Nov
5
Why Do They Call It “Best Buy?”
Filed Under Culture
Big box stores are the Great Satan. They just are. They’re full of a whole lot of nothin’. Do you honestly think that people went to Best Buy in droves to pick up a copy of Steve Carell’s “Get Smart” last night? No, no, they did not. But there were an assload of copies of that flick on sale. How do I know this? I was there, looking for a copy of a movie that Best Buy didn’t have in stock — the 3-hour director’s cut of “WaterWorld.”
Whether or not you’re a fan of “WaterWorld” is beside the point. This sort of thing happens to me all too often. They seemingly never, ever have movie I’m looking for. Last week, it was the 20th anniversary boxed set of “Mystery Science Theater 3000″ that was sold out; as of last night, it was still sold out. These and countless other flicks — the most painful being the 25th anniversary “Blade Runner” set last December — disappear from Best Buy’s shelves before I can nab one. Meanwhile, the store is lousy with copies of the latest POS starring Adam Sandler.
They shouldn’t call it Best Buy. It should be Best Bought.
I used to work at Best Buy. It was my first job out of college. Fun fact: when you start out at Best Buy, they don’t give you one of those blue polos. You have to “earn” yours. Yep, when you’re a noob, you have to wear a white polo — one you have to buy with your own money! — and try to convince customers that you’re actually an employee.
Another fun fact: whenever we’d stock the shelves after closing, sometimes DVD players would get dropped on the floor, and one of us would flippantly remark, “Well, that’s why we sell performance service plans.”
I didn’t last at Best Buy for very long — less than a month. I made a measley $8/hr., I hated wearing white, and one of the chicks I worked with looked like Gizmo from “Gremlins.” I also thought it was positively retarded that just before we’d open every morning, the management would gather us around and make us chant, “Whose Best Buy box?! My Best Buy box!!!” to psyche us up for the day. I think we should’ve poured water on that Mogwai-lookin’ girl to see if she’d start reproducing asexually.
Maybe the blue-shirted demon succubi that stock the DVD shelves at Best Buy are punishing me for quitting unceremoniously. They never order enough copies of something slightly culty (i.e. crap people actually purchase on DVD), so I almost always walk away empty-handed. For a long time, I stopped going to Best Buy and would only order DVDs from Amazon. And that’s where I ultimately went to pick up “WaterWorld.”
Whose Best Buy box?
Not mine, apparently.
-Brad Lohan
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Yeah, this happens to me sometimes as well. They have 1,000,000,000 copies of JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (in 3-D!) but two copies of whatever flick I’m looking for.
What really sucks is when you use the search-store option online at home–and they CLAIM TO HAVE WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR…but when you get there it turns out they don’t.
This happens to me a lot.
Not sure about your sanity…WATERWORLD??? Have you seen it???