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Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

nytimes.com

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Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#11

Post by daenz »

imgabe wrote: post #8

> Richard Dahan, who is deaf, said he had struggled at his former job at an Apple Store in Maryland for six years because his manager refused to provide a sign-language interpreter for him to communicate with customers, which federal law requires under some circumstances. This just doesn't seem like a reasonable accommodation for a retail job. Your whole job is to communicate with the customers. If you need to hire a…

Speaking is only a small part of communicating. A sign language interpreter is just the person's "voice" but their approach on how to treat a customer is still theirs, not their interpreters.

EDIT>> For those missing my point. If Chris Voss suddenly needed a sign language interpreter, he'd still be incredibly valuable for his ability to negotiate. A person's skills in communication aren't solely tied to their ability to speak.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#12

Post by nvahalik »

daenz wrote: post #11
imgabe wrote: post #8

> Richard Dahan, who is deaf, said he had struggled at his former job at an Apple Store in Maryland for six years because his manager refused to provide a sign-language interpreter for him to communicate with customers, which federal law requires under some circumstances. This just doesn't seem like a reasonable accommodation for a retail job. Your whole job is to communicate with the customers. If you need to hire a…

Speaking is only a small part of communicating. A sign language interpreter is just the person's "voice" but their approach on how to treat a customer is still theirs, not their interpreters. EDIT>> For those missing my point. If Chris Voss suddenly needed a sign language interpreter, he'd still be incredibly valuable for his ability to negotiate. A person's skills in communication aren't solely tied to their ability…

Have you worked in retail sales?

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#13

Post by diebeforei485 »

imgabe wrote: post #8

> Richard Dahan, who is deaf, said he had struggled at his former job at an Apple Store in Maryland for six years because his manager refused to provide a sign-language interpreter for him to communicate with customers, which federal law requires under some circumstances. This just doesn't seem like a reasonable accommodation for a retail job. Your whole job is to communicate with the customers. If you need to hire a…

It's unclear from the article, but there are plenty of roles (eg. if you work at the Genius bar, etc) where it doesn't make sense to hire an interpreter.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#14

Post by Flatcircle »

madrox wrote: post #10

I don't believe Apple or secrecy is the story here. I think the real story is how the pandemic + slack has changed corporate politics. It used to be that most corporate concerns were raised through HR or the management chain, and power ultimately rested with the executive. Now, Slack means it's much easier to put anyone on blast, and it's much harder to control the narrative. Combined with the pandemic, where all soc…

Bingo

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#15

Post by dstaley »

imgabe wrote: post #8

> Richard Dahan, who is deaf, said he had struggled at his former job at an Apple Store in Maryland for six years because his manager refused to provide a sign-language interpreter for him to communicate with customers, which federal law requires under some circumstances. This just doesn't seem like a reasonable accommodation for a retail job. Your whole job is to communicate with the customers. If you need to hire a…

The ADA already requires Apple Stores to provide interpretation services or other reasonable accommodations for customers, so it's not much more of an ask to provide those for employees as well.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#16

Post by majormajor »

imgabe wrote: post #8

> Richard Dahan, who is deaf, said he had struggled at his former job at an Apple Store in Maryland for six years because his manager refused to provide a sign-language interpreter for him to communicate with customers, which federal law requires under some circumstances. This just doesn't seem like a reasonable accommodation for a retail job. Your whole job is to communicate with the customers. If you need to hire a…

I bought an iPhone from an Apple Store employee who couldn't speak but used a phone to communicate with me by typing out their messages. It was perfectly fine.

I'm a bit surprised speech to text these days wouldn't basically take you as far as you need to go for a deaf employee.

That said, if you take away jobs with a large communication component from the deaf, that rules out A LOT. I think reasonable accommodations should be provided, versus saying "most jobs are unreasonable for you to have."

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#17

Post by dandotway »

imgabe wrote: post #8

> Richard Dahan, who is deaf, said he had struggled at his former job at an Apple Store in Maryland for six years because his manager refused to provide a sign-language interpreter for him to communicate with customers, which federal law requires under some circumstances. This just doesn't seem like a reasonable accommodation for a retail job. Your whole job is to communicate with the customers. If you need to hire a…

+1 As a society we want to do all we can to accommodate the handicapped so they can work, and many deaf persons are extremely effective lip-readers able to handle retail customer interactions. If Richard's lip-reading isn't up to the job, a non customer facing role would be better for Richard, either that or have Richard do email and message chat customer interactions that are compatible with his deafness.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#18

Post by adoxyz »

imgabe wrote: post #8

> Richard Dahan, who is deaf, said he had struggled at his former job at an Apple Store in Maryland for six years because his manager refused to provide a sign-language interpreter for him to communicate with customers, which federal law requires under some circumstances. This just doesn't seem like a reasonable accommodation for a retail job. Your whole job is to communicate with the customers. If you need to hire a…

Common sense feels very uncommon these days.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#19

Post by majormajor »

madrox wrote: post #10

I don't believe Apple or secrecy is the story here. I think the real story is how the pandemic + slack has changed corporate politics. It used to be that most corporate concerns were raised through HR or the management chain, and power ultimately rested with the executive. Now, Slack means it's much easier to put anyone on blast, and it's much harder to control the narrative. Combined with the pandemic, where all soc…

I don't see it. The most disgruntled people I worked with in the past kept most of their griping off of slack or IM or email because they suspected it was logged.

Is constant complaining over lunch really less effective than constant complaining in DMs? Or, if it's large channels with lots of participants - what stopped those channels from happening before? Is the idea that people who would've whined over lunch to a small group are now recruiting many others to channels?

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#20

Post by jimsimmons »

madrox wrote: post #10

I don't believe Apple or secrecy is the story here. I think the real story is how the pandemic + slack has changed corporate politics. It used to be that most corporate concerns were raised through HR or the management chain, and power ultimately rested with the executive. Now, Slack means it's much easier to put anyone on blast, and it's much harder to control the narrative. Combined with the pandemic, where all soc…

This is why all tech companies are against WFH. They realise that their game is weak without posturing, optics, name-dropping, overt extroversion and all else they've mastered to rise up.

Kinda reminiscent of what social media did to mainstream media --- everyone realised they were being fed a narrative and regimes changed throughout the world in an anti-establishment wave

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