With the recent permanent demise of Circuit City, I got to thinking about my days in retail.  I remember when I first started with Best Buy in ‘98, Circuit City was the number one electronics retailer in the United States.  They were an unstoppable juggernaut bent on domination of the market, and places like Best Buy and Tweeter and HH Greg were considered only with smirks and chuckles.  My, how the mighty have fallen.  Now Circuit is dead, and their legacy will be one of absolute failure in a business that will eat you alive… if you let it.

Last week was the one-year anniversary of my departure from retail, and I though it would be fun to regale a few tales of my time at Best Buy.  For old-time’s sake.

I started with Best Buy because of a girl.  I was in the store in Trotwood, Ohio one day, just browsing around looking at cool stuff, when I spied a pretty girl working at the customer service desk.  Now normally I’m a shy guy, but for whatever reason that day I got it into my head that I wanted to talk to this girl.  I approached the counter, but the only thing that I could think to say (that didn’t sound stupid) was, “hi!  Can I have an application?”  She smiled at me, a very pretty smile, and handed me a card with a phone number on it.  Of course, it was the call-in application thing, but hey, she gave me a number right?  I chickened out then of course, took the card with a smile, and went on my way.

I already had a great job as a fitness instructor at a local gym.  Part of the greatness of this job was that I worked full-time Monday through Thursday, so I figured why not get a part-time job at Best Buy, maybe selling computers on the weekend, and earn some extra cash?  Sounded good to me anyway, so I called the number and applied.

My first interview was great.  The sales manager and I hit it off great, and I got my second interview with the store manager soon after.  As I sat down with her, she looked at me appraisingly, and then told me that things had changed since my first interview.  A senior (assistant to the supervisor) position had opened up in customer service, and because of my previous management experience with other companies, would I be interested?

Long story short, I was actually promoted twice before I even started.  My first day at Best Buy I walked in as a department supervisor, in charge of tens of thousands of dollars in retail electronics and a few young employees named Brandon, Amanda, Dan, Other Amanda, and a couple more I can’t remember, and had no idea what to do.  Good times.  I remember I was with the company for the better part of a year before I really got a good grasp on what I was doing.  Trial by fire.

Oh, the girl you ask?  Her name was Sally.  Very cute blonde… worked part-time at customer service.  We never hooked up, but we were friendly with each other and chatted a few times.  I still remember her pretty smile.

That first year was tough.  I never got any real training, other than the “manual” for my department, known as the “purple book.”  I didn’t have a senior position for my area, so the whole leadership structure consisted of me.  My department was also a new thing, something that Best Buy was really counting on being the “next big thing.”  I sold cell phones, satellite TV, Web TV, and giant-ass digital cameras that you put floppy disks into.  This whole mess was termed “Cellular and Satellite Systems”, or CSS, and here I was running it with no clue.  Digital cameras I could handle, Web TV was a joke but easy, but cell phones freaked me out.  Remember, this was in 1998-99, when cell phones were all analog and about the size of a box of Kleenex.  Plus, the activation procedure was a nightmare, and the credit check and deposit was always seemingly too much for most people.

Actually, thinking back on that, I remember one time Roger Troutman came into my department.  He and his brother Larry came in sometimes, always dressed to the hilt in loud, stylish suits and throwing cash around like it was nothing.  I mean, Roger was a Funk and Hip-Hop legend, so money should be no object to him, right?  He curiously eyed some of my new Nokia 6162 cell phones –cool new styles with a “flip” cover– and asked if he could buy a few.  “Sure, no problem” I said.  I had him fill out the form and told him to hold on for a minute while I did the credit check and activation.  He said, “no way man.  I got stuff to do, places to go.  I’m a busy cat, you dig?”  He gave me his personal cell number (apparently he already had at least one cell phone) and told me to call him when the phones were ready.  Well, Roger Troutman, Hip-Hop legend, inspiration to a generation of Rap artists, and singer of “I Wanna Be your Man” and “California Love” (with Dr. Dre, no less) failed the credit check just like everyone else.  No new “flip” phone for Roger.

Not long after that, brother Larry shot Roger several times in an alley near his recording studio, and then shot himself.  Roger died in the hospital.   I don’t know if he ever got to own a “flip” phone.

I have so many memories of the last ten years.  It was my initial intention to share a few of them here, but I’m coming to realize already that my post is getting too long.  I’m wordy like that.  All I’ve written so far happened in like the first four months.  I have TEN YEARS of Best Buy memories clogging up my brain.

Would you guys actually like to hear more?  Maybe I could do a little series or something.  I surely don’t wanna annoy people with my reflections.  Still, this was a big part of my life for ten years, a part most people don’t know much about.

Leave a comment and tell me if you want more.  Or you could just say, “please stop with your boring Best Buy stories!  We want to hear more bitching about gas prices and gay people and speed-bump stoppers!”  I’d oblige naturally.

It’s good to be back!

Today is the 23rd of September, 2008.  If things would have progressed the same old boring way they had for a long time, today would have been my tenth anniversary with Best Buy. 

Fortunately, (or unfortunately in a financial sense) it didn’t work out that way.  As you all know by now, the Big Yellow Tag decided to terminate my employment back in January over the matter of roughly $4 worth of broken DVD casing.  To add a little salt to the wound, they also challenged my Unemployment Insurance claim so that the state could deny me any sort of income after the fact.  I’m not bitter though.  In fact, I still have no regrets about it to this day, although I won’t shop there anymore.

Ten years is forever in retail terms.  In my position, which was management, the average term of employment is probably something like four or five years.  Really good managers tend to get recruited away to better-paying places, or they grow to hate policies that hold them back and leave for greener pastures, and sub-par managers tend to get weeded out.  It’s the average ones that tend to linger, and they still probably only stick around for seven or eight years.  The fact that I made it almost ten years is quite exceptional, and those that go on past ten are almost unheard of.  Retail is a harsh career, and it will swallow your soul after too long.  I’m glad I got out, regardless of how it happened.

I’ll look back with a few fond memories, and a few bitter ones.  In the end, it was a good experience overall.  I made lots of friends and got to travel the country.  It’s too bad it had to end the way that it did.

I’m still jobless.  I know that it’s been forever and ever since I had a "real" job, but this whole year has zipped by so fast that it’s hard to conceive of the fact that it’s August already, and I’ve been unemployed for over seven months now.  That’s the longest time I’ve gone without a job since I was eighteen years old.  Half a lifetime ago.

I’m still plugging along though.  I’m not in dire straights or anything, but money is tighter than I’m used to.  This is likely the reason for my lapse in judgement and common sense in filing for unemployment insurance.

You know those little terriers that perform in fairs and sideshows?  Little circus dogs that jump through hoops like little yapping fools for the entertainment of others?  That’s exactly what filing for unemployment is like.  It’s a humiliating experience so chock-full of red tape and bureaucracy that it makes your head spin like Linda Blair at a baptism.  You’d think that in this day and age, filling out some government forms would be as simple as logging onto some dot-gov  web site and typing in some info.  Well, they make you think it’s that simple, but not long after typing the equivalent text of War and Peace into Utah’s wonderful web site, professing secrets and useless information about myself to government employees, the response of the state is to send you more forms in the mail.  These forms contain the exact same questions that were answered online, only in convenient annoying manual form, destined to be lost somewhere in the back of a mail truck on their way to not being read by anybody.

Then there’s the tease.  According to some random formula, possibly involving horses stomping out numbers, Utah came up with the amount of $430 per week that I would receive, should I qualify of course, of unemployment insurance.  That’s a little exciting.  After all, that’s roughly ten dollars per hour.  I could sit around and collect unemployment whilst continuing my vegetative state.  Putting a damper on that idea though is the fact that you are required to send them proof of at least two job prospects every week, complete with contact names, dates, and outcome of the request.  So much for sitting around.

That’s not such a bad deal though.  The whole point is to get a job, and forcing you to look is a good thing.  I had no problem with it.

Then they sent me a debit card in the mail.  A shiny little card with a MasterCard logo on the front, promising untold riches at the expense of my former employer.  This card is the method of which the state pays the insurance, forcing you to use it whenever you want to pay for something.  I chuckled a little at the little pamphlet that came with the card, detailing the fact that a service charge would be incurred each time I used the card at an ATM.  Government programs are so wonderful!

This whole situation culminated in a phone call from a "helpful" asshole government employee who called to ask why the hell I don’t have a job.  His intent was to ascertain my eligibility for unemployment insurance, asking me the same type of stupid questions that I could swear I already answered in electronic as well as written form at least twice.  Government is nothing if not thorough.  Interestingly, he seemed to have copies of all of the statements from employees and the corporate office of my former employer at his disposal.  These are documents I had no access to myself.  I wasn’t allowed to see them or know their content, but the tool on the phone apparently did.  He even read bits of them to me in a mocking tone, asking me to explain my actions and defend my position on why I got fired.  I told him I’d never seen those documents, and I countered his argument with my own story, which should have been plainly obvious by that point.  He didn’t buy it though.  He told me they’d "have a decision" by the end of the day.  I wasn’t too hopeful.

Yes, Best Buy challenged my claim, and I was denied unemployment insurance by the state of Utah.  No surprise to me at all.  Seems my firing was "justified" by my actions, and Best Buy was "justified" in canning me because I broke a DVD case after ten years of faithful service.  Government protects the big companies, and I don’t get to peck at the little crumbs of help they throw in the dirt.  Seems logical.

Ah well.  Back to the job search.  This whole experience was an exercise in frustration anyway, so I’m glad it’s over.  I wish I’d have know ahead of time though.  Live and learn.

I got a snazzy little brochure from Best Buy the other day detailing how at the end of July the company is going to switch the provider of my financial benefits over to some other company.  I still have a 401K through Best Buy, and I haven’t done anything with it since my termination.  I figured it was safe for now, until I get settled and start looking into doing something with it.

Since they are switching things around, I figured it was time to get my money.  My plan is to go to my bank and have the 401K switched over to an IRA or some other kind of interest-bearing account.  There isn’t too much money there, less than thirty thousand, but it’s a good start.  Since I don’t work for Best Buy anymore, that money isn’t doing me any good just sitting there with no income flowing into it, so today I set about getting access to the account to start the process.  To my amazement and my fury, I can’t get to it.

Best Buy has a benefits website that is a portal to all things money and benefit related.  This website used to be great, because it was a one-stop-shop to all my information.  I say it used to be great, because I used to be an employee.   You see, this website requires an active employee number and password to access.  Two things which I no longer have. 

Unfortunately, the website used within the company is the same website used outside the company.  My 401K information is safely locked away in a website I can no longer access. 

At the bottom of the log in page, there is a little section that says "for former Best Buy employees."  OK, I’ll just click that and all will be right with the world.  WRONG!  Guess what that link does?  It takes you to a LOG IN PAGE THAT REQUIRES AN EMPLOYEE NUMBER AND PASSWORD!  AHHHRGH!  You can even see for yourself.  Go to http://www.mybbyrewards.com and scroll to the bottom, where it says "If you are a former Best Buy employee."  Click it and tell me if that’s not the most asinine thing you’ve ever seen?

Luckily, the wonderful color brochure I received also includes a  number for helpful customer assistance via telephone.  I cheerfully dialed this number, making my way through various unrelated menus and attempting to follow the instructions of someone speaking a completely unintelligible Indian accent, when I finally came upon a menu containing the information I need.  I pressed the number, and waited for the computer voice to give me further instructions.  Much to my chagrin, but not my surprise, accessing my information via telephone requires an ACTIVE EMPLOYEE NUMBER AND PASSWORD.

I’m thinking there must be some sort of legal recourse here.  They can’t just hold my account hostage like this simply because I’m no longer employed there.  I want my money.  Furthermore, I’d like a level of service that isn’t completely idiotic and impossible.  Is that so much to ask?

I’m off to try and find an actual human being to scream at now.  They better not even ask for an employee number.