Why Did No One At Apple Ever Want To Have Lunch With Steve Jobs?
A former Apple employee recounts the incidents, when employees were stuck next to Jobs only to be inquired over their work and performance.
By Sadho Ram — 02 Jul 2014, 03:55 PM — Updated about 10 years ago
Every kid who has gone to high school knows the social anxiety that comes with deciding where to sit in the school lunchroom
Do you sit with the jocks? The preps? The dweebs? Or will no one let you sit at their table at all, forcing you to do the worst thing possible: Sit all by yourself, alone?
cultofmac.comWhile most of us leave this problem behind us in high school, not Steve Jobs
During his lifetime, Jobs was a visionary, a guru, a genius and a mentor to thousands of Apple employees. But in the Apple cafeteria, he was the guy that no one wanted to sit with. But it wasn't because people thought he was a loser: They just didn't want to get fired.
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Speaking to Business Insider, David Black — a former senior consulting engineer in Java and WebObjects who worked for Apple for nearly 12 years— says:
"In the Apple Cafeteria, lunch was pretty much over within 15 or 20 minutes of Jobs entering the room. No one would fill the seats near him. Just because you wanted to be ready for that moment."
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It turns out that Jobs actually wasn't that much of a lunchroom tyrant, but he did have a dark sense of humour, and often asked employees what they were working on
Sometimes, that would just stress people out, afraid that they would end up with a bull’s-eye on their chest if they answered the question wrong.
cultofmac.comBut sometimes, Jobs would actually screw with Apple employee's minds. In a separate instance:
Jobs once asked an intern what he had been working on while in the elevator. He mentioned that he was doing QA (quality assurance) for a product. Jobs then asked him, "Why are you going down? You should be going back up to work."
"The kid completely went pale-faced," Black said. "And Steve said 'Hey, just kidding.'"
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However, this does not appear to be a problem that Jobs' successor, Tim Cook, has. In fact, individuals regularly pay upwards of USD600,000 to have lunch with Cook.
Back in 2013, a charity auction to score a coffee date in Cupertino with Apple CEO Tim Cook closed at a winning bid of USD610,00. Yes, that's more than a half million dollars for an hour of Cook's time. The estimated price was originally USD50,000.
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