Slashdot Mirror
360 Bundles Lead To Best Buy Housecleaning
Groo Wanderer writes "At the launch of the XBox 360, there were reports of forced and unwanted bundling by several companies, most notably Best Buy. There were things said back and forth, and the usual corporate banter. They have followed through, this time, and a good number of people lost their jobs." From the article: "We are told a manager that started the procedure is no longer employed at Best Buy. At least one senior district manager is no longer employed, and some of the nailings are rumored to have gone even higher. The big yellow inquisition did not stop there, and several other managers and assorted white collar workers were given an escorted walk to the parking lot."
Because Best Buy is a chain. Each store has its own boss, but they still have to answer to the Big Boss. In other words, they were already bound by a previous deal
Best Buy's don paid for all the Xboxes, which he then sold to his capos. One of the terms of this sale was that "youse hafta agrees wit company polisees, capiche?"
I'm hiding as a coward for this one. I'm an ex-EB employee and still know a lot of the managers around my area personally. And yes, they do have a tendency to play with presell lists and call people who ordered more first instead of who ordered first. They also forced bundles on the customers. They do it because of pressure from the GM to meet the add-on numbers set for each store (which is pretty much impossible without breaking the rules.)
This is also how the featured game of the month works, also. No matter how bad it is, each store has to sell a certain amount, and people do get fired when they're not met (even when the game was Turok and the number worked out to 20 in an hour every hour, even though the store was lucky to get 20 people in some days.)
Managers that have stores that don't meet the numbers are first sent off to work in the crappiest stores, sometimes forced to demote themselves (with a threat of just being fired otherwise) and then promptly let go within a few months.
EB Games has to be one of the worst companies I've ever worked for. I'm glad it was just a job I had while looking for real work instead of a career like it is for some of the managers.
It's the classic "bad apple" tactic. Just have very stringent policies in place, but make the goals such that it's either difficult or impossible to meet without breaking those policies. If no one notices, promotions all around. If someone calls them on it, then an easy scapegoat and much haughty pointing to the policy. Either way, the organization wins. Abu Grahib was a perfect example of that and this Best Buy ploy is another. Of course, I'm not saying they are of equal importance or ramification at all, rather the technique is identical.