So there’s this new Best Buy that I decided to go to on the grand opening because I needed a camera battery. This is roughly equivalent to what I went through to get the battery. Basically it was like the opening of the Apple Store in terms of the number of employees there and the craziness. I mean, the Apple Store was blasting “Love Shack” and handing out free T-shirts on their opening day with maybe twenty people behind the genius bar. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but the genius bar was definitely full.
I went with a friend to the Best Buy and we assumed that every person who had been hired at Best Buy was there for the opening day, but during normal days half of those people would actually be there. It seemed almost as if every single person was there with an assistant or two. They weren’t even so helpful. We were perusing the DVD section when the guy asked us what we were looking for. When we said “Family Guy” he just started perusing with us equally confused about where it was (we found it before he did). Then I think he offered to take it to the counter for us.
So I go upstairs to get my camera battery, the first guy I talk to hands it off to another guy and they keep on asking if I want the camera in addition to the battery. Clearly I had the camera with me, and I kept on saying that I just wanted the battery. Then on the way to the cabinet the second guy was asked by another person what we were looking for and the battery was handed off again. So then we have maybe three or four people looking for the battery. One guy finds one in the cabinet, then another comes from out of nowhere with a different battery. I settled on one and then we go to one of the mini-counters to checkout.
Meanwhile my friend was at a separate counter getting her DVDs, and when they said that she won a gift card there suddenly was all this hubbub about which gift card it was along with more confusion, people looking things up in the system and basically more stuff impeding us from getting out of there.
Finally we finished getting our stuff (complete with receipts longer than a boa constrictor). Every person is thanking us for coming in and telling us about some survey that we can enter online to enter for a $500 gift certificate.
Then when we get to the door the guy checking receipts looked at the name so he could say something like “Well Derek, thanks for coming to Best Buy and have a good day!” Then on the way out of the door is a statue/greeting person standing between the doorways just staring straight saying “THANK YOU FOR COMING SIR” as if I were the president leaving the Best Buy. He wasn’t even making eye contact. If they replaced him with a statue I wouldn’t have known the difference.
Scary.
