We learned a few weeks back that the immaculate design of Apple’s outrageously expensive, glass-encased campus had one (minor!) shortcoming: Employees kept walking into the glass walls.
Apple was so concerned with aesthetics that it created a campus in which the automatic glass doors are virtually indistinguishable from the glass walls. Cupertino building officials warned Apple about this while the $5 billion campus was under construction (a contractor reportedly walked into the glass last year), and for good reason! The San Francisco Chronicle obtained incident reports and audio from at least three 911 calls made from Apple in January, after employees sustained injuries from smacking their heads on the glass. Here’s what we learned:
- All three employees were men
- It is not immediately clear to dispatchers where, exactly, Apple’s 175-acre campus is located. In multiple occasions, dispatchers were confused by the campus address, “1 Apple Park Way.”
- One employee likely needed stitches and may not have been fully alert
- Another injured employee deemed the incident “very silly,” and offered the following clarification to dispatchers: “I didn’t walk through a glass door. I walked into a glass door.”
- Apple should probably, maybe, do something about this?
Five billion dollars spent on frictionless design, and Apple still can’t do away with the friction of human error.
Read the full 911 transcripts here.
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