Pros
Really great people for the most part. I met some great friends. The discount was ok I guess but that is not much of a perk especially when we can't get an iPad discount for 6 months after the product was released. The training was good and I learned a lot about Apple products. Good benefits if you can get management to put you as full time and get them. Freedom to have your own style. Great technology for training and of course Easy Pays. People think its cool that you work for Apple.
Cons
Dishonesty. Management plays games with you and tells you you will have all these career opportunities and that you can get promoted. It is a lie, its all about putting your time in. I was a top performer and so were many others that I know that have since left. If you have talent this place is frustrating. They don't care about performance they care about who they like and who has been there the longest. If you want to be in management you must be brought in as a manager. It will take you YEARS to become a manager starting as a specialist no matter how good you are. All my managers came from Gap or Starbucks with zero product knowledge. Many with very little management experience even. I have a college degree in Business Management and they brought in a manager with no education from Starbucks and put them over me. This person had managed at Starbucks for a year. Managers are not really managers. They are schedule makers and schedule keepers. They simply make the schedules and send people on break and lunch. They do not chart profitability, inventory or any thing that requires skill. The hours are terrible. You have to keep an open schedule if you want to work there full time. That means you can be scheduled from as early as 5am during holiday, to 3am to do overnight. Or in NY they have a 24 hour store I just feel sorry for them. The pay is embarrassing. I personally sold over 1 million dollars worth of product last year. I did not get a raise. I did not get a bonus. I got a small roll up blanket at Christmas that fell apart the first time I washed it. Oh ya and my pay was $23,000 while living in Northern California where rent is about 1200 for a 2 bedroom. You do the math. All of this while Apple just became the most valuable company in the world. I am not writing this because I am bitter. I am actually quite happy. I have since left Apple and I am making great money doing something I love. I simply wrote this to hopefully give people an accurate detailed description of what it is really like to work for Apple. Also I hope the people in Cupertino that are in charge of Retail development read this as well because I know from working with them that they are clueless to what really goes on in the store. Your customer service rating will go down and you will lose business because people who are talented will not stay in an environment with no opportunity. I see so many people who fall into the propaganda and think they will some day work for corporate or get into management. It is a fantasy. If you are thinking I just worked at 1 store that must have been a bad one, actually I worked at 2 and observed others. They are all like this.