MacStories reports that Apple retail stores are holding all-hands employee meetings on Sunday, May 22nd. While it's not unusual for Apple to hold such meetings, the early timing of the meeting seems strange.
Store meetings at 7AM Sunday across United States. Unusual time. Expecting some announcement. All stores, brand-wide US. Don't know about other countries.
While there had previously been some speculation about some sort of 10th anniversary Apple retail event, we'd heard that this may simply be due to training.
Boy Genius Report also details some of the seemingly extreme measures:
- There's an overnight shift planned for around 10-15 individuals at each Apple Store to work from late Saturday all the way through mid-Sunday.
- During the overnight shift, it's going to be required that employees lock cell phones in the main office. They will also have to sign an NDA with Apple.
- There are a wide variety of roles, we're told, for the overnight shift. This includes all visuals staff, a manager, a business team member, a few Genius team members, one back-of-house employee, and a few generic Apple specialists.
- Apple stores have apparently already received hardware to install, and are expecting more hardware to come on Friday or Saturday. All materials that Apple stores have received have been instructed to be under lock and key until after close on Saturday night.
- Apple employees will be putting up black curtains at all stores so that people walking outside cannot see inside.
- Employees have had to download gigabytes of data from Apple corporate labeled, "training" in a password-protected zipped folder that won't accessible to managers or anyone else until Saturday afternoon.
- Lastly, all Apple retail stores have mandatory meetings on Sunday, May 22nd. Most meeting are scheduled for the morning, but there are evening meetings as well.
