When our Apple Store in our mall was new, it was this big thing that everyone had to go see. I think this was 2005, so I was fifteen, and I remember one of the first times I was ever in there just being basically a tech tourist, it was summer and they were running a summer camp program for kids in the store (which they still do, it’s day camp and it’s really cute). One of my brother’s friends from his class at school, who I knew casually but who was always very nice and I liked her, so happened to be in the camp that day and we said hi to each other and she showed me the movie she was working on on her circa-2005 iMac. She was twelve, I was fifteen. After that, we kind of got to know each other a little bit better: she loves Coldplay too, etc etc. But that was almost kind of how we met outside of just seeing each other around school. 

Today, that same girl is the one that basically got me hired at Apple—she’s been an employee there for about a year, and I sent her an email once I got out of the dumb cast in October just asking how she liked it there and if things were good, because I was thinking of applying. She sent me a huge, novel-length, me-like email about everything that was so nice of her to do, and ended it with saying that she’d put in an employee referral for me, which put me in a much, much smaller pool of applicants (we had 6 people with employee referrals in my store’s hiring group, and 700 applications of just everyone else), and I think that’s how I was able to stand out a bit more and ultimately get hired. I only remembered that we basically met in that store seven years ago the other day and started up a small kind of friendship, and now we’re coworkers there. I know I ascribe way too much meaning to small things, but in this case I just think it’s kind of cute. It’s one of those moments where in 2005, I would have liked to have a five second glimpse into the future in 2012 when we’d both be working there together, me BECAUSE of her. I would have found that pretty cool, I think. She’s working tomorrow and I want to ask her if she remembers that initial meeting at all. 

PS: I’m probably going to forever talk about Apple like it’s a huge, meaningful cult now. I’ve totally drunk the kool-aid outside of one or two things that you can probably figure out, and this job means a lot to me even though from the outside it just seems like retail in the mall.