While at Apple, Scott Forstall was a close buddy of late CEO Steve Jobs and he was in command of designing the software that operates on iPhones. Jobs has a prominently deserved status as a difficult individual to work with, but at the time of an on-stage discussion last week at the Computer History Museum, Forstall claimed that Jobs also had a huge sense of humor.
Apple is renowned in Silicon Valley for making its workers pay for food and coffee from its canteens, on the contrary to firms such as Google that offer food free of cost. But although the food was reasonably priced (almost $8 as per Forstall) Steve Jobs, the multi-billionaire CEO, still found a method in order for the employees to pay for it.
Here’s the story in Forstall’s words:
“He and I would go to the cafeteria at Apple all the time, and he would insist on paying. I was like, you’re paying me enough that I can afford the $8 lunch, but he’d always, if he got his food before he’d wait at the line for me to get up there and he’d pay. And he made it so you could pay with your [Apple] badge. So you’d come up there and you’d badge in, and it would be directly withdrawn from your paycheck. Somehow, I was like, ‘Why are you, really, go sit down, I feel like an ass when you’re sitting up there waiting for me and I can’t get any long-cooking food,’ and he said ‘No, no, no, this is great. I only get paid $1 per year. I don’t know who’s paying every time I badge!’ He was a multi-billionaire scamming Apple!”
This funny little story was only one of various never-before exposed tales that Forstall enlightened about working at Apple during the era of Jobs and the creation of the iPhone.