Pros
Getting to work with awesome technology and learning more about it everyday. Getting to enhance and add value to peoples lives. Constantly getting people excited about technology is something I looked forward to everyday. Early on the work place setting was warm and caring. It felt like family. They genuinely believed and cared about their employees. We weren’t just numbers. I was taught not to over sell products but instead help our customers find the products they needed. Products that would enhance and bring value to their lives. These pros are not related in anyway to the company and how they currently manage their stores. This is an isolated experience with one member of management that I will always be thankful for.
Cons
The pay is insulting and the commission structure is a joke. All employees must have a vast amount of knowledge. We know Apple products (past and present), software, warranty, and services inside and out. We are iOS certified technicians, and I am even a ACMT! We know AT&T services, Direct TV services, Apples back end service portal, and about 4 other tracking and sales interfaces! Yet, base pay for a sales specialist is minimum wage and their is no flexibility on the matter. Service specialists make a little bit more but they almost never hit their sales goal (yeah they have a sales goal) so at the end of the day they too are making close to nothing. Like others have said, flipping burgers pays more. They lure you in with the idea that the sales goals are easy to obtain and surpass. This is far from the truth. You have tiers of gross profit range that you have to hit, each have an increasing percentage of payout. You also teach hour long classes on various subjects that takes you off the sales floor and away from paying customers. For example: The first tier’s gross profit range is $5,000-6,999 with a payout of $55-70 thats your commission for the MONTH. So for a sales specialist (base pay+payout) you’ll make around $8.61 an hour. If you don’t hit a tier you get no payout. Of course their are multiple tiers each with a very light increase in percentage. Most stores don’t have the traffic or the majority of their customers are service related so associates are unable to hit their personal sales goals and the store doesn't hit its gross profit goal. They blame the stores and their employees for this. Turn over is understandably high. Over the last 3 years I’ve had about 20 people quit (if not more) most of whom I helped train, two of them store managers and one a district manger. I don’t blame them, the stress of this job is consistently unbearable. Our store was commonly understaffed, and we never saw any of the “tools to succeed” that they are constantly going on about. In addition there are no longer any opportunities to grow with the company so why stick around? Women in management get paid less then their peers. My technician, whom I manage, gets paid more then me. I have more tech certifications then he does and I have been with the company longer. Is that not discrimination? I’ve stuck around through some of the worst working conditions imaginable, including acting as manager by myself for months while they looked for a new one, and they wouldn’t even entertain paying me more. I have never felt so undervalued and unappreciated by an employer. They don’t care about their employees. When my first manager left I was given no help. I was without a manager for 3 months and during those 3 months I had 2 people quit. We were extremely short staffed. I was working everyday, working doubles and going without lunches. I asked for help multiple times and was ignored. When management finally came around they offered to “max out” everyones pay in order to keep them from leaving. Everyone but me, that is. I was given nothing for acting as manager. All my hard work was blatantly ignored. Once I had a new manger in store I was promised a raise once the transition was completed and never received one. It’s not like I just sat there expecting it either. I actively pursued what I was promised and they just pretended that it never happened. I’ve stuck with this company through very tough times and have put all my time, effort and energy in making my team and store successful. I’ve stuck around because I love the technology, my team, and our customers. But I can’t be here anymore. The changes management continuously make are not beneficial to our stores or our customers. They’ve destroying the culture that was thriving when I first started my Simply Mac career but now that culture has become distorted. The S-Factors once had meaning and gave us pride but now there just words that go unpracticed and unvalued by our management. They don’t care about you. Do you're self a favor and look else where.