Usually we praise a CEO for responding directly to customers but Apple’s Steve Jobs has made a hobby of talking tough to those who email him at sjobs@apple.com. In the latest case, because she couldn’t get a quote out of the PR department, a college journalism student took him to task. So he took her to hers, saying “Our goals do not include helping you get a good grade” and “Please leave us alone.”
You can read the transcript of two turds throwing themselves at each other over at Valleywag.
Every interaction you have with your customers is a chance to redefine and/or burnish your brand and reputation. Apparently Jobs is concerned that not enough people know that he’s ruthless.
Steve Jobs In Email Pissing Match with College Journalism Student [Valleywag]
More From Consumerist
-
Ricky’s, Where A “Free” Travel-Size Shampoo Will Cost You $7
-
Your Skullcandy Lifetime Warranty Is No Good If You Move Out Of The Country
-
Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak Would Love To Have iTunes On His Android Devices
-
Upselling, Overcharging & Unwanted Warranties Remind Customer Why He’d Stopped Shopping At Best Buy
-
My Virgin Mobile Phone Fails At Basic Phone Functions.
I’m still amazed that a CEO can be so brazenly an asshole and still be both employed and have people buy his products.
And then I realize it’s Apple. Ohhhh, iThing shiny! I need! Take this sgned blank check and charge whatever you want!
I think people still buy his products because they are rather good on a number of levels. If you think the bosses of the other various and sundry consumer electronics corporations are cuddly carebears, I suggest you look a few of them up. I’d start with this article about Samsung’s response to some ribbing they got in a Christmas newspaper article.
Also, ask anyone who’s worked for HP over the last 10 years what they thought of Carly Fiorina…
People buy Apple products because they’re user friendly and usually extremely good at the more narrow set of things they’re designed to do.
Hey! We’ll have none of that fair and unbaised nonsense around here!!
You have to either love or hate Apple with all of your being and for no good reason!
I hate Apple because Apple products generate this unmistakable “my shit don’t stink” atmosphere around any Apple user. The closest thing I could compare Apple to are those Jitterbug big-keypad phones for old people. In this case, it’s for less tech-savvy folks.
“PUSH BUTTAN, RECEEV MAILS”
Ellison
Gates
Welch
The Citibank guy
The Goldman Sachs guy
Michael Dell
Eric Schmidt
etc.
CEOs are a–holes, not sure why you are singling out Jobs.
He singles himself out. He responds publically in a boorish manner. The rest of thes guys are more PC in public.
Also, you provide no evidence why these guys are assholes. I know it would make for a long response, but I don’t know about these at all.
Sculley and Apple board members got rid of Steve once, didn’t exactly work out too well.
Asshole or not (honestly, I think not) the man has vision and he gets shit done. This is about who can most effectively sell the best products, not who can get the most birthday party invites.
Well, “just don’t hold it that way” sold a shit-ton of iPhones, so it seems there’s something to publically disrespecting your customers.. Personally, I’d like to see Steve Jobs meet “The Sisters” from Shawshank Redemption.
Meh, that’d only work until Steve gave the prison guards a bunch of free iCraps
“Boggs never walked again.”
“And Steve Jobs’ farts never made a sound.”
They got rid of him because he ran the company into the ground. If it hadn’t been for Jobs, Apple never would’ve needed the massive influx of capital from Gates.
And yeah, Gates sure is an asshole. He inflicted Apple upon us, instead of just letting them die.
Bill Gates isn’t an asshole. He & his wife have given millions of dollars to charities & have a charity of their very own.
Jobs donates millions to charity too, he just doesn’t make as big a public spectacle of it. Giving to charity does not mean you’re a good person either way–Gates is a notorious a-hole.
Wait – what? From WIkipedia: “As of 2007, Bill and Melinda Gates were the second most generous philanthropists in America, having given over $28 billion to charity.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates#Philanthropy
Oh, wait – I see what you did there. Good one.
Yes, and he was one of those responsible for literally bullying OEMs into selling only Windows.
Not to mention his treatment of Netscape and Sun.
Philanthropy does not negate the fact that Gates has done terrible things in his career; he’s only doing this so he will be remembered more like Andrew Carnegie than J. P. Morgan.
Giving back money you took from others by illegal contracts and other despotism that can only become one who owns a company bent on monopolism (he also spent days trying to subvert justice during his deposition) isn’t being nice. It’s trying to buy your way into heaven when you’ve already been decided you’re going to hell.
He also has some ridiculously assholish ideas about his software. For example, he believed that almost all calls about his software circa 1995 weren’t because of bugs or difficulties using it, but were all feature requests.
Did I mention Bill Gates’ company thinks Open Source software is a cancer on society and that no good software can be made without people paying lots of money all the time for it? Even when it’s inappropriate? Calling anyone that does believe in software being free (which, at the time, was a bit of an assumption–you have to understand what it was like at that point in time) a theif and a parasite? Don’t worry, Bill Gates still thinks giving away anything to do with computer is communism.
He has a lot of cunning, though. He managed to absolutely burn IBM on the OS for their new computer by buying up the rights to software someone else made, called QDOS, and simply tweaked it to work on the up-n-coming IBM PC and renamed it MS-DOS. This is the very OS that IBM had already tried to buy for 1/4 million for themselves. Bill Gates managed to slime his way into being a middle-man for QDOS, buying it for 1/10th that instead and selling it to IBM for so very much more. These backdoor dealings earned the owners of QDOS 1 million dollars in court settlements later on.
I won’t even get into Microsoft breaking their license agreement with Apple over the Windows GUI despite Bill Gates constant insistence on just how important and solid license agreements are.
He even worked to kill the agreement (why are these only good when BG’s company is the beneficiary?) he had with IBM to co-develop a GUI for the IBM PC (OS/2). Microsoft worked hard to develop windows and, how shall we put it, “lost interest” in OS/2 after a few years.
He was also a terrible driver, being arrested for all sorts of infractions, including drunk driving (charges later dropped).
Real winner of a guy. But it’s all okay, because some of the money he made through so many shady deals is being given back to society. I have to hand it to him: He is an absolute master of spin, because so many people new to computers think just like you do. Only us folks who have been in this industry for a few decades know what kind of a guy lies behind those glasses.
Gates might still be an asshole as a person. He may just be a generous one with a social conscious. I have no idea one or another.
As far as Jobs goes, I think he certainly comes off as a huge dickhead. The student’s request wasn’t outrageous by a long shot. He probably could have answered her questions in less time than he spent arguing with her.
Texting him with a Blackberry probably didn’t help her chances.
He still might be an asshole. From the stories I’ve read from the early days of Microsoft, he was pretty tough on folks and his emails to developers about their code were legendarily brutal. Age, family, success and his new role may have mellowed him, but most CEO-types are not particularly lovey-dovey.
I admire his blunt honesty.
Id rather get an honest “I dont care, leave me alone” email from a CEO than a canned “somone will get back to you within 6-12 weeks” canned response then never be heard from again.
ITA. If he’d said the usual “we’re taking this seriously” BS everybody would be all over him too.
Meh, I don’t think his response was entirely unreasonable given the full context. Sure it was more than a little curt, but it wasn’t all that bad. So yeah, I’m in agreement with you.
This is one of the main reasons why the only Apple products I own are an old circa- 1993 Mac from a garage sale & a 2nd generation ipod that was given to me by a friend(I collect old electronics, which is why I still have both of these items lol). I refuse to give one strawpenny to a company that grossly overcharges for its (often inferior)products & who blatantly don’t give two shits about their customers. The response about the iPhone 4 antenna debacle was appalling & very demonstrative of Apple’s general attitude toward it’s customers.
“Hey Jobs, there’s a fatal defect in the antenna design…”
“Pssh, whatever. It’s perfect, YOU’RE just using it wrong.”
“No, seriously, here are thousands more people that are having the exact same problems!”
“OMG FINE, whatever. Here’s a free bumper. Take it & SHUT UP.”
*door slam*
“This is one of the main reasons why the only Apple products I own are”
Oh god, you’re so cool.
Seriously! All he needed to do was not answer the darn email. I don’t care what you think of the girl’s responses, as a CEO he should show a little bit of maturity.
I already had problems with Apple’s business practices, but this sealed the deal for me. I’m waiting for the rest of the world to wake up and realize what Apple really is.
Actually my opinion of him improved because he didn’t bend over backwards to appease someone’s little miracle.
the new futurama for the win on the iPhone
Except…he probably gets emails like hers all the time. I teach that type of student, and they’re seriously assholes. I think it’s great that he was a) honest and b) put her in her place. She’s a whiny brat (“I need your help with my homework!”) – if I were him I would have told her the same thing. I’m sure Media Relations has better things to do with their time than give a quote for a school assignment (with a readership of 1). She should have said it was for the school paper, instead. Either way, Jobs 1 – Stupid college girl – 0
rtfa, her homework was to contact his PR and get a statement. PR refused to give a statement. She e-mailed him asking why PR wouldn’t give a statement. She explained it was for her journalism course (Y’know, the same thing people from places like Engadget say) and he told her to screw off.
She wasn’t complaining that he wouldn’t help get her an A, she was complaining about his lack of professionalism to the future of the people that will be COVERING his products.
Seriously, rtfa before you bash her
She was stuck-up and entitled. She deserved Jobs’s response.
I read the article. She was annoying. Somehow I think the CEO of a major company has better things to do than answer irrelevant questions.
Yeah, I read the article: “Her journalism professor had assigned her a story on a new initiative at her college to buy iPads for all incoming students. She wanted to get a quote from Apple about the use of iPads in academic settings.” The professor didn’t tell her to call Apple PR, and having researched this kind of thing myself, there is more than enough information on Apple’s view of iPads in academic settings available on the Apple website.
No one else is required to help her with her homework. If the source she tries to use refuses, she needs to find another one. If she’d taken three seconds on the apple website she could’ve found out the price of ipads and seen what the education discount is. She didn’t NEED a bulk discount price to take a stab at the amount and put it in her article. Steve Jobs is a dick but she whined at him and he’s under no obligation to either put up with that or acquiesce OR be polite about it.
Quite simply, the people who tend to accomplish big things (like run a big corporation or hold a powerful committee seat in Congress) are also the biggest A-holes on the planet. Some gain that position because we tend to view aggressiveness and initiative as positives (these can also lead to very reckless behavior); others become like this because money and power are alluring but corrupting.
Actually I think that it’s refreshing that a CEO isn’t so God damned politically correct and isn’t afraid to speak his mind.
Me too. And this J-student was pretty full of herself, and whiny, and unprofessional. Journalists get rejected in requests for interviews all the time. If she throws a hissy fit every time it happens she won’t last long in the field.
That’s why college is a learning experience. Also doesn’t change the fact that Jobs is an assclown.
But he’s also a very successful and rich ass clown so I don’t think he minds all that much.
Amen!
As long as new “iThing”s continue to be useful, people will buy them.
There are always alternatives to Apple’s shiny “iThingys”
“useful” isn’t a term that can be used in a sentance regarding any Apple product. unless that sentance is:
“This Apple product would have been useful 3 years ago when that technology already existed.”
How much do you look like the PC guy?
Feel better now that you’ve gotten that off of your chest?
P.S. – You should read the comment posted by “SolidSquid” — I’ll save you the link and just post it here. The OP wasn’t as nice as she makes it out to be. Simply because you “humbly” ask for something doesn’t mean that it matches the tone in which it should be presented: politely.
SolidSquid
09/21/10
“Mr. Jobs, I humbly ask why Apple is so wonderfully attentive to the needs of students, whether it be with the latest, greatest invention or the company’s helpful customer service line, and yet, ironically, the Media Relations Department fails to answer any of my questions which are, as I have repeatedly told them, essential to my academic performance.”
vs
“Mr. Jobs, I was wondering whether you would be willing to provide a comment for an article on Long Island University’s initiative to provide Apple iPads to all incoming undergraduates. Thank you for your time”
Yes, he was a bit of a dick in his responses, but considering her email to him accuses him of hypocracy and is laced with sarcasm, it isn’t really surprising that he didn’t see any reason to help her out. If she does lose her A over this, it should be for the lack of professionalism when contacting someone for information rather than for not having a quote for it.
I think replacing “ruthless” with “an asshole” in the last paragraph would be more accurate.
Ruthless Asshole fits perfectly
Haha, I read the official transcripts from their exchange. She was sending her e-mails from her Blackberry via T-mobile, which certainly didn’t endear her to the CEO of the company that brought us iPhone. Not too bright on her part. Perhaps she’s in the wrong major.
I was thinking the same thing. Perhaps if every message hadn’t been branded Blackberry she’d have received a different response.
I think this girl needs to get her act together.
CEOs aren’t there to coddle you when you don’t get what you want……….
Sometimes its just fun to go off on entitled little brats.
She’s in journalism.
Journalists generally attempt to find out facts. If they give up after the first try, they wouldn’t be very good journalists.
Did you read her email? This had nothing to do with journalism and was 100% about her and her grade. She says it herself…
“The completion of this article is crucial to my grade in the class, and it may potentially get published in our university’s newspaper. I had 3 quick questions regarding iPads, and wanted to obtain answers from the most credible source: Apple’s Media Relations Department.
I have called countless times throughout the week, leaving short, but detailed, messages which included my contact information and the date of my deadline. Today, I left my 6th message, which stressed the increasingly more urgent nature of the situation. It is now the end of the business day, and I have not received a call back. My deadline is tomorrow.
Mr. Jobs, I humbly ask why Apple is so wonderfully attentive to the needs of students, whether it be with the latest, greatest invention or the company’s helpful customer service line, and yet, ironically, the Media Relations Department fails to answer any of my questions which are, as I have repeatedly told them, essential to my academic performance.”
Leave the Apple part out of it for a minute. Expecting and demanding (and she did) that a multi-billion dollar company answer your specific question for your journalism 101 assignment is a pitch perfect example of entitlement. What he wrote was 100% true, just lacking refinement.
But she started by contacting their PR department. The email to Steve Jobs was an afterthought and she admits she was more venting her frustration at being ignored.
You’d THINK that Apple would think just a tiny bit harder: It took me 5 seconds to realize that the use of iPads in academic settings has been brought up a lot and a university actually wanting a massive quantity would be worth a mint. It’s not like it would take a huge amount of time. Just write up a few “The iPad is something colleges cannot function without” comments and send them whenever people inquire about this topic. I think that would make more sense than Mr. Jobs telling her to leave them alone. Whether it make him a jerk or not, now all the headlines are focused away from the multitude of uses for his products and more on him being petty enough to respond to frustrated students, effectively telling them to get off his lawn.
Well they’d know that was bullshit right off the bat. Of course they can function without the iPad.
I was about to agree with you and then I realized by ‘entitled little brats’ you didn’t mean Steve.
She didn’t sound too entitled to me. She’s a student in journalism – she could quite possibly be someone who reports on Apple, or Apple-related issues at some point in the near future (and perhaps via Television).
She can’t be the first person to ask this question – why not have a FAQ and refer her to it on their website? And instead of being a putz to someone who wants to potentially make you look good (who knows what her assignment could turn into – maybe some sales at that university? which could then spread)… just answer the frigging question asshole. Instead of spending the 30 seconds telling her to “leave us alone” – how about saying “Sorry that happened. Let me forward this to someone in PR”…
But no, he had to be a fuckstick…. I’m so happy that I gave up on Apple back when Jobs killed the Newton in his pissing match with Sculley…
“she could quite possibly be someone who reports on Apple, or Apple-related issues at some point in the near future”
And Apple has a history of being so open and welcoming with the media?
It’s not their job to hold her hand. The world is not going to bend to her every whim. She had numerous questions, all of which were insignificant and self serving. Persistence is great, but journalism 101, if you can’t get info from once source, you try another angle. You don’t keep stupidly banging your head against a brick wall. He taught her in a 4 sentences what her school couldn’t in 4 years.
What “hold her hand”? She wanted to ask a question about the use of the iPad in educational settings. Certainly Apple might have some info on this? I’m sure she’s not the first person to have come up with the thought.
So why not go right to Apple and ask the question? Yeah, the whole “my grade depends on it” thing is kinda inane, but honestly – when you’re in college – that’s your focus (well, one of them anyway).
That Apple decided to blow her off was silly. That Jobs had to be a dick about it was just stupid.
Apple charges a premium for their stuff. Part of that premium is the technology, some should be for premium customer service. So if some kid wants to ask you a question – answer the friggin question.
This ‘kid’ could someday be a reporter who remembers that you were shitty to her. Or she could be someone in charge of making purchasing decisions for a multi-billion dollar company and guess what Apple? You’re known to be dickish – but Samsung, with their Galaxy Tab was nice – maybe I shouldn’t put my ass on the line to choose Apple – because they might be dicks to someone who controls my job… Oh, where’d that deal go? To someone else? Why’s that?! Wonder what we did wrong…
Far-fetched? Perhaps, but why risk it and the bad PR to argue with a customer when you could give them a one-liner answer in less time than it would take to argue?
How about “Yes, we’ve given it thought, and while we can’t go into specifics, it’s being considered. Apple has long been supporters of education, and we plan to do so in the future. Thanks for asking.”
Marketingspeak, but it’s a fucking answer Jobs… not “boo hoo… leave us alone…”
She “could be” a reporter one day, but right now she’s just a brat.
i seriously agree. so if you cant get the CEO of a multi billion dollar company to respond to your request for a comment for a term paper that makes the CEO the bad guy? no entitled brat he is a CEO.
as an aside i think the ONLY reason this is news is because its apple and everyone hates/loves apple. can we cover issues about things that matter?
Given the general media’s preoccupation with all things Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan? No.
But that wasn’t her complaint? Her complaint was that the Apple Media Relations department wasn’t responding to a media relations situation.
Here needing a quote for a school paper isn’t really a media event (I’ll admit I did not read the article). The media department has a limited number of people and limited number of hours to respond to countless requests from legitimate publications. I can understand them not spending that time on a school paper.
i read the article and you’re right on. i thought jobs handled it pretty well, and i don’t like apple at all. he repeatedly said he was sorry and after several emails finally ended with “leave us alone” she says “Under no circumstances should a person who runs a company speak to a customer that way” and she’s right. he should have never bothered to respond to her in the first place.
She stopped being a hand model because she was tired of wearing gloves to bed. Sounds pretty rough to me.
I’m going to go ahead an agree with you on this one.
You know… As a CEO, It would have taken less effort to actually address the original email than to reply with such an uncaring attitude…
No kidding. She totally didn’t go about this the right way, but he would have looked a lot better to just respond with some one-line answer about hoping the products fulfill students’ needs.
He wouldnt have looked like anything had he done that. We wouldnt know at all. This gets him more press, and I think its hilarious and admire his blunt attitude.
IHere, she can quote me “Apple is very happy a university is buying thousands of iPads for their students. Hopefully they use them for more than porn and illegally downloaded movies and music”
Then he would have to answer every question that fills his inbox.
It’s easier to be labeled a jerk now and piss on one non-customer than to get overloaded and alienate many customers.
Sites are always posting flame wars between Jobs and others. His attitude just seems to encourage them even more.
(Honestly, I don’t care what Jobs does. I am a PC gal, regardless of his behavior to his clients or haters.)
No he wouldn’t have to.
Steve Jobs responsees are terse, but correct.
Chelsea Kate Isaacs is a spoiled, over-entitled little brat.
Regardless of whether or not the student making the requests is annoying, the responses may be terse but the tone is entirely INcorrect. This is what makes people hate the Apple attitude, which appears to be one that obviously comes from the top. You don’t treat a customer, or potential customer, with rudeness, unless you’re OK with losing them as such. Obviously Mr. Jobs doesn’t mind losing a customer, because that exchange was childish on both sides.
It would have been helpful to know what her requests of the PR department was, but in fairness to the student, she was asking the right department what Apple’s PR positions would be. If she’s not going to get a response because she’s not a “real” journalist, but a student, that’s one thing – however, it is pretty unprofessional for a PR department to simply ignore what are potentially valid PR requests (for whatever reason).
I can’t speak for the student in the story, whom I expect to be entitled and childish in her early twenties and in the relative comfort, safety, and un-real-world environs of a university, but Mr. Jobs’ responses are classic a-hole (and unsurprisingly, also what I expect from an exec at Apple).
no company EVER has to answer interview requests. she asking in effect for an interview. she really sounds like a pain and i am sure that having her as a customer would be expensive, every day getting constant calls to answer her question about whatever. if i owned a company that sold ANYTHING i would black list because she sounds EXACTLY like the kind of person that is more trouble than their money is worth.
She wanted a direct quote from the Apple PR dept regarding the idea of her University buying Ipads for students. That is NOT an interview. Steve Jobs could’ve just directed the email to the PR dept, or have given a simple quote like ‘students and ipads, great idea’ or ignored her. But taking the extra effort to be a jerk with more than one email exchange comes off incredibly douchey. And Jobs knowing full well that this would draw media attention, I question what Apple thinks of it’s customers.
Just don’t hold it that way
Came to say this. My opinion of Jobs has not changed a bit after reading that exchange. I do wonder why he doesn’t have a peon he can forward his unimportant emails to that can answer them for him, though. I’m sure he has more important things to do than answering spoiled brats’ emails.
welcome to Public Relations Disaster!
does not matter who it is… you don’t be an asshole to your customers / potential customers.
but the Cult of Apple will disagree….
Awwww, but he had a reason… she was sending her emails from her BLACKBERRY. Sssshhh, she’s the lowest member of society to him. Bring on cell phone apartheid!
Well, it IS a bit of a slap in Jobs’ face. If I were sending him email from my Android and expected a positive response, I’d turn off the “Sent from my Android” footer…
Oh, wait. I do that for all my emails.
While Jobs certainly didn’t handle this terribly well, neither did she. She comes off as a typical over-entitled brat.
No, just simply asking a PR department for a quote on a product doesn’t mean you’re going to get a response. Tenacity is part of being a journalist. Whining to the guy up at the top of a company isn’t part of it. I’d give her a C- at best.
Find me one person who WAS going to buy an Apple product, and now will not… and I’ll call this a PR disaster along with you! Aside from that girl, of course
Me! My mom and I were thinking of maybe getting iPhones in April when our current phone contracts ran out, but now there’s no way I want one.
The email was rude. I wouldn’t give her the time of day. He was doing her a favor by letting her know that responding to her questions is not their obligation. One entitled brat meets another.
As mentioned on Valleywag, the story that this student could have used is that she tried contacting the company six different times and didn’t receive a reply. She could have looked up someone’s email address/contact information within Apple and asked them, directly, what they thought. Why did she call Apple’s PR department, when Apple has an Education Institutions number? She could have spoken to someone who can tell her about the use of iPads in school settings, how colleges and students utilize them, why they should be used instead of laptops, etc.
Also also, she says that she’s a customer of his, but she sent her email via Blackberry. I’m sure she does use Apple products, but it would have lent more credibility to her statement if she didn’t have “sent via Blackberry” on her email.
That being said, he could have just ignored her email and not been such a jerk about it.
It was an assignment to write a news story, so chances are she would have been forwarded to PR anyway.
She might have been better off to quiz some local teachers who are into technology. Our staff would have talked her ears off……frequently, in this sort of thing, the local adult ed schools and university extension folks are way ahead of the K12 and college educators, since distance ed is pretty much the best way to get through to their students.
Then again, this got her 15 minutes…..
If he left her alone, she wouldn’t have learned the lesson of NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOU, LADY.
I’m sort of bugged how Steve uses the terms “we”, “us” instead of “Apple” or “I”. I guess it’s correct but it always hits me as being awfully close to The Royal We in tone when coming from a mere person and not a Press Release quote.
No, I really think he IS using it in the royal “we” context. He’s just that much of a jerk.
Jobs has been at Apple longer than anyone else there (save the token salary they pay Woz which means he’s still an employee), and is widely credit with bringing back the company from the brink of oblivion when he returned years after he was unceremoniously booted out. He is the company.
I don’t really care for him (still haven’t forgiven him for what he did to the Apple II series), but like it or not he is the company.
I haven’t believed that Steve Jobs used sjobs@apple.com for a long while now
How about now?
I feel the same, people have made so many fake stories revolving around Steve Jobs that I cannot take this story to be true until Apple admits to it, which they will of course not do if it were true.
Now would be a good time to point out that not everyone who uses Apple’s technology worships at the First Church of Jobs. I promise, not all of us feel compelled to have the latest iThing, and most of us can admit that not only is Jobs not our Dark Overlord, we think that he’s an asshole quite often.
Admittedly, the journalism student here was way out of line, and her emails did come across sounding like whining about the fact that she wasn’t going to get a good grade. Apple markets their technology to students. They don’t market any sort of service to help those users get passing grades beyond tech support and the essential service needed to keep the technology up and running smoothly. They are a computer company, not a paper mill. This girl was way, WAY overstepping her boundaries and showing a startling lack of journalistic professionalism, and is, quite frankly, a self-important, entitled asshole. I can understand why Jobs got bitchy with her.
That said, he IS the CEO of a massive technology company. You’d think that he would be able to craft a more professional response, even in the face of entitled, demanding whining. Being fabulously wealthy and having a hoard of people who think that you can Do No Wrong is no excuse for being a total dick. Maybe those turtlenecks are cutting off blood flow to his brain.
+1
Sometimes, in a little tiff like this, both parties are equally at fault. Jobs for being a bit terse (like so many IT types, and I am one), and the student for being over-the-top demanding. It’s a term paper, for goodness sake. You can demand stuff from mommy and daddy, but here is your first clue that the rest of the world doesn’t care as much about you. Lessons like this are why you go to college.
Waaah, I’m a snowflake and I might get a B! How dare you not help me, Steve Jobs! I’m going to hold my breath until you help me!
It’s Apple. They know best and are not to be questioned. Now shut up and keep buying.
Jobs is a dick. Whether the student is entitled to a response from PR or not isn’t the issue. Jobs the dick can still respond in a professional way, or just refer the issue to PR…or ignore it all together.
Why so many fanboys fawn over his every move is beyond me. He has a consistent pattern of being an egotistical, arrogant jack ass…
Apple makes products that appeal to people, and people buy them. Jobs can do or say whatever the hell he wants to, as long as sales keep growing. I’m sure he doesn’t care what anyone else thinks of him at this point.
The girl comes across as really whiney. Jobs is only saying that anyone would have been thinking in that position.
Just because you think something does not mean it should be said. There are certain codes of conduct that we are all supposed to abide by to help society work in a peaceful manner. Both individuals in this e-mail flame war failed at this, and therefore they resulted in making themselves look poorly.
Jobs didn’t fail at all. If she wants to be a journalist, she’s going to have to accept that people will hate on her. All the time. In fact, considering some of the rude responses I’ve received from lesser businessmen, he seemed to be going quite easy on her.
She didn’t contact him as a student or a customer experiencing a problem with his company. She contacted him as a member of the media with the audacity to complain that his PR department didn’t respond. For her term paper. So she could get a “good grade.” Waaaambulance.
Maybe she’ll think twice next time, before she assumes someone actually cares.
Jobs failed at being courteous and respectful in his response to the young lady. Regardless of what someone says to you, there is always a way to still decline a request (and even express displeasure) while still treating someone with respect. Instead of being the “bigger person,” Jobs decided to lower himself the manners and maturity of the student.
She sent the email using a Blackberry. Had she used an iPhone complete w/death grip on the other hand…
Someone alert the media. This must be the first ever sighting of a pretentious, 20-something college girl.
This is pretty big PR fail, too. Even the largest companies have huge PR departments that could, at the very least say something like, “We only respond to general circulation media. We will not provide a statement to you.”
It’s not that difficult! In fact, it’s PR’s job.
Apple has no canned response for journalism student for tier-four university program.
I hate the Apple PR machine, but Apple is right on this one.
Y’know, I think I preferred TechCrunch’s coverage of this.
I had a CEO tell me that Apple has a person that “unfires” people that Jobs fires and finds them new positions.
That reminds me of a sketch in Robot Chicken on the Death Star where Vader ‘Force Chokes’ some random officer. It turns out they just move him somewhere else and give him a fake beard. That way they get to go on living and Vader get’s to think he’s being ruthless and killing people.
this is beautiful its like when two stars collide and make like a supernova, yah its like that only with assholes
I was a little put off by her stating her grade would suffer without an Apple quote. Then I realized, this is the journalism STUDENT equivalent of “I really need a quote or my editor is going to kill me.” When you put it in that context, it seems rather normal. Journalists do what they need to do to get the quote for the article.
I hope in her article, she states “When reached for comment, Apple CEO Steve Jobs responded with ‘Please leave us alone.’”
She did get some pretty good quotes.
Or “Our goals do not include helping you get a good grade”. If the article is about educational use of the iPad, there is no better quote possible.
I would like to see/hear the communications that she sent to Apple PR. Did she approach it like this “I’m a Journalism Student, and I am working on a piece on the use of iPads and other electronic devices in higher learning environments and was wondering if Apple could provide a quote/statistics (whatever she was looking for)” or did she approach it like this “I am a Journalism student and I am working on a class assignment on iPads being used in the classroom, I really need to speak with someone to get a quote, and without it I will probably fail”. Her communications with Jobs is not what I would call professional or how I would expect a journalist to act, to me it sounds like a student expecting someone else to do her work for her which I suspect is why Apple PR did not return her calls. As Jobs said, their goals do not include helping a student get a good grade. A skill that a Journalist needs to learn is how to be persistent without being annoying, and figuring out what they need to say to get the scoop/quote/statistics that will MAKE the story. Seems like Ms. Isaacs failed in this area.
Either that or 50+ J-school students from LIU flooded Apple PR with requests and apple decided to say FU to all of them which is a very reasonable explanation and one that I don’t blame Apple for.
The emails are contained in the linked to story….
I think Rachacha was referring to the voice mails she left, not the e-mail exchange.
You know, this student was incredibly obnoxious — really entitled, naive, and inappropriately demanding. Jobs should have just ignored her, but she was really asking for it. I say good for him.
No one is pointing out the obvious here. Emails are almost impossible to verify unless all parties involved admit to sending them. This student admits that her grade “depends on” this quote (which strikes me as more than a little hard to believe), but if true, then she has a clear motivation for making this whole thing up. Yet everyone is willing to jump on the “bash Steve Jobs” bandwagon, and snark king Ben Popken’s undisguised hatred of Apple strikes again.
There, there. Nobody will take away your iPad.
Jobs’s warm, fuzzy personality is not exactly a secret.
I don’t think anyone here is Bashing Jobs’ response. I think the comments here can be summarized like this:
Steve’s responses are terse but true, and not something we would expect to see from a CEO (i.e. they are not politically correct, filtered through legal counsel and PR machine).
The student is a spoiled brat who throws a tantrum when she doesn’t get her way, and expects that by complaining and badmouthing Apple PR staff that the CEO might come back and say, Oh, sorry, we didn’t mean to cause you to fail, here is a Quote from the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company Hope you get an A!
Perhaps the general public hold Jobs to a higher standard as the older, more mature executive of a multi-national company compared with a young student who has yet to experience the real world, but a J-schoold student should be focused on ethics and fairness, and she has demonstrated that if she does not get her way she will run home and cry to momma as opposed to completing her assignment and including a quote from Apple as being “Leave us alone”. Take the quote you are given and turn it into a story!
Maybe he was having an acid flashback …
OK, so it’s an article about Steve Jobs, but their web site is broken on the iPhone (server cannot be found error when it redirects to mobile site). Are they doing that on purpose so Steve can’t read it?
Not an issue at all. Just go to http://valleywag.gawker.com/?qwr=fullsite and you get the full site on an iphone.
Thanks that is helpful, though not something 95% of us would know. Broken mobile web sites are a pet peeve of mine (thanks consumerist for _eventually_ turning off your automatic redirect to the mobile site after it stopped working). If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. We don’t need a mobile site, just give us what works
How does one define PR? PUBLIC relations, right? Not press relations. That means the department has a responsibility to address the questions of anyone who inquires. I think the PR department of a well-run company should have at least acknowledged the girl’s request, and the PR department of a very well-run company would have answered it. Apparently Apple, like so many other corporations these days, pays so much to its top executives that it can’t afford enough workers to respond appropriately to its customers. Yuck.
Technically, she had been contacting Apple’s Media Relations Department – if you read and believe her e-mails.
This student is a total douche. Who cares what she thinks? there’s a reason PR dept have limited capacity. it’s not there to help her out. She should grow up
I’m confused. If the article is about the iPad’s potential in the classroom, why not use this?
“Our goals do not include helping you get a good grade, said Apple CEO Steve Jobs”
You got a usable quote, and you got it straight from the top. What more do you want?
Ah! Unfortunately, that quote wouldn’t get her campus to provide the iPad she probably desires.
+1
“Our goals do not include helping you get a good grade”.
That’s a perfect quote. Apple’s goals are the most extreme vendor lock in we’ve seen in the history of personal computing and to gain more customers who never complain about how bad the koolaid tastes.
I’m not sure who is more annoying, him or her.
Don’t worry, people will keep buying Apple’s product. This sort of things won’t hurt Apple as a company and Steve knows it. He already has that reputation, people already accept it.
Some thins don’t add up.
http://www.newyork.com/pages/chelsea_kate_isaacs/ says that she is 22
Also says “said to be 1998′s most desirable hand model in the United States and Canada, according to Reuters.”
So when she was 10 she was the most desirable hand model?
OR she was not 10 at that time and so is not 22 now?
But 22 would be more like it for a college student.
“Long Island University senior Chelsea Kate Isaacs, a 22-year old former hand model, reportedly emailed Jobs saying that her journalism professor had assigned her a story.”
This isn’t the type of story that needs a deep internet investigation of. Pretty much steve jobs told her to jump off a cliff…but remember to buy an app for that before you do lol
Here is what I think the outcome will be:
1. Apple’s media relations department will contact her personally and help her out….not only with her project but give her an IPAD for the “misunderstanding”
2. Apple will continue to ignore it and make billions more.
Steve got pissed because the message was sent via a t-mobile blackberry instead of an Iphone…that’s the problem there lol.
Jobs should just have ignored her, too, taking the appropriate cue from his media relations department, which rightly pegged her as not crucial to Apple’s success. Bickering with her only turned a non-situation into one.
Maybe Jobs is addicted to irony.
Welcome to the “new economy”
Steve jobs is an ass………. If it was me and this kind of response was sent back to me (even not expecting one…) i would have marched myself down the university’s office that was considering this project and make one hell of a stink – one that would have gotten some press (good or bad) in both the university newspapers and maybe even local……
you don’t blow off a customer like this and expect no backlash
As an educator, I side with Jobs here. The student needs to find a different way of fulfilling the terms of the assignment and not expect that her need for a grade is the same thing as a consumer issue.
yes yes yes, she sounds like the students who e-mail at the end of term and say ‘well I came in late or didn’t come to class, but I need X grade in this class, so give it to me’. No one needs to do you favors for your grades, you just need to do the work.
I read the student’s letter and quite frankly, she’s doing herself no favors by making this public. She comes across as entitled and Apple has no particular reason to help her with her grades.
Ah Ha Ha! I love Steve Jobs and his response to the spoiled brat who thinks the world revolves around her little complaint.
wow, if every college kid didn’t have an ipod and buy itunes, then jobs would be out of a job
a little time out of his day of golfing isn’t worth the bad publicity
Awesome.
It took the CEO of an esteemed company to illustrate to this j-school student that she isn’t in the right field.
I guess there’s always marketing…
As an Apple shareholder, I give Steve Jobs carte blanche to be himself. He is, after all, responsible for Apple’s exceptional success. Anyone who wants to be offended by his email comments is just looking for an excuse to be a hater. The end.
She’s lucky he didn’t have any ninja stars…
Paraphrased
Student : I’ve called your PR department countless times, and left half-a-dozen voicemails. Why is nobody in your company doing their job and helping me getting a better grade?
Steveo : Our goals do not include helping you get a good grade. Sorry
Girl : This isn’t about my grades. I’m a customer… so why aren’t you helping me get better grades
Steveo : Nope. We have over 300 million users and we can’t respond to their requests unless they involve a problem of some kind. Sorry.
Girl : I am a customer… but my grades… Whaaaaaaaaaaaaargbgbblbblblbl
Steveo : Leave us alone
Personally, I think this is awesome… I’m a huge fan of keeping it real. Steve’s comment is honest. He responded like a human being, not some corporate, PC-brainwashed, muted automaton. She is acting like an entitled, whiney bitch that (based on her own-emails) is continuously harassing his PR department and then complaining to him that she isn’t getting any love back… he told her to stop wasting his time, and stop wasting his PR department’s resources.
My favorite part is the zoolander moment where she doesn’t seem to get the jist of his reply, and just rephrases her previous message…
Any other CEO of a multi-billion dollar company would either ignore you outright or have an automated response system send you a “we have received your comment and it is very important to us…” form e-mail. THIS is much better.
Continue keeping it real Steve!
// I don’t use any apple products… PC and android FTW!
This is the reply I wanted to write.
Stay classy, Steve. Stay classy.
[/sarcasm]
The girl is being a jerk. She’s trying to impose her ridiculous idea that a company has to answer her questions when they specifically do not and have no will to do so.
Steve laid out the reason for this as being that she didn’t have a problem (with one of their products) and she misinterpreted it as the problem being with her own grade. Annoying. I agree, leave Apple alone.
I am with Jobs on this one. She is doing a student project. And it is damn funny that he actually conversed with her wasting more time than it would have taken to answer her original PR question.
I applaud Jobs for telling the truth here. She is a student doing a journalism project. If her grade relies on a quote from apple, her teacher is a retard.
Apple does not have time to answer questions from every future unemployed journalist while they are still in school. She should have quoted something from the internet like everyone else.
Steve’s only mistake here was that he replied at all.
Clearly this girl has never had to do any actual research before, and believes that she is entitled to a press-release for her useless degree (Sorry sweet cheeks, your degree isn’t worth anything in 2010.)
Show me a professor who will say “Yep, you got an F because Apple didn’t respond to you…had they responded, your report would have been top-notch, A-quality!”
In my research, I’ve found that only about 1/6 companies PR departments will get back to you within a month. Most companies will respond within 3-6 months. Some don’t respond to all. (My experience comes from contacting aerospace parts/materials suppliers)
The student’s sense of entitlement was piercingly obnoxious.
It’s on the internet so it must be true.