Most of the venues in which I give presentations have built-in sound systems, so audio is a simple matter of plugging a 1/8″ stereo plug into my laptop’s audio-out jack and all is well. However, my classroom at UC Berkeley is a bit deficient in the sound department—although superbly well-fixed as to visuals—so I bring along a pair of portable powered speakers. Any public presenter worth his salt will keep a pair of speakers stashed in the car trunk.
Alas: last spring my spiffy high-end portable speakers were stolen when some no-good sonofahounddawg broke into my car, rifled it for spare change (there wasn’t any, so there, nyah nyah) and then popped the trunk. I suppose my speakers wound up at a pawnshop somewhere, or maybe on the street corner next to a wan pile of flotsam and jetsam. Or just tossed into the gutter when the dirtbag saw that his swag held neither money, drugs, booze, nor food. At any rate, bye-bye speakers.
With the school term fast approaching, it was time to replenish. I decided against high-grade this time around and opted for decent but mass-market speakers. I made my choice by online browsing and then decided to pick up the speakers at my local Best Buy, instead of ordering from Amazon as is my usual practice. I figured that, all else being equal, even Best Buy couldn’t impart its usual frustration, humiliation, and alienation to such a simple transaction. Or maybe they could. Given that I needed the speakers within a day or so, I opted for the calculated risk. It’s instructive that I thought long and hard about buying such an everyday, inexpensive product at Best Buy, even if their web site assured me that the item was in stock. The store’s reputation, never better than fair-to-piddling, has flat-lined. I don’t trust their web site. I don’t trust their prices. I don’t trust them.
In all fairness I should say that I once bought some audiophile-grade speaker cabling at the Magnolia Home Theater section and was treated with the same courtesy and professionalism that I expect from the classy audio emporia I usually frequent. It was welcome, but more to the point, it was surprising. I wondered what such a competent, polite, and efficient guy was doing at a Best Buy. Surely he belonged elsewhere.
There’s something intrinsically degrading about Best Buy. People aren’t customers so much as retail cattle, mostly left free to graze by a posse of blueshirted morons who don’t earn even the pittance they’re paid. Nobody who needs real, bonafide customer service or guidance has any business shopping in a Best Buy. It’s a place to rush into, grab what you need, and escape as soon as possible while loudly refusing their endless and inane attempts to pick your pocket with extended warranties, service contracts, subscriptions, credit cards, and the like.
Having decided to make a Best Buy raid, I chose an early Sunday for my sortie and donned my thickest emotional armor. They’re not going to denigrate or belittle me, I thought, no way. I’m going to buy something at Best Buy and I’m going to do it with my dignity intact. Just watch me.
And I succeeded. The operation required planning, decisiveness, and stealth. I streaked noiselessly through the entrance and strode resolutely to the computer area, looking neither to the right nor to the left, firmly shunning even the barest glance at my surroundings. My chosen speakers were easy to find. I double-checked to make sure that the box bore no signs of having been previously opened. I quickstepped to the register. Here I encountered the only snag. Only a single register was open. Thus I was obliged to wait—out in the open where I was vulnerable—but it was only a few minutes. I noted the focused and closed facial expression on the guy who preceded me at the register. He was on full combat alert, too. Smart fellow. The wanly glum 20-something checkout guy had all the personality of a doorstop but was otherwise unobjectionable, not to mention unremarkable. I didn’t expect him to say thank you, so I wasn’t put off when he didn’t. Usually the only truly alert staff member at Best Buy is the hulking bruiser who guards the exit, but I guess Bubba had called in sick or was in jail or something. I actually left a Best Buy store without being given the fish-eye by a hired troglodyte. That’s a first.
In short, it was an inoffensive experience, about ten minutes in all. And yet I approached Best Buy with my every defensive mechanism on red alert, wary and on guard, expecting to be treated like a sack of doo-doo. If there’s a more damning indictment of Best Buy’s current business model and prevailing atmosphere, I don’t know what it is. When Best Buy goes under—and I do mean when and not if—its demise will not be at the hands of online retailers such as Amazon. Best Buy has the dagger pointed at its own throat.