No, but neither did the author so he couldn't tell they were making signs up.
> The kids went and bought stuff (incl laptops) at multiple stores?
No, it just says they browsed other stores.
> And wasn't there a long line at Apple? How'd they make it to so many other stores?
Apple lines are product-specific. If there is a line to buy the new iPhone, you can still go in and buy other products. That is why they manage those lines the way they do.
> The kids physically go to the store to buy school computers?
Sure, why not? Private schools can do things however they want.
> The kids are such good actors that they fooled the author & all other salespeople?
How hard is it to act deaf?
> A teacher would actually allow kids to pretend that they're disabled?
Sure, if the point is to give them a taste of what social interactions feel like to disabled people.
> No bulk discount or pre-arranged deal?
Speaking of unbelievable...this is Apple, right? Not known for their eagerness to cut a deal.
> All other employees in the mall were mean to deaf kids?
Not mean, but maybe not too psyched to have to deal with them.
> Author doesn't remember which Apple product was debuting?
Or maybe they don't want to reveal the exact timing of the story, which naming the product release would do to the day.
> I hate to be "that guy" -- but this story is most likely fiction.
We just had a story on here the other day about a gay couple who found their son in the subway. Life is strange sometimes.
I don't understand why someone would lie about this. For HN karma?
I am guessing the author pulled a Broder/Tesla situation on this story. Gist may be true, but the details were fuzzed for a better story/self aggrandizement. I particularly don't buy the whole "You were the only nice person to these poor 'deaf' children all day" angle. I have worked fairly often with people in the deaf and blind communities and if anything they complain that people treat them too kindly in general and not as a normal person.
As for a reason why the author would lie, a quick persual of his site makes it pretty clear he is trying to kickstart his career in the Apple blogger niche. Story like this may be a good way to get it started.
> No, but neither did the author so he couldn't tell they were making signs up.
I'm sure a bunch of high school students' pretend sign language would be quite easy to spot for a decently intelligent adult, especially if you have to interact with them one by one.
> No, it just says they browsed other stores.
Explains a bit about why other stores were not as nice to them then, if they didn't actually buy anything...
> How hard is it to act deaf?
I'd say pretty damn hard if you were in high school, in a group, on a field trip.
> Speaking of unbelievable...this is Apple, right? Not known for their eagerness to cut a deal.
Apple does give bulk discounts, and if it's for a school I'm sure they should be in a program like that instead of paying retail.
> I don't understand why someone would lie about this.
People just do, for various reasons. Some you may understand, some you may not, but that doesn't change the fact that people do lie (especially for HN karma :P)
I had a similar situation while working at a hostel.
A couple walked into my hostel and they were both just beaming these beautiful smiles. They were the kind of people who are just so happy to be on vacation it makes me happy to tell them all of the crazy shit they can enjoy in the city. I stood up and beamed a smile back to them asking them if they were there to check in or if they needed a reservation. They looked at each other, then me, and started to sign.
I panic'd... My mother was friends with a guy who lived in a retirement home because a grenade had taken his eyes in world war two and I often spent time with him and became acquainted with the blind and the nuance of interacting such that we could both make sure we were completely understood, but there have been very few interactions in my life with deaf people and so at this moment in the hostel I was simply unprepared.
The couple saw my panic and laughed and the guy signed using his finger a as a pencil and his other palm as a notebook.
No shit! Write it down. I got us some paper and everything was smooth from there. I got them a room, a deal, and told them where the best place to catch some romance in the city was.
The writer's reaction and feelings toward the interaction mirrored my own quite well. I can believe it, but if it is a fiction, at least it is an accurate one.
Joycer if you see this just thought I'd tell you you're hell banned. It looks like you've been hell banned since the very beginning. I thought this comment was good and you should know. I can't reply to your message either, no one can.
I agree, maybe he dramatized it a little bit to make the story more interesting but I can't see the story as a whole being anything other that plausible.
I worked for Apple for about three years a while back and served maybe five or six deaf people over that time opting for TextEdit or a small paper pad for communication in all but one of those situations where the customer's daughter came along and translated his signing for me.
I'd also like to add that this may have been a class of students who were in a sign-language class...
I did an experiment similar to this in highschool where we were supposed to go without hearing, sight, or speech for a few days. The specifics are fuzzed but there were a lot of kids walking around with things covering their eyes.
It was a cool little experiment and it sounds like this teacher took it a little further. It also sounds like most good stories that I know, mostly fact but a little fiction in there to spice it up rather than saying... well shit I just don't remember that detail...
Apple does offer about 10% off for bulk discounts (between 5 - 12% roughly). They may have not known, been signed up or just let students choose themselves.
I had the exact same reaction. This story has all the telltale signs of typical internet fiction trying to pass as a real story. Lack of details (no names of the school, teacher, etc., no date) combined with an implausible "this doesn't happen to anyone" story line is the biggest giveaway.
It's unfortunate that people are so eager to believe a happy story that they will suppress their bullshit detectors. The truth is important even when the lie is pleasant.
Glad to see this comment is at the top, disappointed to see the story voted so highly in the first place, though.
Admittedly in a few regards the story sounds not-quite-right. However I think if it was "typical internet fiction" then it wouldn't have ended with the revelation that the kids weren't deaf after all. Why deflate the punchline like that?
If pure glurge fiction, it would have ended with the narrator, or more likely the Apple store manager, receiving a note from the school, relating how the deaf kids had been treated poorly at every other store. Better yet, one of the deaf kids would have had a powerful father who went to the Apple store and lavished rewards on all the employees there. Father might even work for Microsoft. Let your imagination run wild.
Without that bit the story would've been "Hey some deaf kids visited my store." It still would have been unusual but that last crazy detail is what makes it a remarkable story, and it's the part that makes the narrator a hero.
It's also the part that goes from pushing the boundaries of believability and bursts full on into being obvious fiction.
I see nothing in this story that is implausible. Odd and unusual things happen all the time. In fact, the unusualness is what makes the story. I really don't get why people want to jump all over people's odd experiences an declare them "totally fake bra, you wouldn't dare be nice as a service employee", or maybe "in your job where you are dealing with hundreds of strangers a week, not one of them (or some of them) could have been an unusual case". It's like saying: I have a raid 6 at home. It's never lost data, and not one of the hard drives ever failed, Backblaze must be lying about the part where they have hard drives fail.
If you think teachers having kids role play the lives of other people is so crazy as to not have happened, I'm not sure what to tell you. I know that when I was a kid, one of the summer camps I went to did similar things. One year it was just live your day in a wheelchair. Another year it was role-play the lives of a very poor family, and have figure out how to handle a broken arm in one of the kids and still pay rent, eat, etc. These included going out into the world, not just staying in the camp.
I've heard other people who in school had to wear "pregnant suits" or carry "babies", or go around with blindfolds, and so on, to help them understand the situation other people may be in.
Perhaps it's the part where a mall worker runs into someone in another part of the mall later that day. I'm not sure how this even comes close to improbable. I've run into clerks who helped me in the food court before.
Overall, I'd rate this story as Extremely plausible. No single element of it is at all sketchy. Some of the coincidences are less likely to happen, but again, not even deserving of a rating rare, merely unlikely.
If the story teller had a 100 stories like this I would be more suspicious, but a single event that is unlikely is pretty believable.
Your characterization of the skepticism in this comment thread is completely ridiculous, and shows your lack of intellectual seriousness.
Additionally, you insist that you don't understand our reasons for skepticism, and bring up total straw men when we have clearly explained our reasons.
I'm not going to sit here and try to convince you that it's bullshit. You clearly don't want to be convinced. You want to believe it. That's fine. Go ahead. But you do an incredibly poor job of being an advocate for the OP.
To me, it's as obvious that he's lying as it is the sky is blue.
Ahh, so you accuse me of essentially magical thinking because I can't see anything unplausible in the story. Yet you refuse to explain, other than declaring "it's so obvious derp", and think you won't be accused of magical thinking?
As for your "clearly explained reasons", they are as I understand them:
1) the guy was nice oh no!
2) There were some events you've never experienced, therefore must strictly be false.
3) The guy talked about his experiences on his blog - obvious liar, not just telling about his life on a medium heavily used for that.
4) He doesn't remember every detail of something that happened some years ago. You know what. I am certain I don't remember every detail of every thing that happened to me too... sorry this is not even remotely useful criteria.
So, explain to me how the guy is obviously lying based on some pretty weak critera, and some really plausible events.
Right now you are just calling me stupid when I am trying to understand you - this is the type of bullshit that makes me wonder why I would even give credit to your claims. As soon as someone questions them, you claim "you are stupid" instead of explanation. Not a good way of being convincing or practical in an argument.
I don't think anyone who'd actually had this happen to them would've written it as a "happy story." This is inconsiderate bullshit. You would have to be a pretty awful teacher to put a class of immature children in the position of deceiving people as a social experiment.
If this person had actually been working retail during a massive launch and found out these kids had been messing with him on their teacher's orders, the reasonable reaction would have been -- at very least -- "you should be ashamed of yourselves." And being a retail employee during such a shitstorm would almost certainly have precluded that much tact.
True or false, this just is not something a decent person (the teacher) would choose to do, for any of several reasons.
The difference is those are presented as being fiction and this is being presented as a true story.
If this blog post were presented honestly, as a work of fiction, it would never have made it to the top of HN. Nobody would care. Because as fiction it's not interesting.
Sure, even though there are some works of fiction that begin "based on a true story" or something similar
For the record I do believe it's a true story, even if the details are fuzzy, or maybe some things have been forgotten by the person telling the story.
Come to think of it, this story isn't about Apple or the Apple Store at all. A better title would be "The Time I Wasn't Mean to Fake Deaf Kids and Felt Great About It".
Regardless of the questions about the story, as a former Apple retail employee, I can tell you that this isn't an unrealistic story. I had a few interactions with people who were deaf that worked much like this. It was always a memorable and uplifting experience to find ways to use our demo units for more productive purposes.
As an also former Apple retail employee, I disagree with you that this isn't an unrealistic story. There are a lot of red flags here, many of which are not Apple Store specific, and some of which are.
The fact that a Mac sales guy was walking back and forth from stockroom to floor, fetching each MacBook for 15 students individually, and no manager took him aside to ask what the hell he thought he was doing, did he not notice that [unidentified product X] had just launched and that the store was full of waiting customers... does not ring true.
I worked at the store the OP worked at, and his story seems accurate. The 5th avenue store does more $/sq foot than anywhere else in the US, and grosses more than any other retail store in New York. In early 2012 the 5th avenue store got 'runners', who would bring the computers out to you, but it was often faster to run back and get it yourself. I sold ~30-50k of macs a night and would frequently be seen running back and forth to the floor with my arms full of laptops - this didn't attract negative manager attention - I was making sales.
His story checks out - I'm happy to answer any other questions re: 5th ave
There's also the "use Google Translate to talk (in writing) to someone in a foreign language, without a language in common" that I've done several times.
I hope it's better than Google translate with Japanese, because that's almost completely unusable for anything longer than one or two words. GT does much better with European languages to/from English, I suppose because of the shared ancestry...
It's so obviously fake, anyone that has one or has ever been on a school field trip would know that it would be impossible to get then to keep quiet. They'd giggle and one would say something within about 15 seconds.
And the guy doesn't remember what product had just launched :)
I feel really sorry for the guy, trying to get attention like this. Pretty desperate.
And what's more, it's taking up the top spot on HN, which could be used for a real story that might have better social justice advice than "don't be a dick".
Sorry dark, that bit... was a joke. It was playing on a common internet saying that people say to their friends (and others) when they say something, you know, like, I meet the Prezz, surly you have run into it before. Jezz I hate having to explain my jokes. I'll need to get that looked at.
Oh so that explains why it's the top comment on an otherwise benign post. He's a pretty major hacker, whatever that means, so people just upvote him because of that?
It hasn't always been that way actually. I worked apple retail while in college for 2 years, and we only had 'runners' to bring inventory up from the back the last 6 months I was there... and the white macbooks were released at the time the "Specialists" (salespeople) were responsible for doing the running themselves.
It is not faster than waiting, because there's no waiting. You do other things while it's being brought out, like trying to sell attachments to the customer or (in this case), finding out what the next student wants. Behaving inefficiently and adding traffic to the back on a busy launch day is simple incompetence.
all it really takes is one kid in the group knowing sign language. It is actually not that uncommon since it counts as a second language and there has been a bit of a craze to teach babies to sign. It also clusters around deaf children since their friends tend to pick up sign[1].
1) remember children, signing to your friend at church still counts as talking during the mass
Please don't do this. While this author seems to have enjoyed the experience, many retail workers have enough to do without being jerked around by those pretending to care about the experience of people with disabilities. It seems ridiculous to me that the teacher thought it was a good idea to lead these children in an extended "lie" in order to teach them about tolerance and empathy.
Once when I worked in bookstore a man came into the store and faked being deaf. My coworkers and I jumped through all kinds of hoops to accommodate him and spent a lot of time writing notes back and forth to help this customer find a particular type of book he said he was looking for. After half an hour of scribbled notes, fetching books from the stacks, and iterating towards what he was describing the man bust out laughing and declared "Hahaha! I'm not actually deaf!!" and walked out without buying anything.
I felt stupid and annoyed that he had wasted so much of our time. Not only did that man's behavior distract us from other legitimate customers, the experience left me feeling guarded about whether to accept people at face value. I never encountered any other customers with hearing disability while I was at that job, but I'm sure I would have had skepticism from this hoax experience in the back of my mind as I tried to help them.
You are not helping anyone by pretending to have a disability.
Although it sucks that you had a bad experience with someone who was pretending to be disabled, I disagree that having the students pretend to be deaf was a bad idea.
First off, they each bought a MacBook, so catering to them was hardly a waste of time. Secondly, I feel like exercising one's empathy is always a good thing, especially during those extremely formative high school years.
Of course, it's very easy to dismiss another person's life circumstances (disabled or not) in passing. So, actually being treated differently as a result of changing your behavior can open up a world of insight about human nature. This article makes me wonder how I would've felt about having the same experience (as one of the students) when I was in high school.
The author noted that there was a "troublemaker" and that the kids were "mostly friendly", so maybe some of the students were of the same mindset as the guy who tricked you. Perhaps the article was sugarcoated quite a bit, but even so.
Pretending to have a disability solely to cultivate empathy can certainly be beneficial for one's social life. Maybe it's not the best way to exercise empathy, but I don't think it hurts.
It sounds to me that you simply encountered an asshole who happened to pretend to be deaf, and incorrectly blamed the pretending bit for the asshole bit.
When I worked in retail, our boss would have us send our friends across the street to our competitor's store to really screw with their employees. The theory was that this would make them less courteous to their real customers, which would send more of them our way. He always made a big deal about how courteous we were. This went on for over a year when one day we started noticing very similar "troll" customers appearing in our store and screwing with us. I'm sure you can guess what I'm going to say next: Hahaha! None of this story was true.
Sure, you're not helping anyone by pretending to have a disability, but you're a grown adult, not an impressionable child. Assuming these kids really did learn something from this exercise it will help them be more tolerant and empathetic in the future, which isn't just good for the kids but it's good for everyone they will interact with for the rest of their lives.
The coolest experience I had as an Apple Store Employee was saving Christmas...no really, we literally saved Christmas. It was about 1:30 AM on Dec. 25th, and a man comes in to the store out of breath. He needs two iPod nanos. "My wife thought I was getting them, and I thought she was getting them..." he explained. Not a problem. We got the nanos, and sent him on his way.
I worked the overnight shift at the 5th Avenue Apple Store. I got to spend two Christmas mornings (and two New Years Eves) in a row with some of the best people I've ever worked with...hell, some of the best people I've ever met!
I think of it as a public service: you're working on your Operating Systems assignment at 1am and discover your AC adapter has malfunctioned and you have 5% of battery left.
Here's a tidbit that might entertain, then: in densely populated suburbs, you're less likely to find what you need at 3am than in small-town America (at least, in the rural South). That's because Walmart is typically open 24 hours, and Walmart in rural areas has essentially everything that's not very specialized.
Upon moving from such a place to the suburbs of DC, I was dismayed to find that finding a store open at 3am was actually more difficult than in the hinterlands.
No doubt. When I moved to Minneapolis, MN from ND, I was constantly amazed at how little is open in the early AM. Heck, even the fast food places closed early[1]. ND small town is more 24hr than the cities.
1) and what unholy foolishness of closing offsale at 8pm on weekdays, 9pm Fri and Sat, and closed all day Sun. WTF? "Backwards" ND has Sunday offsale.
Not really. I think NYC is the main city that doesn't sleep. Other large cities I've been to like Seattle get pretty dead late at night. The town I go to school in, Providence, even has a 2am business curfew.
Is it really worth not letting employees be with their families on Christmas so a forgetful dad doesn't have to wait an extra day to buy mp3 players for his children? Is cheap electronic shit really more important than allowing people to spend time with loved ones?
You know that not everybody observes or cares to celebrate Christmas right? When I worked at a movie theater I loved working Christmas because it was easy money and I didn't care about the holiday, I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way.
I love working on Christmas, since I don't really celebrate -- if I'm working, then other people don't have to, and I get paid a premium. The Christmas-New Years week is basically the most productive period in the world, followed closely by Burning Man week.
Thanksgiving, in the US, has more market penetration than Christmas. Yet, there's the huge Black Friday shopping thing, so stores pay people extra to set up on Thursday too.
"Only in America do you celebrate being thankful for everything you have on Thursday so you can go buy more shit on Friday"
-Some wise netizen (a paraphrase).
Not sure if you realize it, but comments like yours are also part of what's going wrong on hn. Ignore the low quality comments and upvote what adds to the discussion. Don't add more low quality comments.
Perhaps the students were treated better at the Apple store because they were buying 15 macbooks. Surely they didn't spend that much money at all the other mall stores.
In the case of the Apple store, these kinds of sales are the last thing a salesperson wants.
Apple salespeople are not paid on commission, and since the guy was told exactly what the students were buying and that they already had the money distributed to them on gift cards, he knew he couldn't upsell them on a warranty or in-store training. Selling a baseline macbook is easy, people line up to buy them. It is the upselling that determines an employee's performance. So I don't think it had any bearing on this guy's behavior.
Out of curiosity, how do Apple stores track how well an employee upsell products? Is there an expected model that sells for each product line, and if an employee exceeds this level on average (say, the EV is a Macbook Air 13 inch and 10% chance of warranty contract but the employee "averages" a 13 inch MBP + 25% success on a warranty), does she get a bonus?
Apple tracks a bunch of different metrics regarding sales. There are no bonuses for performance on any of them, and its quite difficult to get fired lack of sales. The metrics they use are (in rough order of decreasing importance):
Net Promoter Score
~25ish% of people who purchase a 'hero product' (iPhone, Mac, iPod, or iPad) get an email asking them to rate their experience. One of the questions asks how likely you are to recommend apple based on your experience on a scale of 1 to 10. People who give a 9 or a 10 are considered promoters, and those who give below a 7 are detractors. Your net promoter score is % of people who give a 9 or 10 minus % percent below 7. The 5th avenue store's average score was around a 52.
This matters a lot, consistent negative reviews are one of the few things that can get you fired.
- AppleCare %- This is the extended warranty apple offers. This is emphasized pretty hard, managers frequently cite studies that show higher satisfaction for people who buy warranties etc. The official target for this is 50%, but getting over 20% puts you in the top tier, and anything below 10% gets you negative attention. Store average was around 13-17%. Its pretty rare you actually changes someone's mind on buying it, most people come in decided.
- 1 to 1 % - this is % of computers you sell with one to one, which is a year of as-many-as-you-want hour longs training sessions on basic computer stuff. A 6% 1 to 1 rate was outstanding and over 10% was unheard of, but official corporate expectation was 25%
- Sales $
- personal setup % - how many people you can get to sit with an apple employee and be walked through setup of iDevice.
While I was at Apple, they were pretty good about just letting you do whatever you felt was best for the customer. There's was never any pressure to force a sale, and you were encouraged to talk to customers for as long as they wanted.
source: I worked at 5th ave, Apple's busiest US retail store for 6 months in 2011-2012. The store gets over 50% international customers (who often can't use the warranties/upsells in their home countries) so %ages may be drastically different from other stores.
I don't think it's a bonus rather a not-getting-yelled-at perk (or pat on the back bonus perhaps). They can track it rather easily since every employee's ID is tied to the little iPad or iPod they are completing the sales with.
There are some stores that just treat their employees better, even though they're selling similar products, as a matter of culture.
In the low end/mall type environment, look at In-N-Out or Chick-Fil-A vs. a badly-run Arby's franchise. Essentially the same product, but different culture. (McDonald's is even more interesting; they have great systems and generally hire younger or less experienced and more short-term workers, but don't seem to be as happy as the other places. McDonald's does do a great job of hiring disabled people, though -- and for a McDonald's job, a developmentally disabled person who is motivated and happy and has worked there 5 years is probably going to be a far better employee than a normal high schooler who is bitter about having to work.)
Generally "better" stores have higher margins, but not always higher prices -- Trader Joe's and Whole Foods both beat Safeway as a place to work.
If I lived in Iowa, I'd love to work for a place like Brownell's or in Colorado, Magpul, even for a lower wage than a company with less-good internal culture.
Well there was a significant secondary motivation to see how salespeople reacted to the faked "deafness", so in this case contacting the Apple education group would have rendered this secondary purpose moot.
I doubt many schools would forgo saving $1500 of expenses (15 laptops at $100 savings each plus whatever free software the Education group throws in) for a small pointless lesson like this.
Also if I was a student, knowing this experiment wouldn't affect my grades at all, I'd be rebelling against this forced lie and talking out loud "accidentally".
education discounts can be applied in store, as well as the other education offers they occasionally do, like the free iPod touch during the back to school season.
What a cynical attitude. Do you think it's justified to give disabled people a bad attitude and poor service just because they're not spending a lot of money on your product?
Where did you read that in typpo's comment? The was clearly no "ought" implied. But it is a fact that people are treated more nicely by salespeople when they're buying something (especially something expensive) than when they're not.
At the Apple Store in Santa Monica there's a deaf employee and he talks to you typing on an iPad. It was actually a pretty cool experience and I particularly appreciated it since both my dad's parents were deaf (but I do not know the sign language, they were extremely good at lips reading)
Does this particular employee also have other motor disabilities? Because he once helped me with check out. He was walking around the floor with what seemed like a special software on an iPhone attached to a scanner. I was amazed that the entire transaction took around 30 seconds and I was on my way.
To be fair, a more apt comparison would if they were all sent to a car dealership, and the dealer was told they will all buy a car and just need help picking a color. I'm sure they'd get fantastic service.
Having said that, Apple is pretty well known for offering great customer service, even when it's clear you're not purchasing anything.
I've been in that situation at a car dealership and the service was pretty poor (AAA pre-negotiates prices with many dealers; if you call in advance you get the car at AAA's price without haggling). Basically, they know you're not going anywhere else, so they don't feel any urgency. It was much less stressful overall, but not because of the service.
Just an FYI. I don't know that the innate economics of Apple are any different.
AAA, Costco, etc. are all nice for having pre-negotiated prices, but IMO the best way to buy a car is something like CarWoo -- that way you might actually get a "deal" if you pick the right make/model, vs. a global price. I'd use them for my next car except I plan to either get a used diesel truck or a Tesla, and they only do new cars (and probably not Teslas).
(Although the absolute best deals I've found on cars have been deployed military BMW/Audi sales programs)
Retailers that sell more expensive products typically hire friendlier, more capable, and more numerous salespeople. This is why many people prefer to buy at an Apple store rather than Best Buy, even though they both carry Mac computers.
I totally disagree. The most expensive things I've ever bought have been terrible experiences. Car and house. Real estate agents are the devils spawn where I live.
I had a similar experience while working at a big-box retailer in high school. You don't get to have many "feel-good" experiences in retail, but using MS Word to sell a deaf woman a computer was one of those rare occasions.
Some time in 2007 I went to an Apple event in Scottsdale Arizona. I am a network engineer/system administrator, and my organization was about 50/50 Mac/Windows. We spend somewhere between $200-600K a year on Apple products for employees. I seem to remember that this was shortly before Apple killed off their XServe products, but I could be mistaken about the timing.
There was a break in the presentation, after which I decided I was going to bail. I took my phone, a Blackberry at the time, out of my pocket as I exited the door so that I could check if anything was going on at work.
As I took those first few steps outside, I accidentally dropped my phone.
It wasn't one of those gentle drops. In the process of trying to catch it before it hit the ground, I ended up pushing it with even greater velocity downwards. It hit the concrete pretty hard and a mix of phone, battery cover, and battery went skittering across the concrete walkway.
Three Apple Store employees were sitting outside, also on break. My phone had gone flying right past their feet.
"Oooh!" they said with a wince.
Then one of them said, "Don't worry everyone! It wasn't a IPhone!"
And they laughed.
And that was it. I picked up the parts of my phone, took at a look at the damage, put it back together, and walked away.
There was no offer of help or concern, but they thought it was pretty funny.
Fortunately, the phone survived pretty well off. There really wasn't anything more than minor scratches, despite how I had practically thrown the phone against the concrete.
Ironically, had it been an IPhone (or any modern touchscreen phone), it would have probably been destroyed. I ended up destroying the screen on my Nexus One a year or two later with a much less violent drop.
And, I'm afraid to say, most of my other experiences with Apple store employees here in Arizona has been pretty similar. We regularly have our helpdesk staff go in to pick up parts and do repair runs and I've had to call up our regular Apple rep and comment on bad attitudes, poor service, and outright rejection of service on in-warranty breakages for whatever reason-of-the-day they could make up.
The story linked to is important: You really can make a lasting impression on a customer that they will never forget, positive or negative.
I will never forget the way three Apple Store employees laughed at me as I dropped my phone.
When I read the "It wasn't an iPhone" bit, I thought they meant it as in "Don't worry, it wasn't an iPhone, so it will probably survive the fall!". Which puts a more positive spin to it :)
When I was a kid, there was a girl I knew who was deaf and mute. But we always had great fun talking with each other using pen and paper. I don't know why, but it was so much easier to talk with her than it was a lot of other kids. Obviously, some types of people are easier to talk with, but I think something actually switches on in my mind that makes it easier for me to communicate when I'm writing, rather than speaking.
A little tangential to the story but a good thing to be aware of is that the barrier of communicating between deaf people and hearing people is not always that they simply can't hear the sounds you are making. Many deaf people (especially those who are born deaf) are illiterate or have low literacy in written language; so you can't expect to always be able to just pop out a pencil/paper and write back and forth normally as you would with a hearing friend while playing "the silent game".
What is heartwarming about this other than this person patting themself on the back for being a decent human being?
While it's nice when someone is reasonable and polite but it doesn't magically make up for the other 100 people who acted like I don't have the right to get on the bus.
It seemed to me that this fellow felt the same way colonizers feel about natives of the lands they conquer. How noble of them to spare the natives any thought! They are clearly the better person than the average person that pays no attention.
I work as a skydiving instructors and had a similar experience. A group of deaf college age students came in to skydive and I was paired with one of them on a tandem skydive. Generally we have about five minutes to gear up and train our students when it is busy (as it was that day).
During a lull I wrote up a quick briefing of everything I would usually say and go over on my laptop. When it came time to jump I greeted the student, smiled and then had them read the text while I geared them up. Them I made a big show of pantomiming everything we'd be doing while we laughed and conversed on the laptop.
Weird. I worked for a couple of department stores before I was 20, not as a sales clerk, but stocking shelves. I don't remember the sales staff as the sorts who would snub customers. Of course, I wasn't treating them as lab rats in a high school psych course.
I will also point out that retail sales staff get a lot more exposure to anyone and everyone than your average hacker does. One can become jaded and perhaps impatient fairly quickly. Should you? No, maybe not. But it's Friday, your feet hurt, and some kid is social engineering you. Do you feel as if you need that?
I've worked as a salesperson since I was 17 (I'm 22 now), on and off. Pays the bills, you see. And you're 100% right about the amount of exposure you get to every day people, however instead of making me jaded, I believe it's made my life as a developer easier; it gave me insights into regular people I think I would have otherwise missed.
That school really should have dealt with the Apple store directly. I'm guessing they would have gotten better than the standard educational discount that way.
Also, wow, please don't map "escape" to cause navigation on your website. That's super annoying.
It seems to me like almost nobody in the comments on HN believes his story to be genuine. And yet, this guy updated his blog to add :
"Wow, I really didn't expect this story to blow up the way it has. I've never had anything voted up on Hacker News before, much less gain the top spot. I'm still not convinced it hasn't all been a fever-dream."
which just supports the hypothesis that he's just bullshitting everybody.
At first, I thought why not take two colors, than make the kids who preferred black stood left and the others on right side. There should be many simple ways to deal with that situation quickly and easily. I
The story looks a little weird, even not true, like I don't quite remember which product had just released that morning,, is it true?
But at the end, I found I was misunderstood and also was touched.
I would guess this (if true) was from 2008 on the release of the iPhone 3G - based on the fact that the Black MacBook was discontinued in October 2008 (per wikipedia). It could have been 2007 for the original iPhone, but the lines for the 3G were more prevalent.
While I was reading the story, I kept thinking that the kids will start using the "say" command in the Terminal to start talking. That would have been a great story.
I took a year of sign language in high school to satisfy the language requirement. This is the sort of thing I could imagine a instructor doing. It was a public school so our outing would have probably been to Burger King.
ok...if the story is true or not..I believe the message there trying to get across is more important. For example who questioning the whole deal must treat people as bad as the other stores treated the "deaf" kids...
you should add commenting capability to the page.. how neat would it be if someone from the not-actually-deaf group were to share a self-confirming anecdote (and possibly, an update on how they're doing now)!
Calling it. They went store to store buying Macbooks. Multiple sets of laptops just for a social experiement?
What kind of IT department would allow the KIDS to get the computers they need. And with no bulk discount, what school would allow that?
This happened in his dreams.
> What kind of IT department would allow the KIDS to get the computers they need.
I would guess that this is something more like a 20-kid Montessori school, than a regular big-building public institution. The kind where there's one teacher (who does things like run field trips as sociological object lessons), and no IT staff to speak of, but which has a big budget nevertheless due to the high tuition cost of private education paid by the (rich) parents.
I don't quite remember which product had just released that morning, but it was the kind of thing that had attracted a long line of campers outside the entrance the night before
Seriously? You work at an apple store, it was supposedly your most memorable experience, and you don't remember what product was being released? It's not like they have hundreds of products. Sounds fishy.
I bet he could look it up pretty easily by trying to date the experience but it's not important to the story. When Apple names every iteration the same flippin name it would get blurry in my head as well. iPad, iPad 2, New iPad, iPad 4?? I don't even think I got the names correct myself now from memory.
I don't care if it's slightly embellished or even pure fiction, it could have happened. It highlights the discrimination faced by many groups of people, and encourages readers to act excellently with all types of people. I like the article for that reason alone. The class outing was also a cool idea, it would be fun to try a cheaper variant.
They were given gift cards and their teacher was supervising them. It's not like they were given a thousand dollars each and sent on a shopping spree.I know schools that give laptops to students - and this one was allowing them to buy them, possibly to teach them something, give them that experience. If it was a small, privately paid school,then I don't see what this would not be true.
Still, KIDS were given thousands of dollars to buy stuff tech for their school. This happens no where.
Now if he said it was a coffee shop or such, sure.
I purchased a couple switches and a new server for my high school when I was a junior. I also was allowed to buy on the school's line of credit at a local hardware store for things I needed for the stage.
I went to a private catholic high school in a small city. The administration trusted the students. They also didn't have IT staff, so geek speaking technobabble sounds better than paying actual staff. Walked out of high school with independent study classes, real experience in IT and building control systems, and without my parents paying expensive tuition.
The kids went and bought stuff (incl laptops) at multiple stores?
And wasn't there a long line at Apple? How'd they make it to so many other stores?
The kids physically go to the store to buy school computers?
The kids are such good actors that they fooled the author & all other salespeople?
A teacher would actually allow kids to pretend that they're disabled?
No bulk discount or pre-arranged deal?
All other employees in the mall were mean to deaf kids?
Author doesn't remember which Apple product was debuting?
I hate to be "that guy" -- but this story is most likely fiction.