Re:How Best Buy saved itself (2019)
by CalRobert on Friday July 31, 2020 @04:59AM
(#24006931)
I worked at Best Buy in San Luis Obispo around 2003 and it was clear that if you didn't sell enough warranties, $29 USB cables (wholesale cost about 80 cents), and (bafflingly) subscriptions to Entertainment Weekly you would get your hours cut to effectively 0. I got chewed out and nearly fired by my boss because a customer came in with a broken lens for their camera they'd just bought, and I told them a replacement was about $99 when _instead_ I should have apparently told them a warranty could be bought retroactively for $199 and that would replace the lens (this was a bald-faced lie, it had clearly been dropped).
Of course, consumers should expect that because Best Buy is blatantly evil, but the scummiest thing was that customers would walk in with a printout FROM BESTBUY.COM showing an item was $129, demand we match their own website instead of charging $149, and they'd be walked over to a kiosk showing that the product at bestbuy.com was $149. (They had a mock bestbuy.com running on the kiosk that looked like the web version but with in-store prices). Remember smartphones weren't a thing at that point.
It was valuable as a reminder of just how bad most jobs are, and that most people in America are treated like absolute shit by psychopath bosses who themselves live in fear of their boss, and so on. It certainly was a motivator to learn to code.
Quitting the Wednesday before Black Friday was a thrill. It's supremely depressing Best Buy still exists.
Of course, consumers should expect that because Best Buy is blatantly evil, but the scummiest thing was that customers would walk in with a printout FROM BESTBUY.COM showing an item was $129, demand we match their own website instead of charging $149, and they'd be walked over to a kiosk showing that the product at bestbuy.com was $149. (They had a mock bestbuy.com running on the kiosk that looked like the web version but with in-store prices). Remember smartphones weren't a thing at that point.
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus23dec23-column...
It was valuable as a reminder of just how bad most jobs are, and that most people in America are treated like absolute shit by psychopath bosses who themselves live in fear of their boss, and so on. It certainly was a motivator to learn to code.
Quitting the Wednesday before Black Friday was a thrill. It's supremely depressing Best Buy still exists.