Report: 5th Avenue Apple Store Has Had Bedbugs For Weeks

BEDBUG WARS 2069

From subway squirrels to bodega cats to bag dogs, there is a wide-range of wonderful NYC wildlife for locals to fall in love with. But when it comes to the absolute worst creatures living in NYC, there is only one candidate: bedbugs. And their latest alleged appearance? The big Apple store on 5th Avenue.

The Post reports today that the store has been dealing with an infestation all weekend, and that workers told them bedbugs may have been there as long as a month.

A bedbug was reportedly spotted in the manager’s office on Friday, prompting employees to get the heck out of there. "It was just mayhem," an employee told The Post. "There was a mass exodus…employees were freaking out they felt really unsafe and management kept giving them the runaround." Staff were ordered to double bag their belongings in plastic while a "bed bug sniffing beagle" (ROSCOE??) was hired to take on the case.

The store, which is open 24/7, 365 days a year and rarely shuts its doors, closed for six hours during the overnight hours on a weekday last week for a "water leak." One worker told the tabloid, "People came to work and didn’t even know the store was closed, there was no notice." Last week, a warning tweet sounded the alarm but did not attract much attention:

Other employees said the problems started several weeks ago, when a table on the second floor was "cordoned off" because a bed bug was found there. "No one could go to that table but it was still on the floor, if a customer leaned on it and they didn’t know" a bug could’ve crawled on them, the employee noted. Management reportedly told employees it was under control, until a week and a half later, when an overnight employee found a bed bug crawling on their sweater and took a video of it.

We've reached out to Apple for comment about the situation and will update when we hear back.