him? That guy will work there for YEARS because he can generate revenue. And at the end of your day, you will be forced to sit through an “upload”. This yet another thinly veiled attempt to reinforce corporate groupthink and try to make you forget the gruelling, depressing 9 hours you just spent in a silver, windowless, featureless rectangle of a room getting belittled and accused by selfish, whiny children hiding in adult bodies because they can’t bear to be without their overpriced, luxury cell phones for eight seconds. Its like if a liquor store opens and you’re forced to apologize and placate all the jonesing alcoholics whom spent an hour waiting to yell at you because they had to spend a whole night without any vodka. But you’ll clock out ten minutes late at ten at night because of that stupid upload and you make your way home in a rush since you have to be up at 7AM to do it all again. Because it’s a Saturday and there will already be a line of people outside the store, clutching to their liquid damaged iPhones, shaking with withdrawal and eager to tell you it’s your fault that they broke it because you should’ve made the phone everything-proof.