Reader Anjela writes in wondering if a certain employee of the Apple store has has a rare disorder that makes women invisible to him. That might explain why the employee spent the entire AirBook shopping excursion talking to her husband instead of Anjela—the actual customer.
Anjela writes:
Apple
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA 95014
408.996.1010Dear Apple:
Today (2/28/2008, at approximately 4:00pm) I walked into the Bellevue Square Apple Store (in Bellevue, WA) intent on buying a MacBook Air. I am delighted by the MacBook Air. I am the geek for whom the MacBook Air was invented. I am a lifelong PC user, and until now the leap to a new, unfamiliar operating system was a roadblock, but for a machine with a full-size keyboard and monitor that comes in at three pounds, I was not just willing to make the switch, I was genuinely excited. (The fact that I don’t want my next laptop to run Vista doesn’t hurt, either.) I’ve been waiting to get one since the day they were announced.
I had a horrific customer service experience in your Bellevue Square store that has me rethinking this idea. I will certainly never set foot in that store again, and I hope I never have to deal with any of your Apple Store employees in person, if this is how they’re trained to treat customers.
The Apple Store “genius” — and I’m offended that he was called that, given the stupendous idiocy he exhibited today — was named Bill. Bill was called over when my husband and I came into the store; I had told the concierge that I was interested in buying a MacBook Air.
Well, first of all, Bill DID NOT LOOK AT ME. He did not greet me. He greeted my husband, introduced himself, and shook his hand… and completely ignored me. He didn’t ask my name, what we were there to buy, or who the new computer was for. He did not make eye contact. He simply behaved as though I were not there, and steered my husband through the crowded store — ignoring me and leaving me behind.
When I caught up to them, he was commencing the hard-sell of “AppleCare”. After being told several times that I was not interested, he asked my husband if he was a Microsoft employee, and pointed out that he could get a 12% discount on it. My husband finally stopped Bill in his tracks and told Bill that the computer was for me. He asked Bill if the education discount, which I qualified for, or the Microsoft employee discount, which my husband qualified for, was a better deal. Bill told my husband that the education discount was better — but continued talking to my husband as if I were not there. Even after being told the computer was for me and that we’d be using my education discount on it, Bill did not greet me, make eye contact with me, or acknowledge my presence in any way.
After scrolling through a screen of peripherals and asking my husband — not me — about each one, and only giving up on selling us the items when my husband — not me — confirmed I was not interested, he muttered something I could not make out (I presume because he was, again, talking to my husband and not myself), and wandered off.
I did not wait for him to come back before leaving the Apple Store. As my husband was not interested in anything at the store, he left, too.
I am a grown woman. I am 29 years old. I was dressed in normal clothes — a plain blue t-shirt, jeans, a flannel overshirt, sneakers. I don’t know how or why this employee could not see me, but I was extremely offended by the way I was treated. I have a credit card. I use computers — in fact, I intended to use the MacBook Air for my volunteer position as a CSS/XHTML coder. I’m the person who walked into the store ready to buy myself a new computer, not my husband. Yet Bill could barely bring himself to look at me, and appeared more interested in selling my husband the peripherals that went along with the computer than in selling me, the actual buyer, the product I was willing to “make the switch” for.
I hope you’ll let the managers at the Bellevue Square store know that women use computers, too, and that if a couple comes into a store to buy one, perhaps it would be a good idea to ask which of them is making a purchase. And if the answer is “a girl”, please tell the employees to talk to her, and not her partner, brother, spouse, or some random guy standing ten feet away from her, as I believe Bill might have done.
I can honestly say I haven’t had a customer service experience this awful for several years (a fast-food restaurant manager who threw a pen at my friend when she asked for his regional manager’s name comes to mind). If I decide to get myself a MacBook Air despite all this — and right now, I’m not sure I will; if Bill’s attitude was typical of what I’ll face should I need technical support or any other sort of customer service from Apple, I don’t want any part of it — I certainly won’t be going to one of your stores to be ignored by an employee; I’ll be ordering it online.
Ew. What a jackass. You’re right to report this employee, and we also would have left without buying the computer, but the next time someone treats you like this—call them out on it right there. There’s no reason sexist jerks should get away with treating you like that. You don’t even need to be rude, just look the jerk in the eye and say, “I’m the one with the money, talk to me. Don’t talk to my husband.” Then, if they don’t get embarrassed and profusely apologize, feel free to calmly explain to them why they have lost your business. We don’t mean to suggest you did something wrong by simply walking out; we offer this advice because standing up for yourself will make you feel a lot better. Trust us. You don’t need to wait for someone else to let the jerks know what is up.
Apple owes you an apology for this employee’s behavior.
(Photo:Plankton 4:20)
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@LadyKathryn: Gee, do I know you from somewhere?
There were several portions of the original post that sounded like Anjela was trying to talk to the salesman, like the part about how he’d ask questions but only take answers from the husband, so I don’t think she was just standing there fuming silently. The salesman blew it for good when he refused to greet her or introduce himself, anyway.
I usually let salesmen ignore me because I prefer kicking the tires and looking under the hood (literally or metaphorically) to listening to sales pitches. This has led to some amusing exchanges, like when my husband has listened to all the sales talk alone, and then I come up and tell him “no” and we leave. Or the time a computer salesman informed my husband that we absolutely did not have the connector he wanted, right before I called across the store, “Here it is!”
I applaud her walking out, but sometimes I’ll be damned if I’m going to let a stupid clerk stand in the way of me and my consumer satisfaction.
She should have walked off and let the guy continue to talk her husband and found another clerk who would help her, and then picked up the husband on the way out.
Sometimes, you are faced with someone so beautiful that you cannot even look at them for fear of losing it. I’ll bet this is one of those times.
I’m with Anjela on this one. My g/f gets treated like this all the time when we go shopping or out for dinner and men ALWAYS look at me and talk to me instead of her. I can’t imagine why….she’s a skinny, tall Mexican girl and I’m your avg 6′ white guy, but somehow they’d rather look at me than her….believe me, even on my best day, I can’t hold a candle to her in the looks dept.
Anyway, this reiks of sexism and I hope that Apple will get back to her soon. I don’t blame Apple because they’re only as good as the people they hire, and you can’t hire ALL good people ALL of the time. This guy will hopefully get a very humbling letter from Apple corporate soon….
@CumaeanSibyl: I do that too, only I hate being ignored. I kick the tires while tuning out the sales pitch, but when it comes to me asking the questions, I find that the sales people aren’t used to it. We were buying a printer one time and he listened to the sales pitch, I srveyed each printer while grinning at the sales guy’s promise of a “ink change indicator” light, and the “high-quality scanning bed” that had the foam pad peeling at the edges. When I had enough, I turned and saw that my fiance was nodding, and getting hooked. I shook my head and when the sales guy was done, I steered him away from the sales guy and we took a wander through the DVD section while we discussed the matter.
@discounteggroll: yeah good point, geniuses are the mr. fix-its, not the sales folks, and the 2 I’ve known personally were phenomenal guys with some of the best customer service skills and understanding of the mac innards, out there. That’s why they get the job, they are supposed to calm you down and keep you happy, since you’re already a customer. Weird.
when i’m in the store with my wife to buy something that she wants i tell the drone to talk to her and listen for the BS if it starts coming from it’s mouth.
It’s usually not a problem though to get them to talk to her as she is white and i’m mocha colored.
in 15 years it’s always been the same. they will talk to her instead of me, you know they guy that makes 100k/year.
of course that could be another consumerist rant.
but i dont have a problem with it as i’m free to sort out the BS without prejudice.
@miramesa:
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering.”
I love this blog. Your suggestions make me feel all warm and fuzzy.
This used to happen to me when I worked at Gamestop…before my fiance and I were dating and when I worked for him there, people used to come in and ask questions all the time to Shadowfire (he comments here) and ingore me, even though I was the one who greeted them. I used to get aggressive and cut in and answer all the time…she should have too. It’s really obnoxious to be treated like you know nothing about electronics just because you’re a girl.
@InfiniTrent: “One of the quickest lessons a salesperson should learn is that in most cases, the woman controls the purse strings. … Even if you’re a chauvinist pig, you should be able to set aside that in order to take a customer’s money”
When we went in for our yearly insurance review with our agent, he spent the ENTIRE time talking to my husband, even when my husband kept repeatedly saying, “I don’t know, my wife does the insurance” and so forth. I’d ask questions, and he’d answer them to my husband. I was torn between offended and amused because he’s an older fellow and I don’t generally get all up in someone’s face when they’re 70 years old and not used to women in the workforce. (Even though the memo’s been circulating for 40 years now.)
I called my grandpa and told HIM the story, because my grandpa used to be an agent with the same company, and my grandpa was HORRIFIED. He said, “in 1946 we were selling to the wives — the husbands may pay the bills, but the wives have ALWAYS made the decisions. A wife will talk around a recalcitrant husband, but a husband can never talk around his wife if she digs in her heels.”
So I found that amusing. He was even out of date for 1950, let alone 2005.
(The postscript is that I did speak to him about it, and he did apologize, and he now deals with me directly. It was a little roundabout getting there, but we got there.)
@GearheadGeek: Recognizing that women make a lot of purchasing decisions (more than half of car sales, last I heard) is pretty much how Saturn built their brand. Take an average car with average styling, hire nonsexist salespeople, and preset the prices instead of requiring traditionally male-biased haggling. And it paid off for them bigtime.
My mom wanted to buy a new chair for the family room. She picked one out and when it came time to complete the purchase, the furniture salesman actually asked my mom, “Don’t you need to talk to your husband first?” It did not end well.
The VW salesperson did that to me and my husband. I was picking out a new car and the sales guy would not talk to me. I’m the family CFO, the car was mine, I would be making the deal and the decisions. My husband finally told the guy, “If you don’t talk to my my wife about HER car, we are leaving.” We had no such problems at the Lexus place.
This has to be one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever heard in regard to experiences in an Apple Store. I have been a customer in various Apple Stores in the Philadelphia area for several years now, and have never had anything but the most respectful and egalitarian treatment. In fact, I began as one of those customers who knew so little that I could easily have been dismissed as someone hardly worth attention. But thanks to the wonderful assistance of the professionals at the Genius Bar and the Creative Bar, I have developed much more confidence in my computer skills. I know how to create websites, upload and edit video, edit photography, and have developed a facility with computer vocabulary which I never though I’d have. On my last visit to an Apple Store — about a week ago — I was actually able to give advice to another customer about VMWare Fusion — and was treated with great deference by the sales person who was working with the gentleman. He thanked me for my input and suggested that the customer take my advice.If this story is true, I’d be surprised if “Bill” isn’t already looking for a new job; I cannot imagine any Apple Store on the planet tolerating that sort of behavior.
Its not just computer stores, OR customers…sexism is alive and well everywhere. I worked at a Canadian Tire store for 5 years, much of it in the hardware & paint departments. I and lost count of the number of men who would ask for a manager to answer their questions, and be amused by their response when the MALE store manager informed them that I knew more than he did about hardware, and to direct their questions to me. Or they’d walk right past when asked if I could assist them, as ifI didn’t exist.
Why not go somewhere else and demand the respect that your $1,600 tax refund check deserves?
The funny thing is that you don’t really understand the complex workings of the Apple Store. You see earlier in the day Bill either lost a bet or pissed off the concierge and for the entire day he was sent “The Moms”. Answering countless questions about iPod colors and how to access voicemail on an iPhone really gets to a guy. It is possible that he didn’t look at you to keep from giggling when you told him about your volunteer position as a CSS/XHTML coder (that has never worked or tested code in Safari).
So you logged onto the consumerist and read about the guy that smashed his macbook and got a free one and decided to make up a story about how you were wronged in hopes that Super Rich Steve J. would just send you one to make up for it.
I’m sure you were yelling at your poor spouse all the way home for talking out of turn with Bill, and when he called you a nut job you decided to tell the entire internet how you were wronged…. You are lucky all you got thrown at you is a pen. I would have stabbed you with it.
“I am a grown woman. I am 29 years old.”
So have the balls (figuratively speaking, of course) to call a dude on his shit on the spot.
@nursethalia: Dude if some guy told me that about my wife, I’d piss my pants laughing. That’s too funny – you should have slapped Dick on the back for that one.
Too funny.
@bdslack: Just completely off our meds today, I see…
@GearheadGeek: So true on so many levels. It’s more fun that way.
Actually what I want to see is a fist fight to the death on the “I’m a Mac and I’m a PC commercials”. I would really get worked up to see the skinny kid beat the living shit out of the fat PC guy. Sort of like Fight Club for computer geeks. So many beautiful things in this world go unnoticed because of people so tightly focused on complete BS like this lady.
It spins my head.
@bdslack: Oh my God, you mean Bill was forced to do his job? That poor man. Of course that completely justifies his rudeness to a customer.
Sorry, muffin, but you’re not going to get any sympathy with that line. If you can’t handle answering questions about iPod colors, maybe you shouldn’t work at a place that sells iPods.
@CumaeanSibyl: Hey, the poor kid can’t bat 1000. Not even Tiger Woods can hit them straight every time…
I’d love to hear about all the times this woman has messed up at her job. I’m sure her coworkers don’t write the CEO and ask for a formal apology, especially for not looking at someone correctly. I would have thrown the laptop at her not the pen.
Wait…their address is “1 Infinite Loop”?
@girly:
Listen here girly. If the husband had any onions he wouldn’t have wandered off with Bill in the first place and spoke up clearly and forthrightly that it was his wife and master who is in the market for the computer. But I think we see who wears the pants in this household. And jeans, no less.
If my wife of nearly twenty years and I had a similar shopping experience I’d have spoken up right away and if the sales person (not “Genius”) were not to my liking I’d have spoken to another one. I would not expect my wife to go home and whine online about how she was treated horribly by someone who thought he was helping me.
Don’t expect this marriage to last.
@soulman901: Why the hell do you care? It isn’t your money or your choice.
Some things just never change. Fifteen years ago, I took my dad computer shopping for a new office machine. I asked the questions, and they’d answer him. Finally he flat-out told the guy, “What are you telling me for? She’s buidling the machine, I’m just here to write the check.” On the way home, he apologized to me for not believing me when I told him that’s what always happened to me. Thank goodness it’s been happening less over the last few years.
@juanguapo:
There’s a real reason guy’s talk to you and not to your girl: jealousy. They expect you to get jealous if they spend too much time talking to her and checking her out. And guess what? you would.
Anjela,
Not only was Bill a complete jerk, but he wasn’t doing his job. Any salesperson with a modicum of honesty would have told you the Macbook Air was not built to run as your primary machine and cannot support everything a normal laptop can.
I hope you get the apology you deserve and that Bill gets appropriate training to bring him out of the 1950′s.
This is really typical for the store in Bellevue.
I’ve been asked to leave because i’ll “just look at myspace like you kids do” (dude i’m older than you, wanna see my passport?) when i was there to buy an ipod case. When i brought in my computer for service, i got treated to a five minute rant about foreigners and greasy people and how fat women disgust the gent behind the genius bar. Then he modified my customer record to state “intentional damage.”
Needless to say, i have an ibook g4 that crapped out because they did a crappy job fixing it the first time, the employee was angry i came back, and oh yeah, no other store can fix it because the serial number’s flagged. “Maybe your husband you married to stay here would be more rational”, he sayd.
Yeah. Bite me.
Alderwood is better, Tukwila is too busy but much better, U-Village is kind of mercurial depending on who peed in their cornflakes that morning.
That’s what you get for buying a mac…a gimped mac at that.
I live a couple of blocks away from that store. I’ve had really bad experiences there. If I want anything Apple, I get in my car and drive 7 miles to the Apple store at University Village.
I’ve heard enough reports that I’m not alone.
Wim.
My advice would be:
1. Next time this happens, you or your husband should say something to the employee, such as: “Why are you only talking to me?” or “Could you point us to an employee who is comfortable dealing with women?” That should get you an instant apology.
2. Tell the manager. Based on my experiences, he or she will likely apologize and promise to speak with the employee.
3. Do send a letter to Apple HQ, but don’t skip the first two steps.
Ellen
Incidentally… they’re called “Mac Specialists” not “Geniuses.” Not to defend them – the one you got was an ***hole – just to clarify that Geniuses are some of the calmest, friendliest, and most helpful people I have ever met. Most ‘specialists’ I’ve encountered have been great as well.
Umm. Maybe the guy just had a bad day? Maybe out of the thousands of Apple Store employees, there are a few that aren’t quite on the ball. I deal with a few hundred people a month in (so to speak) sales. Most absolutely enjoy the experience, some don’t.
I like the “stand up for yourself” perspective. A “hey buddy, I’m the customer” would have done the trick. It seems kind of silly to walk away from an entire platform because one nerdy Apple Genius rubbed you the wrong way. Better to simply pick another sales person. I’m not sure if these guys are on a comish. . . I think if someone did that to me I’d walk over to a different genius and wink at the guy talking to my spouse while making the purchase.
She is a sophisticated, educated lady with dough to drop on a Macbook Air. The kid in the Apple Genius outfit is likely a part time student with an old sunflower iMac at home who lusts for a new MB Air. Which is why he works in the Apple store. Bottom line, Set’im straight, and buy from the guy or gal standing next to him!
@deserthiker: Who has the power in their marriage or whether it will last is of little consequence to the issue of the employee acknowledging all parties and not making an assumption about who his customer is.
I agree that the husband and wife could have dealt with it better.
I don’t care for how the issue was inflated, but the feedback can be taken with a grain of salt and still be put to good use by the company. In that way I think it was worth it for her to contact Apple.
This story sounds like a Microsoft plant.
However, most everyone here just hears one side of the story and immediately calls the employee names. Sad yet typical of the tar and feather, knee jerk, lynch mob mentality in the good ole US of A.
Does Apple call their salesmen ‘geniuses’? I thought genius referred to their on site staff that helped with repairs and such, not sales.
Girly
It is the marriage I am questioning and not the salesman as much. The sales guy was sent over by the concierge. He did not know who was looking for a computer. When he first talked to them, the husband should have said AT THAT TIME that the laptop was for his wife and not walked away with the salesman, leaving his wife in the lurch. The wife is displacing her aggravation at her husband abandoning her on poor Bill. The guy was only doing his job. Her gripe about trying to sell Apple Care is also misplaced. On a new notebook like the Air it would be smart to get Apple Care.
Now, it may have been one of those situations where her husband said, “Honey, Let’s go get YOU a new laptop. I think you need a new laptop similar to the time that you needed a PS3, a new 52 inch Sony Bravia LCD 1080i TV and tickets to the Seahawks and that new camping gear at REI”. Husbands often get their wives presents which are really gifts for themselves. Not that I would ever do that but I’ve seen it happen.
If the wife should be mad at anyone it should be at her husband. Instead of a letter to Apple and the Consumerist, I’d recommend counseling.
My wife and I owned a small business for 27 years. It was a very successful and profitable business and still was when we sold it three years ago. During those 27 years we pleased the overwhelming majority of our customers, but of course there were those who had a problem with our products, service or both. Nothing irritated me more than a customer we did not please who would not say a word to us about the situation, but would then go bad-mouth us in the community. Given a chance, we would do most anything reasonable to make a situation right and sometimes even comply with unreasonable requests. Any smart businessperson would do the same. Now, lets take a look at Meghanns situation. Do you see the number of posts she has on this article? I think Meghann is sly like a fox. Bash Apple in an article and the snowball starts rolling. I have never been to this site before, but I would bet that its a rare article that Meg writes that gets this kind of response. What do you think her response would have been if she settled the problem in the store like she should have?
I can’t say I’ve even been treated like this in an Apple Store (I’m usually the one to strike up the conversations anyway), but I HAVE been treated like this over the phone with less then intelligent customers who insist that a woman just CANT be doing a server admin job and insist that I play the nice secretary and hand over the phone to the real server jockey.
@deserthiker: I did say before that I think the husband was part of it(the irrelevant to Apple part).
I mostly agree with you. As I said, since he didn’t know who his customer was, asking would be useful. And that is a good tip in general, and so there was some value in the letter. (in addition to a lot of venting)
Here’s an unfortunate truth: The grunts on the floor are -trained- to ignore women and instead focus on selling to the man. Something about how women are more indecisive, especially with tech purchases. Not all floor grunts are going to abide by that (some actually do realize women are able to use computers too), but if you go to any tech store–Circuit City, Best Buy, anything–you will find the man gets the focus. That’s just how they were trained to sell the products.
@girly:
What is it with women and venting?
As a geek/nerd myself I can safely say that most of my male counterparts are terrible with women. In a conversation with FRIENDS that know that I am their equal, they will geek out with my husband first. Most don’t want to be emasculated by the possibility that I might best them with my geekiness. That does not excuse this behavior and he shouldn’t be in sales. He should just be fixing things. That said, being a sugar momma, I make sure that when I go shopping with my husband, that the salesperson needs to address me. Directly.
I would like to clarify that Macs are now comparable in price with computers having the same specs. Since the introduction of Intel, prices have become reasonable. I have done multiple price comparisons, building computers that have all of the bells and whistles of a Macintosh and have come up with the same prices. Macs are expensive because thay have alot of high end stuff in it.
Now for the Mac Book Air. This is a supplemental computer for those who travel extensively, or at least are away from their primary often. Anyone who is in the know with tech, knows that “The Cloud” is where it’s at. The Cloud is the internets linked by purely web based software. People who have an extensive internet presence, download or stream all of their entertainment, have no need for hard media or wires. What I’m saying is don’t buy a Mac Book Air as your primary. (As a side, does anyone here remember when the original iMac didn’t have a floppy drive, and everyone was bitching about that?)
@bdslack: I am a woman that has owned Macs since 1985. I AM in fact a member of that “Mac Club” and as a long time member I have to say that it is people like you that make it hard for me to have sensible conversations with non-mac users. People like you that make sure that everyone thinks that Mac users are pretentious snobs.
I’m a female, and this story came out at a great time. I need to purchase a new wireless router soon, and I’ll likely go somewhere that these types of encounters happen. Guaranteed I’ll be buying a Linksys…so perhaps I should wear my Cisco employee shirt underneath my coat and reveal it at a strategic time. (Linksys is a division of Cisco, for those that don’t know.) I almost hope that someone tries to kid-glove me so I can school them.
@deserthiker: I’m not sure, I’ve have not done a gender-specific study of it.
If you read the long letters to corporations on this site, it seems that neither gender is immune.
I guess it could be that people have a long list of grievances, but they’d probably make their point clearer by making it brief.
It is interesting to see so many people want to guess why the employee did what he did.
Weird that this happened at an Apple store! When I’ve gone into SF Bay Area stores, I’ve always been treated reasonably and respectfully when I had a question. But I’ve had the cold shoulder from sexist salespeople in electronics stores on more than one occasion.
The worst was when I went alone into a Good Guys a few years ago, ready to purchase an XM radio setup for my car. I knew the model and all of the accessories I would need, and I was ready to make a purchase right then. I was completely ignored by the three salesmen in the room in favor of male customers. I waited for several minutes and tried to attract their attention several times, but none paid the slightest attention to me. I finally gave up and went to the Best Buy across the street. In under five minutes, they’d rung me up with all the equipment and scheduled me for an installation the next morning.
I’m really surprised this kind of thing is so common! Reading the stories in the comments has been both enlightening and frightening.
@girly:
I have four sisters and the majority of my close friends are women and I think venting is more a female thing. If I have a problem I tend to go for a run and my wife gets on the phone and calls everyone who will listen.
I guess we’re both letting of steam, we just do it in different manners.
And I agree, brevity is not something used in most of these complaint letters. I don’t need a life story. Please get to the point.
[www.apple.com]
This goes directly to the stores themselves. So, if you’re going to avoid speaking to a manager, etc., this is the more direct non-confrontational route to go.
The woman’s husband should have spoken up. If my wife were being ignored like that, I would have said something to the clerk. As blatant as the offense was in this case, my comment would have been cutting indeed.