Macs traded for plastic surgery, hard drives used as skateboards and a shrine to an irate customer: Shocking secrets from ex-staff of America's most corrupt Apple store

• Store at NorthPark shopping center in Dallas, Texas
• Staff 'would break phones to see how many replacements they could get'
• Ex-manager gave plastic surgeon a sweetheart deal on computers in exchange for stomach-stapling procedure
• Workers built shrine in store room to a complaining customer 

Apple stores have long been regarded as modern bastions of technology staffed with sharp young problem-solvers eager to help a customer in need, but according to a shocking new exposé, all is not as it seems. 
A tell-all article has blown the lid off the dirty secrets of one Apple store at the NorthPark Shopping Center in Dallas, Texas.
Among the allegations was a manager trading heavily discounted Apple products to a plastic surgeon in return for a stomach-stapling procedure.

Rotten Appley: The NorthPark Apple store in Dallas has been identified as the location in an explosive expose

According to Gizmodo magazine, which interviewed two former so-called 'Genius' Apple employees, identified as 'Jake' and 'Ronald', behind-the-scenes at the store was a hotbed of corruption, drunkenness and out-of-control antics.
The former employees said that the regional corporate manager ran the store as if it was her personal playground.  

 

‘She was notorious for pulling favors for businesses in the community who didn't want to play by Apple's rules,’ Jake told Gizmodo. ‘She made quid pro quo an art.’
Eventually, the female manager was ousted for reportedly ‘unfair hiring practices,’ playing favorites, and ' questionable activities surrounding use of store services'.

Dark side: Former members of the Genius squad revealed that if customers were rude to them, they would get back at them by breaking their hardware

But management were not the only ones breaking the rules. Ronald admitted that he and his co-workers on the Genius squad would shamelessly exploit Apple’s once lax return and exchange policy to get new phones whenever they pleased by making false transactions.

Sales Queen: Ex-workers claimed that one regional manager sold computers at a sharp discounter to a plastic surgeon in exchange for a stomach stapling procedure

‘It bends my brain to know that, statistically speaking, it's harder to get a job at the Apple Store than it is to get into some Ivy League schools,’ Jake said.
‘Yet somehow they're staffed by some of the most inept people this side of mastering the ability to speak.’
Sometimes they would purposely smash their iPhones at alcohol-fueled parties just to see how many replacements they could squeeze out of the Apple stockroom. 
But it was not just the off-site parties where the booze flowed freely.
‘It's not uncommon for the Genius team to be drunk,’ Jake noted, adding that Apple employees working the night shift at a call center in a nearby town would routinely do cocaine on the job. 
Beside exploiting their company’s policies to score free hardware and working while inebriated, Jake and Ronald have revealed that members of the Genius squad would get back at particularly rude or annoying costumers by destroying their devices, simply because they were being 'a*******'.
‘Ive used someone else's hard drive as a skateboard cause he told the store I smelled,’ Ronald said in a text message.
And there was little the customers could do about their damaged property because the employees would give them a form to sign according to which they were not responsible for data loss.

Sign of contempt: The workers at the Dallas store created a shrine to the whining customers in a back room

In a supreme expression of contempt for Apple clientele, some of the Geniuses at the NorthPark location even built a shrine in a back room to whining customers.
Gizmodo has reported that since releasing the expose, several other former workers of the Dallas store, identified by the Dallas Morning News, have come forward to corroborate the claims made by Jake and Ronald, who are no longer employed by Apple.
Others, however, were quick to point out that the examples of irresponsible behavior cited in the article were an exception to the rule, and that most Apple employees love their job and treat their customers with respect.