> I had just been fired for helping _someone_
> they wouldn’t have fired me for helping a _customer_
This shifting language is suspicious to me; is this a friend or a customer you met at the Apple store and then helped off the clock? It sounds like this person was employed at an Apple retail store, and I can't imagine Apple having a policy that retail store employees are not allowed to help their grandparents set up a new Mac. There is 100% something else going on here.
WAG: this guy told a customer at the store that he could get the data transfer done faster, and was effectively running a Genius Bar out of his garage.
EDIT: I get that he's using different nouns in order to make his case in a few different ways. Ultimately, I think the writer did something shady and got fired for it.