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.
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).