The launch of the iPhone 4 was Apple’s most successful product launch ever. That’s great news for the company itself, however the real heros of the day are those employees that had to work the retail end to make the launch successful. Pre-order lines wrapped around malls and shopping centers, and the lines for the non pre-orders were every bit as long. Employees had to break the bad news and cut people off when they ran out of inventory, and they had to handle the unhappy and argumentative customer.
With inventory severely constrained, Apple could not even reward employees with an iPhone 4, though they were allowed to pre-order one. Now we are hearing that Apple will pay out a small bonus to those employees who worked at least 12 hours on the iPhone 4 launch day. This of course would be paid on top of the normal pay plus whatever overtime the employee may have earned.
Sadly for the employees the bonus income, like any other, is taxable which will probably result in the employees actually seeing about $120 or less. That is unless Apple pays the bonus in cash, and relies on the employee to report it on their tax information next year. [ifoAppleStore]
