14 DAY TRIAL // A worker at Apple’s flagship retail store on Fifth Avenue and 59th Street in Manhattan, NY, reveals to a local newspaper that the facelift commissioned by Steve Jobs two years ago translated into a sloppy renovation job.
New York residents had to fight some heavy rain yesterday but, even so, there were as many as 15 customers in the landmark Apple Store on Fifth Avenue at 8 a.m.
It was around that time that a deluge of water came rushing through the ceiling, flooding the store.
“It’s because of the construction they did last year on the roof,” the worker tells the New York Post.
Steve Jobs, Apple’s late co-founder, commissioned a renovation of the store’s iconic glass cube in 2011, not long before the pancreatic cancer he had been fighting for a decade claimed his life.
The facelift was done in November, and Apple lifted the cloth off an all-new cube which not only looked better, but also promised to be more durable.
As it turns out, the workers contracted to do the job carried out some sloppy work.
“They didn’t do it right,” the employee says. “There are large flat stones up there [that you walk across as you go into the store]. And with the heavy rain this morning, [the water] came through.”
A customer who was in the store at the time of the flooding is quoted as saying, “I was down there at 5:45am because I had trouble backing up my computer and everyone started yelling.”
“There was a leak then–boom–the whole thing opened up out of the ceiling. Then everyone started scrambling, moving tables…It didn’t look like there were any electrical issues otherwise they would have evacuated the store,” the customer says.
It appears Apple will need to commission new renovations to the store’s structure.