A recently published article on Reuters gives an interesting, albeit slight look at what Apple retail employees get in terms of hands on with the products. Without worrying much here about giving a spoiler, it should be described more as a hands off. Did anyone really believe that Apple employees got to play with new things like the iPhone and iPad well in advance.

The article is an interesting read and gave goodies such as;

“We haven’t seen it; we never do” before a product is launched, said one employee, who asked not to be identified because workers are barred from speaking with the media. “Every store employee I know, including the managers, they haven’t seen it.”

and

“There was really no word on anything,” said another former store worker of the iPhone launch. “We saw a video of the keynote, and that was basically all you knew.”

That said, on a more personal level, I can say that Apple has an interesting set of workers, and I speak from experience. I used to do telesales for Apple, and that contract was not even through Apple. They contracted me from a third party company, and I worked from my home office. Yup, I answered 1-800-MyApple sales calls from my house wearing my PJ’s.

More shockingly, I can say that I was one of the precious few that had any Mac, iPod or iPhone experience. Most of my “co-workers” were PC using workers who were answering calls and could have cared less about Apple.

But going further, I was not even allowed to use my Mac to answer calls because the call software that I was required to use was PC only.

In short, we had a group of sales agents selling products that most have never given a second thought about and never saw in person, never mind touched or used.

As far as the new products, because these employees were home based and were not into Apple culture, most found out about new products after they were on the Apple website, and that is where we were told to get our info from. Our team leader used to send screenshots from the Apple Store as product information.

But enough of my story, check out the full read over on Reuters.