Apple is rarely on record discussing company strategy, direction or goals. They tend to let the products demonstrate what they are about. There have been a number of times that Steve Jobs (and now Tim Cook) has slipped little bits out though, and they always paraphrase down to something like:

Put the end user first.

Like so much about Apple, it is amazingly simple and impossibly complex all at the same time. It can be complex to develop around, but at retail it usually means a couple of things. Training and empowerment.

Today I was at my local Safeway, getting some items from the deli. I found a company that is going the opposite way with things. The couple in front of me in line had to leave the deli and stand in a standard cashier line because they had a case of soda and bag of chips to go with their fried chicken. They asked why they couldn’t check out here, as it was only them and me in line and the deli. I was even being helped by another employee at the time.

It’s a new corporate policy, if you have non-deli items I cannot ring you up at the deliPatient Safeway Employee

After hearing this conversation, I asked the employee helping me with my own order about it. He confirmed that this was a new policy handed down from high above. Service at the deli had experienced some number of issues with customers bringing large sets of non-deli groceries to the deli cashier. Rather than training and empower staff to handle this situation in a manner appropriate to conditions, management decided to castrate their employees and put a policy in place that will not be applicable 99% of the time.

By pushing this policy down, management has told staff “You are not capable of handling basic customer service, we do not respect you.” I can’t help but feel like this is the kind of decision made by someone that has never met their customer and does not care about developing a long standing relationship with them.

I find it very weird that I found myself thinking about Apple retails stores after this experience. I’ve seen Apple employees make horrible short term business decisions (honoring long expired warranties for example) in order to foster long term relationships. They do this because Apple trains the hell out of them and gives them the power to make those types of decisions.