Edible Apple

Ah, Apple Geniuses, the last bastion of help when your Mac is on its last legs or simply acting up. But who are these mysterious men and women, often donning blue shirts, and helping out the Apple masses?

Well, is it any surprise that Gizmodo, of all sites!, got its hands on the training manuals Apple uses for its Geniuses?

From banned words to little psychological games, the handbook, so to speak provides an interesting glimpse into the psyche of the folks on Apple’s front line of retail.

Dubbed the Genius Training Student Workbook, Gizmodo reportedly got its hands on the most up to date version of it and so lets take a gander.

The manual could easily serve as the Humanity 101 textbook for a robot university, but at Apple, it’s an exhaustive manual to understanding customers and making them happy. Sales, it turns out, take a backseat to good vibes—almost the entire volume is dedicated to empathizing, consoling, cheering up, and correcting various Genius Bar confrontations. The assumption, it’d seem, is that a happy customer is a customer who will buy things. And no matter how much the Apple Store comes off as some kind of smiling likeminded computer commune, it’s still a store above all—just one that puts an enormous amount of effort behind getting inside your head.

Here’s how Geniuses can gauge how a customer is feeling at any given time.

And this is actually interesting that Geniuses are forbidden from using phrases like “bomb”, “crash”, and “hang.” Instead they’re directed to use words like “unexpectedly quits” or “stops responding.”

Also, remember that your computer doesn’t have a bug, but just a little “condition” or “situation” that needs some attention. No big deal!

Head on over to Gimzodo for the full run-down on this training manual expose.