After being Browettized, Apple Retail touts numbers

Last week, ifoAppleStore‘s Gary Allen reported on “a series of recent administrative moves to reduce the number of Apple retail store employees [that was] attributed to Sr. VP Retail John Browett.”

Citing “numerous tipsters,” Allen reported that recently Browett had “ordered store management personnel to reduce the number of employees. The first reports of cut-backs came from the UK, but the reports later spread to the United States and other countries.”

Browett’s actions included:
Cease all recruiting and hiring events
Make no promotions
Immediately lay off newly-hired employees who are still on probation
Reduce available hours for part-time employees
Reduce or eliminate available overtime
Lay off or fire employees who can only work more than 32 hours a week and not part-time

Apple Senior VP Retail: John Browett

Within 24 hours of Allen’s report, Dow Jones Newswires‘ Ian Sherr, citing “two people familiar with the matter,” reported, “John Browett, who took the reins of Apple’s retail stores in April, said that the company had been trying a new staffing formula for its retail stores, leading some employees to see their hourly shifts cut and retail locations to be understaffed. This happened for a few weeks before the company decided to revert to its older system, hoping to rectify the problem.”

“He instructed leadership teams to tell employees, ‘We messed up’” according to two people who were aware of the communication, which also stressed that while shift schedules were affected, no one was laid off. He also wanted employees to know that it was hiring new staff, these people said,” Sherr reported. “Apple acknowledged the retail staffing changes. ‘Making these changes was a mistake and the changes are being reversed,’ said Kristin Huguet, an Apple spokeswoman. ‘Our employees are our most important asset and the ones who provide the world-class service our customers deserve.’”

Today, we get some numbers:

“Apple opened its 374 and 375 retail store worldwide this weekend in Canada,” Jim Dalrymple reports for The Loop.

“According to Apple, the company has seen almost 300 million worldwide visitors so far in its fiscal 2012, which started in October 2011,” Dalrymple reports. “To give you some type of comparison, by July 2011, the population of the United States was estimated to be 311 million people.”

Dalrymple reports, “50,000 people get serviced at a Genius Bar around the world, every single day.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take:

Browettize
Brow ett ize [brau-eh-tize]
verb (used with object), Brow ett ized, Brow ett iz ing

to monkey with success, usually in a cheap and ignorant way; to reinvent the wheel; to fix what isn’t broken; to screw the pooch; to attempt to empire-build with disastrous results, then face widespread public humiliation

brow ett i za tion, noun
brow ett ized, un brow ett ized, adjective