David Kravets at Ars Technica:
A federal judge has ruled that Apple must defend a class-action trial, to begin in January, representing thousands of Apple store workers. The employees claim they had to spend as much as 20 minutes off the clock having their bags searched to combat employee theft—known as “shrinkage”—every time they left the premises.
A version of this policy reaches back to my time as an Apple retail employee from 2006-2008. Pre-iPhone, we weren’t allowed to bring in any portable Apple products, and cell phones had to remain locked in the break room. Once the iPhone was out, we had to still lock them up, but had to register our devices with the store. While it certainly was a pain to look for a manager before being able to leave, I don’t remember having them need to do cross-reference the serial numbers with our personal technology cards. As this entire process had to take place after clocking out, it could very often eat into a break.
I know why Apple does this, of course. At my store, we experienced shrinkage on a regular basis, once at the hands of an employee who slipped out numerous notebooks while faking transactions at the register. That said, there’s got to be a way to make things more efficient for retail employees who are just doing their jobs and want to grab lunch in a timely fashion.