Joined Feb 2007
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Forum Thread
A little story about WHY YOU NEVER CALL!
March 4, 2008 at
04:50 PM
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Quote
from tlegend
why not
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He let the cold breeze sweep away most of the acrid stink from the caustic smoke he'd just finished. And he calculated with disgust how many of the cars in the parking lot would be hauling around the typical prick, jerk, and trumped up soccer mom bitch that made his otherwise pleasant job a pain in his ass.
"Customers.... assholes." he hissed just before shoving a mint flavored piece of gum in his mouth.
Brandon had spent too many months at his blue-shirted job now to even bother trying to fake a smile when asking the umpteenth blank-faced retard "Help you find something?" He'd always taken perverse joy in making people spend way more of their money on things they didn't really ever need, and probably were never going to use; especially if he could get them to pay more for a shittier brand. "The 42 inch Samsung is nice, but check out this 50 inch Element! Oh, totally, the picture will look much better at home since the signal here isn't distributed correctly for all these TVs."
Some wiseass always came in trying to get a price matched to some ridiculous deal on line, or at some store half way across the country. He'd given up trying to argue with these people, let the manager waffle these people. They'd always cry about the price match policy. Policies... guarantees... who gives a rat's ass. He wished for the day he could look at one of these self-preening pompous pricks and just say "Honestly, corporate doesn't give a shit about that 'guarantee', their policies, or even you! So neither do we. PISS OFF!" But he knew not to step on managements' toes; only they got to tell the masses to shove it.
At lunch he'd thrown on his hoodie and wandered across the expansive plaza parking lot to check in on his red-shirted counterparts. God damn! Some of the betties working there! Why! WHY GOD MUST HIS STORE ONLY HAVE UGLY CHICKS!!?? Brandon refused to spy on his rival store again, if for nothing else it depressed him to know they had hotter coworkers. Instead he day dreamed of the epic, video-game-like battle between red and blue that could ensue, like some scene from Brave Heart; *ring*a PCI card could be sharped into some sort of blade, and pens, *ring* pencils, and touchscreen styluses could be fired from a compressed-air-duster-powered cannon. Mice could *ring*make good maces and nun chucks if they weren't so cheaply constructed... maybe some of the heavier gaming mice... hell, just tear apart one of the shelves and *ring*beat people down with the supports like baby harbor seals.
*ring*
The ringing snapped him out of his imaginary escapade "What the f*ck?! Is anyone going to answer the damn phone?!" he snapped up the receiver, took a deep breath and spoke in a level tone.
"Customer service, this is Brandon, what the hell can I help you with?"
"Uh, hi, ya I was curious if you had any of the western digital mybooks in stock?
Clicking through the computer he noticed that yes, they did have a lot of them. Of course they had them, the moron did in fact call a computer store. Dumbass. "We do sir, can you be more specific as to which model you're looking for, we have several."
"Oh, of course. It's the seven hundred fifty gig. The ess kay you number is 8478701."
Brandon figured playing on the computer was better then dealing with someone on the floor. Maybe he'd put the guy on hold and play some soli...taire... "What the hell?" he mumbled in awe.
"What was that? I couldn't hear you."
"Oh, nothing sir. No sir, I'm sorry, it doesn't look like we have any in stock." he said starting to aimlessly hang up the phone.
"What about in other stores!?!?"
"No sir, they're sold out nationally. Good day sir...."
"But but but!" he hung up the phone as the man on the other end's protests faded from his mind.
In front of him, on the slightly flickering screen sat a set of numbers that didn't make any sense. The SKU number was legit, and showed, that, in fact there were several in stock at his store, as well as others locally, and that was all very normal. What was not normal was the last couple numbers...
Store...........SKU........STOCK......PRICE
E Venture.......8478701....12.........$299.99
West Fill.......8478701....8..........$289.99
Mormoth.........8478701....13.........$79.99
Suszan..........8478701....5..........$79.99
Brandon let a slow smile crawl across his face. Not one of grim humor or malice. But for the first time in weeks, one of absolute unadulterated joy. He had some phone calls to make. He and his friends were going to make a little extra cash flipping these little gems. His day was going to be very, very good...
~Hardwyre
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I call on some stuff....s0 sue me.
Freed0m.
Usually the people working electronics retail are
Not the sharpest
or
Hate their job
or
BOTH
(usually, means most often, not always)
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It's one of the very few perks to working in retail.
Finding that nice clearance item almost makes the job....not so freakin bad.
Brandon joyously waited for his 15 minute break to come so he could call Joey who was the only friend of his that might have enough money to bankroll his hair brained scheme. By the time his break had ended his friend Joey was well versed in SKU's, hard drives, clearance prices and stock locations. Unfortunately, Joey didn't even have enough gas money to get to a store let alone finance the purchase of a bunch of hard drives that he would need to sit on until everybody else on eBay was done selling them so they could actually make a profit. Brandon turned his pockets inside out and realized he didn't even have enough money for lunch. The gray, heavy clouds became thicker as Brandon started to come to terms with the reality of why he was working at Bestbuy in the first place.
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I remember the time he sold a $35 2 year service contract on a pair of Koss earbud headphones that cost $49.99. First, what could possibly break on a pair of earbud headphones except the cord coming out and that wasn't covered anyway. Second, and most importantly, Koss headphones already had a lifetime warranty. Mail back a pair in any condition, and they send you back a free replacement. Did he do it all the time? No. Just once. Why? To see if he could. He even sold a $200 service contract on an ottoman (the bench you put your feet on while sitting on a chair) that was free to the customer as part of home entertainment system. Again, just to see if he could.
Another time the company got a great deal on portable disc players. The "spiff" (incentive paid to him) for each one came out to about $20. Add an extra $10 if he sold the service contract with it and another $12 if he sold the car adapter. He went on the company's computer, found all the ones in the chain and sent interstore transfer orders and had over a hundred sent to his store and that's all he sold for months. I still remember the district manager yelling at him for having them all sent to him but quickly changed his attitude when he saw that ALL of them got sold within a week or two of coming in. It was a great player, by the way. Just overpriced by a monster markup.
Another time we had two Aiwa walkmen models. The only difference was one was black and one was gray. But, b/c we were the only chain with the gray model, they made a LOT more money on it and so, we got a bigger spiff. So, he did the same thing. Got hundreds of them sent to our store from every corner of the chain and sold them like crazy. What's the difference the customer would ask? The gray one is better, was the response. Why was it better? Because he made more. Same item for the same price with just a different shade of color but higher payoff for him.
And when he was promoted to a manager and got paid his regular commission for his own sales and also a bonus based on the performance of his department (his numbers not included), he would put all of his sales under the names of people in his department who had poor numbers in various categories so his department would always hit all 6 of their goals and he would get all 6 bonuses - an amount that netted nearly 8x what he would ever had made on commission. He never broke his draw, but he always hit all the dept goals and made a fortune. He always made more money selling walkmans and small electronics than other people did selling big screen tv's and camcorders, etc...
For all I know, he's one of the people posting on slickdeals now...