Apple terminates employee for allegedly helping a customer with a data transfer outside work.

[kQuote03]

Summary

• Ted Hodges, a writer at LowEndMac, has published an article where they accuse Apple for terminating them for allegedly helping an elderly friend with a data transfer between 2 iMacs.
• 2 weeks later they were approached by their boss (who knew of the ordeal from an unspecified source) and Mr. Ted admitted to doing the data transfer where they were laid off 2 days after the initiation of an investigation.
• Ted has posted the article 6 months after they got terminated "thanks to covid".
• Ted later describes their distaste towards Apple and announces that they would go Apple free.

 

Quotes

Quote

..I decided to help an elderly friend with a data migration at home ... but my friend didn’t want to leave both of his machines with Apple for 3 to 5 days in order for them to do it.

Quote

..2 weeks later I was approached by my boss.  Someone told him that I had helped a friend with his computer.  I told him that yes I had in fact helped a friend with a data transfer (something Apple does for free) and that I had helped him on my own time.  He told me that I had just admitted to a major conflict on interest, and that an official investigation in to my actions would now start, two days later I was suspended.

Quote

Six days after that I receive a letter in the mail informing me that my actions were in violation of Apple’s business conduct policy, specifically their conflict of interest policy, and that my services were no longer required.

Quote

Apple is a company that holds itself out as a company that cares; that “Thinks Different” ... I can tell you that based on my final experience with Apple that they are anything but open to those with new ideas or those who go against the status quo.

 

My thoughts

First off, I sympathize a lot with the writer, however I must point out that there are many things that would let you go "Hmmmm...."

 

Obviously the first thing that sticks out is the timing of this article, right when Apple is at it's lowest PR wise, chugging it as "Covid gave me time to think about it" is a convenient excuse.

 

Second off, discussion towards this article has been rather negative on sites like reddit, it maybe the nature of the subreddit this is currently being discussed at but I didn't think that it would get such reception regardless.

 

Thirdly, the writer provides 0 evidence of the termination or even them working at Apple, so I would be REALLY cautious.

 

Finally, the article seems to throw a surprising amount of shade towards Apple, going as far as recommending competitors such as Spotify instead of Apple Music.

 

Sources

https://lowendmac.com/2020/dear-apple-your-services-are-no-longer-required/

https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/ic79ff/dear_apple_your_services_are_no_longer_required/

 

Edited August 18, 2020 by kQuote03
spacing

[mr moose]

As always, and as cruel as it sounds, we must be extra vigilant when listening to the story of someone who was laid off.   

 

If it was unfair is there an arbitrator he can go to in the US or are there no rules in regard to unfair dismissal.  And if so did Covid prevent that from happening? I understand that covid has prevented a lot of things from happening (e.g you can;t et your learners permit in victoria until next year even thought he application and administration can be done online).

 

So many questions.

 

 

[The_russian]

My opinion is either some key information was not provided, or the information was falsified or completely made up. Why would helping someone on your own time be considered Conflict of Interest? Especially if the service you are doing is done for free by Apple, it’s not like you are taking a money-making opportunity away from them.

[kQuote03]

1 minute ago, mr moose said:

So many questions.

 

 

I defos agree ::::/

 

 

2 minutes ago, mr moose said:

If it was unfair is there an arbitrator he can go to in the US

Yes, in fact the writer (ironically considering what's happening now) could even sue Apple. I'm not exactly familiar with US law but I've seen so many scenarios where this has happened and that was the outcome.

4 minutes ago, mr moose said:

And if so did Covid prevent that from happening?

As I do not live in the US I can't provide an answer, but I wouldn't predict that covid would prevent such a thing.

[kQuote03]

4 minutes ago, The_russian said:

My opinion is either some key information was not provided.

I'm currently of a similar opinion, my only gripe is that (as I've previously mentioned) the writer provides no evidence in the article. I'm sure they worked at Apple (I mean 13 years is nothing to scoff at) but again, evidence.

[Donut417]

6 minutes ago, mr moose said:

If it was unfair is there an arbitrator he can go to in the US or are there no rules in regard to unfair dismissal.  And if so did Covid prevent that from happening? I understand that covid has prevented a lot of things from happening (e.g you can;t et your learners permit in victoria until next year even thought he application and administration can be done online).

 

Yeah he can contact his state government. Or he might have better luck with the NLRB. If that was the reason for dismissal Apple screwed up and will probably be forced to take him back and or get fined. Of course the person let go will have a target on their back if they get rehired. 

[kQuote03]

1 minute ago, TheBritishVillain said:

Keeping in line with Apple being a bit mean, was Steve Jobs really as much of a dick IRL as he appeared in the film adaptation? 

He was quoted saying "I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's to right this [android] wrong."

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, TheBritishVillain said:

Keeping in line with Apple being a bit mean, was Steve Jobs really as much of a dick IRL as he appeared in the film adaptation? 

According to workers and many anecdotal yes.  And to be honest it really wouldn't surprise me if he was,  his personality type, drive, and ambitions and the strict product language from the company all point to a narrow mindset. 

[zeusthemoose]

I very much doubt this story. As someone who just did a data transfer between two imacs a few weeks ago, I can personally say that the process for transferring from one imac to another is very easy. If you have a backup in the cloud, you select that option. If you have a timemachine backup, plug in the drive and it goes from there. If you have the other imac on the same wifi, there is a specific option and it does it automatically (like how you can do it with phones and ipads).

There is nothing they could have done that would in any way be some kind of Apple secret or anything that Apple would consider wrong.

[TetraSky]

Sounds strange to me. Why would they fire him... for transferring data from one macbook to another? Sounds like the simplest of things to do.

Is file transfer somehow magic for Apple computers and only the Apple Store is allowed to do that? (Shouldn't be considering icloud backups and what not)

Considering they also mention it being a "free" service that they offer, I'm not sure why it would be a conflict on interest either. Really makes you wonder where they found out about it, too. (Did they talk about it at work and someone ratted him out ?)

 

If true, it's extremely shitty behavior from Apple to fire someone for this.

[mr moose]

Maybe the back up contained trade secrets from apple, maybe he was a leaker, maybe the person he did the backup for was blacklisted for being an apple hater on reddit (secretly using a mac).

 

 

 

[Orangeator]

Yeah something is real fishy about this article. When I first read the headline I thought it meant transferring secure data from Apple's servers to a 3rd party, instead its a simple "help the grandparents" task. If true, this is bad on Apples part. That said, I believe there is either more to this story that is not being told or that its not true at all. 

[AnonymousGuy]

There is some key information missing here.  How does "I helped my friend with a data transfer" trigger that coworker to run to management to tell them about it?

 

I agree with this guy in the Reddit comments:

 

Quote

My guess is OP used some internal tool to help the friend out and it triggered a security alert of some sort.

 

You don't get fired from a Top 50 company easily, he did something that was so egregious it was vetted by HR, legal, management, etc and they decided to fire him.

[kQuote03]

1 minute ago, Orangeator said:

When I first read the headline I thought it meant transferring secure data from Apple's servers to a 3rd party, instead its a simple "help the grandparents" task.

Noted! Headline changed, thanks for your input.

 

[DrMacintosh]

Nothing about what happened is very clear. Did the person set an appointment with Apple to do the job and then the guy told them that he'll go over to them outside of work hours? If so that's totally a legit firing offense that I could see. 

 

If it was just the author doing tech support for a family member/friend, there is no conflict of interest, because it would not be any of Apples buisness. That leads me to think that the guy is leaving out some key information to make it seem like he's the victim. 

[Donut417]

7 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

If so that's totally a legit firing offense that I could see. 

When employees are off the clock, that gets them in to the sketchy zone. 

 

Back in 2016, employees at a Sports bar were fired due to shit talking on social media because the business owner didn't take out the correct taxes and they owed. A customer joined the discussion. They were promptly terminated. They complained to the National Labor Relations Board. They found it as an illegal firing. The business asked for a second consideration. Again it was ruled an illegal firing. It ended up in court. The Judge said it was an illegal firing. Based on that case, this could be interesting. 

 

The Article in question is "Employees Have the Right to be Disloyal and Use Vulgarity in Social media posts about their employees" It was published in the Management Report Vol. XXXIX, No.1 in January of 2016. This was an article I used in my last semester at school. 

 

If I were the employee I would complain to the NLRB. At the very least they may go out to bat for the employee. 

[Trik'Stari]

26 minutes ago, Caroline said:

Even using the toilet is considered a susipicious activity by the morons at HR.

That's valid for any company, not just Apple.

HR is a parasite on the underbelly of all corporations. Unfortunately it's there to fight off other parasites.

 

Am I the only one laughing at the fact that it apparently (can someone confirm this?) that it takes Apple 3-5 days to take care of a simple data migration?

[Roswell]

The “friend” was probably just a customer and they got fired for conflict of interest/non compete.

[Kisai]

2 hours ago, The_russian said:

My opinion is either some key information was not provided, or the information was falsified or completely made up. Why would helping someone on your own time be considered Conflict of Interest? Especially if the service you are doing is done for free by Apple, it’s not like you are taking a money-making opportunity away from them.

As always, consider the source.

- claims to work for Apple, or formerly work for Apple, provides no evidence

- claims termination via email, shows no screenshots.

- makes unverifiable claims that other employees can verify

Come on dude, at least produce a photo of your shirt.

 

See the thing is, usually employers let people go for two prime reasons:

- the employee is bad at their job

- the employee breaks rules/policy with impunity and without reason.

 

Other reasons include layoffs, store closures, business needs changes and so forth, but typically you'll see these stories in the news BEFORE the action.

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, Trik'Stari said:

HR is a parasite on the underbelly of all corporations. Unfortunately it's there to fight off other parasites.

 

Am I the only one laughing at the fact that it apparently (can someone confirm this?) that it takes Apple 3-5 days to take care of a simple data migration?

You know what's funny. That's how long it takes to migrate data on a Windows machine without SSD's. 1Gbit = 125MB/sec and about the same speed as the highest end 7200RPM drives. So it takes 16 hours to transfer the data without an intermediatary, or 32 with one(that isn't a SSD) With a SSD, you need both machines connected by 10Gbit, but is slower than a NVMe drive.

 

Like today it took 3 hours to transfer 80GB on a windows machine. Those mechanical laptop drives suck, a lot. If I had to transfer the entire 500gb drive it would have taken 18 hours.

 

[Trik'Stari]

5 hours ago, Kisai said:

You know what's funny. That's how long it takes to migrate data on a Windows machine without SSD's. 1Gbit = 125MB/sec and about the same speed as the highest end 7200RPM drives. So it takes 16 hours to transfer the data without an intermediatary, or 32 with one(that isn't a SSD) With a SSD, you need both machines connected by 10Gbit, but is slower than a NVMe drive.

 

Like today it took 3 hours to transfer 80GB on a windows machine. Those mechanical laptop drives suck, a lot. If I had to transfer the entire 500gb drive it would have taken 18 hours.

 

So glad my company doesn't do machines with Mech. drives anymore. They stopped using those a year before I started working there.

 

Also super glad for an environment in which we can just move the drive to a new system without reimaging lol.

[Tellos]

I suspect this was a guy trying to give a customer an exception to help them. But this is precisely why we as employees usually won't when we tell you we will get fired for breaking policy WE AINT FUCKING KIDDING. @mr moose Nope in all likelihood since he was fired for breakign company policy he'll be denied unemployment too. This is really really why shouting at people to do what their told not to is a bad idea. And I promise you if this got out and is true it was allowed to so it'd keep others in line. Remind them that company policy trumps you being nice.

[GoodBytes]

Assuming it is true. In my book, the manager probably wanted to fire him regardless, and like any employer who wants to fire someone, they'll find whatever detail as a valid reason. That said, again, assuming all of this is true, he knew his contract.. or at least he should have read it, to know. Now how did the manager know? To me, the "friend" probably went back to Apple store to complain on his work, or the friend of a friend wanted the same preferential treatment, and did a scene at an Apple store and given out names.

 

Now I don't think it is true. Else the fact that you can't help someone outside of work hours would be something that would already be talk about. I mean Apple hire A LOT of people for its stores and such position is a high turn over job. It would already been mentioned if that was the case from people who rejected to sign the agreement, and those who left their job. It has yet to be the case.

 

[Master Disaster]

Yeah, this has to be nonsense. An employee helping out a relative outside of work hours is nothing to do with Apple. It's much more likely this dude was doing it on the side for a fee (to skip the wait), they found out and rightly fired him for it.

[Donut417]

1 hour ago, GoodBytes said:

Assuming it is true. In my book, the manager probably wanted to fire him regardless, and like any employer who wants to fire someone, they'll find whatever detail as a valid reason. That said, again, assuming all of this is true, he knew his contract.. or at least he should have read it, to know. Now how did the manager know? To me, the "friend" probably went back to Apple store to complain on his work, or the friend of a friend wanted the same preferential treatment, and did a scene at an Apple store and given out names.

 

Now I don't think it is true. Else the fact that you can't help someone outside of work hours would be something that would already be talk about. I mean Apple hire A LOT of people for its stores and such position is a high turn over job. It would already been mentioned if that was the case from people who rejected to sign the agreement, and those who left their job. It has yet to be the case.

 

The article is poorly written. Doesn’t provide an area where this takes place. Labor laws differ for each state. Non compete clauses are not valid in all states or are very limited. It all comes down to the state.