“The other day a friend of mine mentioned that our local Santa Monica Apple Store smells bad. Like body odor,” Rocco Pendola writes for TheStreet. “Particularly in the morning at the entrance.”
“A simple Web search reveals that this problem is not exclusive to Apple Santa Monica. At least not historically. Most reports of a stench permeating Apple retail are from the pre-2013 period,” Pendola writes. “In fact, my unscientific, Google-fueled sample revealed that a majority date back to the 2008 to 2012 timeframe.”
“You would think if the presence of what even Santa Monica Apple Store employees I spoke with define as B.O. has been a recurring problem elsewhere, management in charge of retail operations would have taken steps to safeguard future stores, particularly the brand’s most important ones,” Pendola writes. “But, of course, after Ron Johnson left for J. C. Penney nobody, other than the underperforming John Browett (who lasted six months), was officially in charge of Apple retail for an entire year. Maybe job one for Angela Ahrendts is to address this known issue.”
Pendola writes, “I call it a ‘known issue’ because I spoke to two Apple Store Santa Monica employees this week who confirmed, without hesitation, that the store, at times, does indeed stink.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Browettized.
We know California has a never-ending water supply issue, but, sheesh, bathe people! At least use some deodorant/Antiperspirant (the real stuff, not that “organic, all-natural” crap that doesn’t work, either). And, no dropping by for a spare Lightning cable on your way home from the gym, either!
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “JES42” for the heads up.]
Been to the Santa Monica store many times. Only thing I smell is that new idevice smell
The ghost of young Steve Jobs.
You beat me to that!
Time to invite Ghost Hunters or Ghost Adventures!
*SNAP* You two beat me to it! I too suggested Ghost Hunters further down the thread. ‘The Ghost Of Sam Smelly Geek’ is my name for this phenomenon.
BO is Job 1 for Dame Angela overseeing a global operation? I doubt it.
Some of the original Apple stores used to have a button in the managers office that released an apple (fruit) scent.
I had an employee once about whom several other employees complained regarding body odor. The employee in question was a vegan, and the other employees attributed this employee’s odor to his eating habits. I don’t know if it was a factor or not, all I can tell you is that I was not in a comfortable position at all as the employer. As far as I know, they don’t make stinkometers, or any other measuring device that can be used to prove that the problem is in fact real, and not a manifestation of some inter-relational problem between employees.
Knowing a number of vegans, I seriously doubt what this person ate had anything to do with their body stink. Using non-functional deodorant is far more likely. (We carnivores are far more likely to be malodorous than vegans, sad to say).
And, as ever, there is the possibility of simply not bathing, known as the French Syndrome. 😉
If it’s thought that Steve can resist dropping in and overseeing just because he’s dead, think again! 🙂
If only he’d been properly embalmed.
The Santa Monica store is located on a pedestrian mall that has more than its share of homeless population. The smell of urine is not unique to the Apple Store…I’m sure more than a few stores on 3rd Street have to contend with urine odors from the homeless who don’t have access to public bathrooms at night.
When I lived in New York, many of the subway stations had the same aroma wafting through most mornings, and for exactly the same reasons. And don’t even get me started on the alleys in Chicago, especially those behind pubs and bars.
Being from Chicago, I can definitely confirm the piss stench permeating from our streets and alleys. It smells worse than “Sex Panther”
After coming out of the New York City subways even Apple retail stores smell much sweeter. Practically everything stinks in Manhattan so there isn’t much difference wherever you go. It’s a multi-cultural city where immigrants think they’re living under the same poverty-filled conditions they came from and don’t bother to bathe or use deodorants. Anyway, I hear some cultures don’t believe in bathing because it weakens the immune system or something.
As far as the Apple stores go, I’d say the whole Apple franchise is beginning to rot internally. It would be so easy for Apple to install air purifiers at each and every store. Even in my house I have some battery-powered Glade automatic dispensers that puff out air freshener every so often. There is no reason for Apple stores to have a bad scent no matter what of the amount of traffic. Setting up a decent HVAC system shouldn’t be that much of a difficulty for a company of Apple’s wealth.
Whoever is now in charge of Apple’s retail outlets should look into this problem and come up with a solution as soon as possible. Too many people are finding fault in whatever Apple does. Apple’s reputation is being completely ruined at every turn thanks to wet noodle CEO Tim Cook.
In my case I don’t bathe because of our city’s fluoride infested waters.
Exactly what I was going to say. Every morning, every sheltered doorway in downtown Portland smells like urine, which as it ages begins to smell like BO. I know this because I had to be on the job at 6 am, and in order to pay only $10 a day for parking (instead of $18) I parked about 6 blocks away from work and walked.
This is not urine, and it’s not homeless. It’s in the store, and it’s there at opening. If you are the first person in the store in the morning, you smell it. And while it’s stronger near the front of the store, you can smell it throughout. I mention it to the employees every time I walk into the store and they are all aware of it. The old Apple store, which was two blocks up and had MORE homeless people nearby due to the proximity of the McDonald’s Dollar Menu, never smelled this way.
After they have the front doors propped open all day, it gets better, but it’s still there. It’s something in the store, and it’s not the homeless.
So it’s probably not customers either. Sounds like it may be something environmental in the store itself. Builds up overnight and disappates with airflow.
By the way, the MDN comment stinks.
I bet it has to do with plastic used in the store. I am mainly thinking of the MacBook G3’s that smelled that way after a few years for no reason other than a chemical reaction the plastic had with people’s skin oils or something.
So far you’re the only one who has got it right. My 4 year old MBP smells of B.O. After being used for a few hours around the palm rest area.
iBook G3 for sure, I have my cousin’s old one with dead hard drive in storage… Meant to disassemble the iBook to get the drive out and maybe replace it but the BO smell is so overwhelmingly obnoxious I can’t work on it inside the house at all and will have to wait til spring.
My 2006 MacBook is also a little stinky with the same odour after turning it on after weeks asleep or shut down. Not as bad but still…
are we the only one’s who recognize this as the problem?? I don’t think it’s the stores. I think it’s certain products. In the metal or plastic combined with the heat.
I was going to posit that it’s probably the glue they use in the furniture or something. There was some kind of rubberized plastic that used to be used for wiring insulation that as it aged under certain conditions began to smell like vomit. Never will forget my experience with that.
Long long ago apple store had aromatizers. I know I worked at R016. They stopped using it for some reason. Newer stores didn’t have them. When we’d come back after a break it would smell a little like a barn :-/ Lots of people not a lot of hygiene.
I worke with someone in the NY Soho store that reeked of garlic. It was so bad I had to keep moving away. and when I would move away- he would move forward .Couldn’t wait to escape
Paper/wrappings from China like drywall from the same country. It’s in the water that was used to make the paper.
Um …. Ew!!!
You will not find this issue at a Microsoft Store!!!!
(Of course you’d actually need people in the store first … Bazinga!!)
Burn!
I wouldn’t know. My closest Apple Store is a 2 hour drive from here!
Next stop for Rocco Pendola: penning his next piece in human excrement. Do you think young Rocco sat at his typewriter as a child fantasizing about the day he’d get to write about smells in the entrances of technology retailers?
Expect the upstairs neighbor to continue hearing Rocco get drunk and break things on a nightly basis or to hear a single gunshot in the middle of some night soon.
And then smelling something like BO in a week or 2.
It’s Rocco and TheStreet. He’s back to his Apple bashing and couldn’t find anything else to write about. He’s a hopeless fudster like Enderle and Dvorak.
correcto mundo.
There is an infamous type of plastic that, when aged, will give off the stench of an old geezer’s butt stink. It is a pliable/bendable plastic I have found is commonly used for box fan grills. The stink his horrible. Overnight, the plastic would just sit in stagnant air. The venting stench would therefore build up in one place until someone opens the doors in the morning.
Either than or that store is being haunted by a particularly smelly geek ghost. I’ve known of people who, for gawd knows what reason, can’t sense their own stink and don’t commonly bathe. In previous centuries we might have suspected they came from France. Urban rumor has it that such people continue to stink after their demise. It’s time to call Ghost Hunters.
Hmmmmmmmm. So you’re familiar with that old geezers butt stink? Just ahhhhhhhhhh well ahhhhh, oh never mind. Have a nice day.
For those who complain of excessive body oder in Apple stores, please hang out in Microsoft Stores in order to introduce your own body odors into those normally depopulated outlets.
Stores with no body odor are either propped up Socialistically or are about to close from inadequate customer activity.
If in fact Apple at one time deployed deodorizing machines, perhaps it stopped because some chemically-sensitive customers had dermotological or other kinds of medical reactions. For example, a friend is sensitive enough of artificially introduced odors, that must avoid breathing odors from all popular soaps and toothpastes, kitchen detergents, industrial solvents and cleaners, toilet papers with ink designs, and his wife’s beautifiers and deodorants.
So, no, bodily oder is not necessarily from the unwashed as the author haughtily implies. And, if some are in fact are unwashed, the author should apologize for blaming those who have no shower facility for not washing in the way that the author demands.
I worked at an Apple store for 5 years. (2008-2013) The odor was one of the main reason the store was kept as cold as it was. It’s very difficult to have a place with as much traffic as an Apple store has and not have an issue with odor, but the cold helps. The A/C broke two or three times during my tenure, now that was body odor.
This is actually something that occurs at every Apple store I’ve been to since the iPad was released.
The store gets more traffic than a place that size normally gets. Add all the wood and the smell will linger.
I’m not the only one who has noticed it either. I’ve friends who joke about Apple stores smelling like ass.
I cannot help but laugh and SMH at the stupidity of bloggers. Is it possible that they actually believe no one was in charge of Apple Retail after Ron Johnson left, except when John Browett was failing? So what, the entire Apple Retail division ran amok, headless, directionless, so much so that it’s managers and employees couldn’t even clean the store?
The ultimate in stupidity. Like Ron Johnson issued weekly emails to Apple Retail managers and employees, reminding them to bathe, or clean the tables and devices, or turn down the a/c so people wouldn’t sweat so much. Unbelievable.
Former Apple Store employee I know says:
They do smell.
It’s BO.
It’s not the customers, either.
They would have hygiene talks as a staff.
Maybe they need to dole out a few more shirts. The RDF was strong in there. 😉
Considering the majority of people that use apple products are hipsters, it probably is the customers.