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The Last Will and Testament of Circuit City
Harry writes "Sunday is the final day of business for Circuit City, the once-dominant national consumer electronics chain done in by the rise of Best Buy, the crummy economy, and multiple failings of its own. I paid a final visit of respect to my local store, and found that they'd gotten rid of just about all the unopened electronics products, and were therefore selling off stuff like broken computers and the toilet-paper dispenser from the restroom. Whether or not you were ever a fan, it was a sad scene." NPR has a segment on the end of the Circuit City era as well.
Years ago, when I first moved to California, I had never seen a Circuit City, only Best Buys (and was suitably appalled by BB and business practices, they tried a bait and switch on me once).
I found the Circuit Citys I saw to be clean, maintained, decent prices, friendly employees. But then, a few years ago, I noticed a reversal taking place - the CCs near me had become, for lack of a better word, 'ghetto' - unfriendly employees, broken equipment on display, and lack of product - while the Best Buys had cleaned up and trained their employees. I switched back to BB, occasionally walking into CCs, and finding them just getting worse and worse.
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Actually that sort of thing is handled by the liquidation company and in no way is set by the former Circuit City management.
Basically, as in all liquidation sales, they put everything up to MSRP, then take 10%(or whatever the starting discount is) off. Chances are you'd have gotten a better deal the week before liquidation began.
Okay, so I know I'm sticking my neck out here by admitting this on /., but I work at Best Buy. I can also say that no one in a Best Buy store below a supervisor position has any fear of losing their job any time soon unless their store is SEVERELY under performing. Maybe it's not the whole company, but I'll tell you at my store if a supervisor wants to fire someone and goes to a manager (since a sup can't fire an employee) the first thing the manager will ask is what the sup has enacted to correct the behavioral issue with the employee. We're not graded on magazine subscriptions and haven't been for a year+ and even then it was only cashiers that ever were (not salespeople) and I doubt anyone actually got fired for it. As far as selling the service plans, we have periodic corporate memos going to all employees that care to read them saying that the service plan is not for everyone and that our job is to let the customer know they have the option, not that they have to have it. Sure management would like you to try to sell it and show the value in the plan, but no one CAN get fired for not selling a service plan, let alone actually does.
Say what you will about the customer experience but don't claim the employee experience is something it's not.
Having an extensive memory like I do and also having lived in Richmond many years ago and then most recently; I feel I have a pretty damn good over view of the whole fiasco. The problem was with management. The problem was with management every single step of the way.
When I was a teenager, Circuit City was THE place to buy anything electronic. Why? The salespeople worked on commission so it was in their best interests to know what they were talking about. You could stand and talk with them for however long it took and the lions' share of them knew what they were talking about in every aspect of what you were considering buying. The service was so good that people used to refer other people to the salesman that had helped them by name.
I can remember CC winning design awards for stereo eq that came out on occassion as well as many other things. At the same time, their return policy was bar none, the best you could get anywhere. So what happened?
First, management decided they wanted a larger chunk of their employees pay. To that end, they cut all the salespeople and offered them entry level wages on a per hour basis. Almost immediately, the good sales people left. They moved on to greener pastures. Instead of walking in and talking to someone who knew what they were talking about, you got a teenager who was more concerned with who he or she was going out with on Friday night. Not that there is anything wrong with teenagers, I used to be one too. But, a teenager making minimum wage is never going to be able to compete with someone who lives and breathes whatever the product is that they are selling.
Next came the elimination of the large appliances. Who is honestly going to buy a washer and dryer from a 16 year old kid? You see, when people realized it was kids in there, the high dollar purchases ended. It ceased being THE store and became a store...like so many others. As many of the commissioned sales people left, many of the management also left. What they were left with was a company with salespeople who did not understand what they were selling along with a management team whose understanding of technology was "It's the next big thing!"
In a mad dash to recoup the losses generated by idiot management, they turned to many deals that were ill advised at best. The most glaring of these was the DIVX support. They tied almost all of their fortune to Toshiba and in turn provided the buffer zone financially if the whole thing fell apart. As we all know...Americans like to own their media (we can argue about that later).
When DIVX collapsed as everyone who knew anything about formats knew it was going to, CC took the brunt of it. Then as we all know, the dot com boom blew out and that was it. One of my favorite incidences that occurred was about 10 years or so ago, you found out you had been laid off on Monday mornings by a sign on your desk. If your stuff was in a box and there was Kleenex next to it on your desk and a security guard in your department wandering around, you were laid off. You can only do that so many times to employees in your headquarter town before you hit a point where noll amount of advertising is going to save your company from bad press.
But, time had moved on and Best Buy had shown up on the sidleines and was edging their way in. BB opened stores that were clean and bright and made their fortune off of friendly helpful people who knew what they were doing. As CC began to circle the drain, more stores closed, more layoffs took place, items got cheaper and their price went up. Where at one time in CC you could walk in and buy just about anything for a great price and have your neighbors over and have them oohh and ahh for the next three days; now, it was a shady looking place where you kind of expected someone to offer you 'grey market' items in a dark corner.
They never dropped their prices after they stopped paying their commissioned salespeople. In many ways, CC was THE MOST EXPENSIVE place to buy something. Yes, you
"Those of us who are afraid of Uncle Sam spying on all our credit card transactions are called paranoid."
My credit card purchases are not useful information for even the most toxic government. If anything they just add to the data burden such government would have to sift through.
If you decide to do things you don't wish government to be aware of, that same innocent activity becomes your smokescreen. You can manipulate the perception people have of you by what you reveal to them. You could even fake a persona by your choice of purchase, especially media. The way to hide FROM the system is to hide IN the system.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Are you really that naive? Seriously?
It's easy to marginalize somebodies opinion by calling them "paranoid". That does not address the fact that government after 911 IS looking for tools to fight terrorism. The credit card companies already analyze purchasing habits to fight fraud. Is it really that much of a stretch that the credit card companies are going to use this data to provide targeted advertising? Detailed profiles on individual customers?
Of course they ARE. It's already happening. So why on Earth would the government not want in to start using that profile data to fight terrorism?
They ARE. There is a large list of items such as pre-paid cell phones that the government flags to start profiling certain people to determine just what threat they may represent. Purchase a pre-paid cell phone and have a middle eastern last name? Welcome to the "no-fly" list in the airlines.
Yeah, call us paranoid. There is no way governments have EVER been caught abusing their powers. Nope. No Sirrree.
Wait..... Wasn't Hoover obsessed with Martin Luther King and wrote scathing letters about he hated the man and abused his powers to spy on him and THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of others? Those are little things we call FACTS now aren't they?
Nahhhh. You're still right. We can trust everyone in the government to only violate our privacy when ABSOLUTELY necessary. I stand corrected and I see your point *now*. Gosh, I feel better.