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."

Providing an iPad to type messages on is a reasonable accommodation. Customers who don’t like it can work with another employee or go elsewhere.

But hiring a second entire employee who basically shadows you and does your job for you seems like a bit much.

Doesn't that make communication slower? When I want to buy something, I certainly don't want to start chatting on a tablet to get my point across. It seems like a poor choice of position for that employee.

Interacting with people with disabilities gives us an opportunity to think about how we can make society a little better not just for them, but for ourselves in the case that we become sick, or injured, or just live to be elderly enough that parts of our bodies have fulfilled their expected useful life and stop working.

I have near perfect vision/hearing/speech and no motor difficulties, but there are several accessibility features that I enable on my Mac and iPhone because they make it easier for me to do certain things.

Even outside the software realm, examples like adding ramps to entrances instantly makes life a little bit easier for people pushing carts/strollers, which at various times is a pretty huge part of the population.

I'd much rather fund social programs which just outright support people with disabilities (and I'd like such programs to be more robust and empathetic than they are today). Frankly, if you're not going to be able to do your job well in the first place, this works out better for everyone.

Consider the other perspective here: I'd posit that all else being equal, most people would rather not have to go to work every day, particularly if "work" is a crappy retail job. We force most people to work because their jobs benefit the rest of society, but if someone can't work in a way that helps others, why force them to do it? Because it's not fair to everyone else?

Because hard work is good for the soul? Screw that! Go read books, raise your children, live your life as best you can, and let the rest of us take care of you. If the situation were reversed, I'd expect you to do the same for us.

Couple of times I have been served by a deaf employee in my local Apple store, we typed sentences on the iPad. It was slower a bit but otherwise perfectly fine.

If this person wanted just money from social programs they would do that. But you could tell it was important for them to work, to communicate with other people, and have a sense of purpose. And it was my pleasure and privilege to participate in this, for these brief several minutes.

It might not have been the fastest way but it was definitely pleasant (2nd part of your criteria), for both of us.

Any of us could be disabled or our person may be a target for discrimination or worse.

Could be me.

And I make sure while it is not me I can increase the net happiness in the world.

Sometimes I want to zip in and out of the grocery store but there’s an old lady in front of me who wants to argue about an expired coupon and it takes longer than I’d like. Such is life.

A reminder to me that if I lost my eyesight, hearing, or mobility, I won't be left behind.

I did however cancel a £1000 order with currys because they didn't provide anyone to talk to - by phone, email or even text chat (which only worked on some browsers). The only form of communication was 'fill this form in to cancel your order'.

Fixed it, and maybe. A decline in customer experience provides incentive for Apple to optimize the slower customer service folks out of the picture.

Yes, there are human beings on the other side of our daily transactions that should always be treated with respect. However, these are transactions, not social calls.

I live 10 minutes away from an Ace hardware, 20 minutes away from Home Depot. I almost always go to Ace and pay a few dollars more because when I walk in the door, somebody immediately asks me if they can help me find what I'm looking for. They walk me to the isle and spend a few minutes discussing the various options. If I had to communicate awkwardly through a tablet, I'd honestly just spend a few more minutes driving and save the money.

Sales is a communication-heavy job. It's pretty common already to offer extra pay for bilingual associates. I don't see what the difference is here; nobody would hire me for a job selling in Mandarin, even though I could run Google Translate on a tablet.

I think this is the issue in a nutshell. And as a salesperson, you don't get to define the method by which customers want to interact with you.

They're the ones with the money. You're the one trying to get the money. They get to have you meet them where they prefer.

But isn't this exactly the customer behavior Richard Dahan was complaining about?

You have agency here; you could choose to shop somewhere else, where they would prioritize your retail experience by not hiring the disabled. By the way this would also make you a giant knob :)

Calm down. Breathe. You're buying something at a store, not performing surgery.

Five minutes of your time is not necessarily more important than depriving someone of their livelihood. If you were that important, you'd be driving an ambulance.

I'm stealing that line... thanks for the chuckle and snort on a Saturday morning.

Using an iPad/iPhone seems to be the standard Apple policy, but this employee objected.

Does it say anything about if his manager had penalized him for some customers not working with him? If management requires him to post the same numbers despite knowing that, I think that's a big problem. Otherwise, I'm not necessarily sold by his story here.

(I'm curious is customers still refused with an interpreter, too. That's also going to slow things down.)

Interpretation varies, but hiring another employee to translate for an employee seems to be beyond that standard to me.

The fact is, many jobs are out of reach for most people. Standard disability is only one of many aspects of a person that makes them unsuitable for a particular job. Personality, intelligence, type and level of education, or physical strength/capability are another.

Since I saw no defense of the interpreter, are you agreeing hiring an interpreter is not a reasonable accommodation?

I don't have an NYT subscription to see if there's more detail in there, but I don't necessarily take every complaint at face value. It wouldn't surprise me - since this person was there for 6 years - if other accommodations were provided that many people would consider "reasonable" and a sign-language interpreter wasn't actually necessary to perform the job, but there's just long-lingering bitterness over not getting precisely the accommodation that was desired.

Best to withold judgments until get more of the facts are revealed.

However, it came to light that their internal research found most people drink the coffee while driving. The primary reason has been speculated but of course never officially acknowledged as what you suggest.

It sounds like that might not be accurate:

>...In 1994, a spokesman for the National Coffee Association said that the temperature of McDonald's coffee conformed to industry standards.[2] An "admittedly unscientific" survey by the Los Angeles Times that year found that coffee was served between 157 and 182 °F (69 and 83 °C), and that two coffee outlets tested, one Burger King and one Starbucks, served hotter coffee than McDonald's.[37]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restau...

I'd like to note though that what ever the case, a beverage that she was expected to put to her lips managed to give her horrific burns. And there was, if I recall correctly, quite a few of the same case accident reports at Mcdonalds on record. She was the only one who ended up in high profile litigation though. I suppose my point is that she wasn't silly or unreasonable as the slow drip feed of facts led many people to conclude as they heard it.

The problem is costs. I wonder what people would say if you required mom and pop stores to have sign language interpreters? It would drive many out of business.

Now look at spiraling Medicare costs. We have similar expectations for the elderly and it is increasingly untenable.

We need a lot more automation to maintain or increase this level of social support services.

Another issue is what we classify as a disability. As another commentator mentioned, what about lack of strength, intelligence, etc? There is a vein of American culture that is trending that way. It basically spreads the costs to other parts of society, directly and indirectly. Tricky since most people are actually disabled temporarily or permanently in one way or another. Color blindness, myopia, bad hearing, on crutches from tearing an Achilles, etc...

1. Text is a common medium for communicating with the deaf. Younger deaf people in particular will be fine with this

2. VRS is also an option, but it would be awkward in that scenario. VRS is subsidized by the government. VRS predates Facetime but both have been complimentary for deaf people

3. It wouldn’t be a huge leap to expect Apple to run their own VRS-like service optimized for deaf retail employees and situations, considering they make Facetime, and counting all the other anecdotes of interaction with deaf people here. The same should be true for any huge retail operation - Macy’s, Home Depot, Costco, etc… If you go to a hospital they already have something like this.

I also worked a few years as a "sales associate" (retail guy) at RadioShack.

I don't think these two mix well in practice. People are moody, in a rush, and don't generally have accessibility or the needs of others in mind when going to a store.

Trying to communicate when you're also trying to convince someone to give you money is paramount. Any hiccups and both sides get frustrated which just sours the whole thing.

This is more of a reflection on people than it is retail, deafness, etc. It's a terrible reality but it's reality.

It's a really, really tricky, touchy and all around uncomfortable problem to solve.

Maybe it would be harder with a deaf person vs. blind. Maybe I’m just an outlier here. Dunno.

The interpreter has a job already - it’s to interpret. If they wanted to be an Apple specialist I think they would have applied for that job. Interpreting and doing the job of an Apple specialist are not the same thing. It’s possible the interpreter would be a terrible Apple specialist.

Why not just hire an interpreter? It’s a win-win-win: a deaf person had a job, an interpreter has a job, deaf customers are better served, hearing customers are better served.

And to top it all off Apple still makes a ton of money! What does an interpreter really in the grand scheme of things when you’re a trillion dollar company like Apple? What’s the cost of an interpreter really to them? I get this idea that corporations are profit maximizing entities, but we’ve really taken it a bit far when we can’t pay a little extra for common decency even when record profits are coming in. Like, maybe if times were tough we’d have a different conversation, but Apple isn’t exactly hurting for cash here. We’re not even asking for decency, just to follow the law. They’ll bend over backwards to help out a thug like Putin when his lawyers send a takedown demand, but to do a solid for their deaf customers and employees… well they can’t be bothered.

The message it sends is “you’re so incapable that we need to hire another person just to make up for your deficiencies”. And if it becomes a norm across the corporate world, companies will become even more reluctant to hire deaf people if they know that they are getting one employee for the price of two.

It's my understanding the interpreter was requested. I don't think that's the message being sent here. The message would be more like "we comply with this reasonable and lawful request because it makes you, our valued employee of 6 years, even better at their job".

And you're not getting one employee for the price of two, you're getting one employee and a one assistant. Executives get assistants all the time and no one blinks an eye. What, are they so incapable of scheduling their days themselves?

A good question to ask Apple. Why are they hiring such people and then ignoring their workplace demands that would allow them to do thier job satisfactorily? Is there some federal program that allows them to claim some tax benefit by hiring the disabled? Is that why Apple doesn't care about them or their job performance?

How does the incidental learning work with the iPad? Are they experiencing equal employment opportunities as others? How can they contribute during the meetings without an interpreter? Should our expectations of them be lower because they are disabled?

Apple does pretty well in the accessibility department, they could use someone demonstrating it.

You could view it as a full employment plan.

The next logical step is to have a deaf man who only signs in Irish Sign Language. The first interpreter converts that to ASL, the second into spoken English.

By the end of the last interpreter, the guy at the Apple Store would get an order of Granny Smith apples and his vintage Mr. Coffee machine would be repaired by a passing street musician.

1. It’s the right thing to do.

2. If Apple can afford multi-billion dollar toilet shaped offices, they can hire interpreters.

I have huge sympathy for human beings who are unable to work, and a humane society should provide for them, but I don’t see why it falls to Apple. This kind of populism (“person X or company Y should be arbitrarily forced to pay for thing Z, ultra vires, because they can”) feels like a lazy way to avoid solving a deeper societal problem which goes well beyond this one person.

And they are beholden to the public that allows them to keep that money. The government should absolutely be doing more to help disadvantaged people (and everyone else). That doesn’t make Apple a good place to work. They already have exploited child labor to build their fortunes. Apple is rotten to the core and this is just another example.

That’s a given though. My comment was about how HN jumped on this aspect of the story as it loves to punch down.

It's a completely different thing to expect a company to hire 2 people (with 2 full time salary and benefits) when 1 will do. Especially for a low skill job that has no real shortage of potential workers.

For one of the most profitable companies in the world, this doesn't seem outrageous (1 extra employee per store, maybe full time, likely not) especially given the fact that Apple doesn't support right-to-repair they will naturally have more foot traffic than most similar businesses.

The law is not going to work if it says “the most profitable companies need to pay for 2 people when 1 will do”. And then how does it work if profits fluctuate?

It is simply much easier for the government to pay to accomplish whatever goal it wants, and at the same time does not obfuscate the price of achieving that goal. If the government wants to help deaf people be employed, then the government should pay an interpreter to help the deaf person be employed.

Is that not much simpler than arbitrarily requiring various other entities to comply with nebulous requirements and then spend resources policing them?

Of course, it is cheaper for the government to do the latter, and then spend more money policing them since in the former situation, it is easy to project how much the government will need to spend, and in the latter, the government can use some bullshit assumptions to make up whatever budget they want.

Examples: People at road construction sites holding "Stop" signs, packagers in supermarkets, money collectors in toll booths (even before electronic devices, just using a machine was easily and cheaply possible and frequently and successfully used elsewhere), and a few other jobs that appeared to be unnecessary and purely intended to keep some people busy.

Things like that, and how the defense budget is actually used as a jobs program in large parts, were quite eye opening for me. I came from former East Germany and we always thought US as the most capitalist of all places, but when I first visited for a few months of travel not long after reunification I was very surprised to find some things that we in East Germany even used in jokes comparing East and West, and now I found out that e.g. "employee of the month" (with a special parking lot no less), that we thought was a typical socialism thing, and we even had a joke about that which implied and presumed that something like that could never exist in a country such as the US, was something they actually had. Also, the reverence to uniforms (military and police especially) was very East German.

I think the US is confused about how capitalist they really are. Under the hood they try to solve the same problems as everybody else and come up with very similar solutions, only that they need be be branded differently because you can't do any "socialism" openly.

I think the ultimate truth is that we humans are all just super fucking tribal. For all our chest thumping and moralistic justifying about how our philosophy and way of life are better than everyone else, it really all comes down to "I want my tribe to be the most powerful" and we'll sacrifice any and all of our ideals to make that happen. Or maybe more accurately, those tribes that actually hold strong to their ideals don't have what it takes to become the most powerful.

How that game between tribes plays out is a never ending cat and mouse game of shifting narrative, demographics, environmental conditions, technology, and tribal affiliations.

"Capitalism is better than socialism/communism" was only ever a narrative to justify why we in the west were top dogs getting fat and happy while those in the east were struggling to survive. The truth of why that happened is a lot more complicated.

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.

People feel more comfortable in groups and more pressured one on one. The interpreter is seen as neutral but an upstanding person. Grouping the three presents a natural barrier which gives the customer space. If the interpreter can fullfill the wingman role by neutrally suggesting to go forward with a purchase to someone on the fence you have a real business.

The way you seem to be looking at it - yes, I mostly agree that the company should not outright be expected to essentially hire another fully time employee to work as the deaf employees interpreter. But in the 21st century, in the developed country that is the United States, I very much feel as if there should be some way to quickly and reasonably pair this employee with a student(s) of a local sign language or whatever school/program in which they come and go assisting in translation services for part of school credit/curriculum/outreach. Anybody learning a language will tell you there's nothing better than real world experience.

This gives the disabled (in the form of being deaf) person a meaningful occupation/independence, and students an assured way to get important experience. However, since the US is a highly capitalistic machine, we seem to not have reasonable things such as this set up on any meaningful scale.

Lots of downvoting. Do HN users have beef with disability accomodations or something?

If one must keep that in mind, may one ask what definition of "welfare state" has applied to the USA since its founding?

I'm sure there's plenty. From the Federalist years (George Washington onward) to modern times, the federal government assumed both the responsibility and the management of the US resources as the political winds found necessary. To what degree, has only grown over time in spurts and fits.

I’m going to assume that this is a serious question and try to quickly answer it in good faith.

A quick search finds these figures [0] from the Congressional Research Service.

“CRS identified 83 overlapping federal welfare programs that together represented the single largest budget item in 2011—more than the nation spends on Social Security, Medicare, or national defense. The total amount spent on these 80-plus federal welfare programs amounts to roughly $1.03 trillion. Importantly, these figures solely refer to means-tested welfare benefits. They exclude entitlement programs to which people contribute (e.g., Social Security and Medicare).”

Social Security and Medicare are massive entitlements beyond welfare spending that are all but sacrosanct in US politics, and that’s just federal spending.

Looking at total social spending as a share of GDP [1], the US is in line with Australia and Canada at 2016 numbers. The difference between the US at 19% and the Netherlands or Japan at 22.5% or Germany at 25% is one of degree, not of kind. This is especially true when you consider that in absolute terms the difference is even smaller since the US has considerably higher GDP/capita than those countries.

[0] https://www.budget.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/CRS%20Report%20-...

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-long...

It is a serious question and I was hoping for something closer to the late 1700s vintage. I'm well aware there is a vast welfare system in place today.

I was caught in a weak moment I guess.

“Since it’s founding the US has never been a welfare state in any sense. Change my mind!”

> If one must keep that in mind, may one ask what definition of "welfare state" has applied to the USA since its founding?

The contention was definitely whether it has been a welfare state ever since its founding. No judgement though - the English language is terribly poorly designed, so I can totally understand how you read it that way.

Go read about the history of Mormons and Utah. The reason the surrounding borders are so weird is because the U.S. gov essentially tried to thwart a larger land grab by the LDS

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Deseret

Their tenants were largely about taking care of each other.

So, in short - there were a lot of welfare states, mostly segregated by religion. As time went on, they mostly morphed into an encompassing welfare state.

Do you disagree? HN is definitely a tough crowd when it comes to ideas of helping the less fortunate it seems. Hopefully your future physical therapists won't charge too much when your ruined backs and wrists are hurting, despite the fact capitalism says "why shouldn't they reap your pains for all they're worth"

Certain groups choosing to take care of their members is not a welfare state so I'm not too sure what you're getting at there.

For what it’s worth, you almost certainly mean ‘tenets’. I don’t know why, but this malapropism has become increasingly common. Tenants are people who rent a property.

Both words come from the Latin tenere, to hold. A tenant is someone who holds a lease. A tenet is a belief that is held.

How is it limited?

Why must it become inaccessible to people with bad eye sight? My feelings aren't that fragile

How familiar are you with the deaf? If this was a lifelong affliction they (likely) won't verbally communicate and even if they do it's not something that can be parsed clearly enough for retail.

Its not unreasonable for Apple. Tim Cook could personally, out of his own salary, pay the salaries of every Apple employee in New York. He could give them all a 200% raise, and he'd still make twenty times more than ICU nurses who work 20 hour shifts to save his life if he ever needs it.

As an employee, it would help me feel pride to contribute toward a company that is willing to not just meet the law, but go beyond it and provide valuable and gainful employment for people like Richard. As a customer, it would make me proud to walk into an Apple Store and work with someone like Richard, to see that Apple were willing to pay an entire second salary simply to be accommodating. Comparatively, the salaries of an entire Apple retail stores' worth of employees is exactly the same as you accidentally dropping your change at a register, a penny rolls under the checkout lane, and you say "nah its not worth it".

Now, the reality of the situation is that, Apple Corporate would probably be fine with this, but the real problem is with this Middle Manager. To be clear, it reflects poorly on Corporate, and its their responsibility to set terms and culture to ensure Bad Store Managers don't pop up. But, they will. What matters is Apple's response, not necessarily the history of what happened (though, six years is a very long time).

Please stop pretending that you do.

Hint: the vast majority of his compensation is, and has always been, via stock grants.

You do understand that, because Apple is a public company, all of this information is literally public knowledge, right?

If you'd like to argue that stock grants are not part of a person's salary, that is a reasonable interpretation of the definition of "salary", but hardly relevant to the broader point, which is clearly not to assert that Timmy should open up his checkbook, but rather to illustrate how incredibly inane it is to suggest that a few hundred bucks a week for an hourly interpreter means anything at the scale Apple operates at.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-highest-paid-ceos/

Apple has 4,291 employees in the entire state of New York [1]

That's $61,500 per person.

The average salary for an "Apple Genius" (one of the people who work at apple stores?) in New York City is $53,230

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28573768

[1] https://www.apple.com/job-creation/

[2] https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Apple_Genius/Salary...

And that's without taking his performance into account, which is, of course, obviously the best performance by any CEO in the world.

So I'm pedantic and an asshole? Fuck that. Two can play at that game: you're a lazy jerk who paints sloppily with a broad brush.

Given that equating "salary" and "total compensation" is a reasonable interpretation, and by the context the talk was about front line apple store workers rather than high level developers, the figures add up (and then some)

I'm making no judgement on Cook's compensation or value, just confirming the numbers, but you seem to take that as a personal attack.

As for you pretending to be shocked that I considered your comments a personal attack, um, er, uh, you called me a "pedantic asshole". I think that qualifies.

It also changes the argument meaningfully in a second way: liquidity. Tim Cook can't just go sell all that stock right now, since that would cause a rather big panic and also rob him of a lot of its value. Which means he could not actually pay all those folks' salaries.

Whether my point is "interesting" is up to you. Whether it's factual isn't. It's factual.