Change can bring with it a certain brutality.
You might be happy with your world at a certain point. That happiness might last for years.
Then slowly, creepily you discover that world is gone and the new one feels rancid with injustice.
I judge this from the pained words of a current Apple store employee who isn't named Boris. (I agreed to withhold his real name.)
Boris claims -- in his store, at least -- that things have taken a turn for the worse. And, as far as he's concerned, this really isn't the Apple he joined many years ago.
"Store leaders and senior managers benefit from metrics, but employees see no benefit. There's no holiday bonus and no incentive. And as for promotions, they're a joke," he told me.
You might think this is fairly standard fare for so many businesses. Stay in them long enough and you'll see the principles that made you stay there erode like, well, faith in most institutions these days.
This Apple store employee, however, believes there's a specific reason for the new, new, ugly world: Apple's enthusiasm for building its services business and the local management's methods to kowtow to that enthusiasm.
As the company shifts away from being the iPhone company, its services business has become increasingly important. At the last earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed record numbers[1] from the add-ons sector of Cupertino's money haul.
What this looks like at store level -- at least according to my whistleblower -- is a touch ugly.
"Management has their own agenda and is extremely superficial in relation to employees. The past month