What Happens Behind-the-Scenes At Best Buy?

sirius x big box store target walmart best buy employees what some of the behind the scenes stuff that happens that the public doesn't know about zellers around 2005-2007 zelos was like a canadian target or kmart that had a diner in it i worked in the clothing department we once found a box long lost and buried in the back with girls dresses they went on the shelves discounted then discounted again etc idk if they eventually sold would find the remains of sharp-lifted weight loss supplements in the plus size section all the time i wonder if that still happens people would occasionally try to shock lifts genes leave their old jeans on a hanger but walk out with the size stickers still on them and get caught people sharp lifted all the time like constantly some would wait nonchalantly near the fitting room for the attendant to return clothes and go ham we would find discarded tags everywhere employees did too my supervisor was fired for it then we got target then target died so now we have nothing market pantry target brand is literally delivered in tyson boxes you're getting tyson chicken for a cheaper price than tyson even though it's the same stuff a lot of stuff is like that it's cheaper for target to pay tyson to package things as market pantry than to actually produce things themselves there are often laws depending which country you are in that dictate how long a promotional price can be displayed before it becomes the normal retail price other comments mention inferior product being bought to sell at clearance prices but it can go beyond that let's say a toaster is normally 100 for the next two weeks it's on a half price sale the two weeks after that it's by one appliance get another free two weeks after that it's buy two appliances save fifty percent that toaster's retail price is fifty dollars no matter how it's worded if it's always on sale it's never on sale i worked at super target a decade ago working in the warehouse was one of the most fun jobs i had in my young life my boss used to walk around with a box cutter and slip next to bags of cookies and chips resulting in the product becoming defective so it was up to us to dispose of the product worked at target and if there is any price dispute at all with what's wrong up and what is posted they will take the customer's word for it within reason for example i worked in the food and we had meat for sale at 2.99 lb the sticker on the food said lb but the signage in the aisle said 2.99 inches a woman disputed it and got 40 dollars of meat for six bucks i bought a phone case the other day and it rang up as 54. but i could have swore it was 45 when i picked it out i was in the self checkout but i asked the attendant thinking she could price check it for my sanity at least she changed the price immediately i didn't even ask her to no clue what the right price was in the end many of the black friday deals are items made with inferior quality compared to the original product but they change the school number to protect themselves legally when i worked for toys r us black friday deals were normally just a bunch of crap that didn't sell well during the year one year we had 100 or so toy story operation games for 10 that just sat in the back for months put them out on black friday for eight dollars with a sale limit three sign and they sold out within an hour people were freaking fighting over them and trying to get more than three stores like kohl's or other discount retailers ship products with the sales price in the truck that was 49.99 now 34.99 inches means it came to the store in the truck with a real retail price of 34.99 the big you saved 100 bucks shopping at kohl's at the receipt that's bs you paid the normal retail rate and they add like 20 40 and claim you are saving money former jc penney employee they'll take almost anything back a lady came in wanting to return a pair of pants but didn't have her receipt because she had bought them a few months prior she explained that she had worn and washed them several times since buying them but one of the legs got a small hole in it and she just didn't think they should be tearing up already the manager accepted the return and gave her store credit used to work at taurus years ago i loved my co-workers everyone was a nerd for something comic books anime card games etc which made work really enjoyable but in addition to bad pricing year round certain popular toys would experience price creeps starting in september october x ez bake ovens were 40 in september 60 by november then during black friday and random weeks throughout the holidays would be on sale for forty dollars skylanders same thing ten dollars normally creep to twelve dollars thirteen and then on sale for ten dollars the kicker was they'd keep the prices high and then after no sales post holidays so your gift cards wouldn't go as far prices usually went back to normal by april also at least my store was very customer is always right that 50 off a baby item coupon from the business bring it to true and ask for a manager you'll get the discount on a toy customer claims price tag is different if it's within ten dollars don't question just change it if you didn't mind getting a little confrontational you could get some good deals worked at macy's for years macy's doesn't work commission anymore except in some very specific areas like fine jewelry and shoes but only if they work in that specific area so one trick the management would do at my store to get around that was to just pull from other departments when they were short instead of calling in someone who worked there and needed the hours that way they don't have to pay any commission furthermore employees are still required to make a certain dollar amount of sales they use the same system they used back when commission was given to everyone used to be that if you exceeded a certain dollar amount in sales in a given day you'd get a bonus but then they ditched that commission system at my store but kept the goal number and just instead expected everyone to hit it all the time this figure is supposedly based on sales made the same day the previous year but it never really worked out that way and always came to a suspiciously round number failure to meet this number gets you written up successfully meeting this number also gets you written up for not exceeding it by enough the only way around that was to work in a department that consistently met the goals set for it they push this idea called magic selling basically it's nothing but a flowery way of saying just provide good customer service but they love talking about it like it's some amazing innovative idea to air meet your customer greeting them properly ask questions to figure out what you can help them with give them options and advice i inspire them to buy more in plain english that just means upselling and sierra bread the purchase with them before they leave it's really not it's just normal customer service really but the management thinks it is actual magic and can somehow cause someone working in the watch department for four hours on a day when nobody comes into the area to just create three hundred dollars worth of sales out of customers who are literally not even present the issue is the management is their own goal set for their departments and they get in trouble if the department doesn't meet the goals so the crap falls down and if the arbitrary goals admit their training is to ride your butt and actually prevent you from doing your job so they can tell you off for not doing your job well enough for their liking that sounds fun this is probably common sense but just in case you really should probably wash your new clothes before wearing them i spent a year doing overnights at target in soft lines the backroom aisles of clothing shoes and baby and when i'd wash my hands at the end of the shift the water would truly be deep charcoal gray when i worked at target they'd always feed us i'd go into the break room and it would be pb and j day or cereal day or ice cream sunday day on bigger days like holidays or black friday they'd cater anything from pizza on smaller holidays to full-blown barbecue rib buffet dinners from a local barbecue joint summers were popsicles in the freezer and even a cookout once a summer i mostly hated the job but the people i worked with were great all the way up the chain worked at a bonds and noble here's a few off the top of my head that i can remember the one i worked at soul text books so a few for that one was i understand that pearsons and other major publishers host huge promo events in football stadium sizes with thousands of dollars of catering and giveaways to college execs it's here that they push new editions of texts and while there are professors who do insist on their own books i've had many conversations with professors on the phone who were ordering books for the following semester and they'd ask my opinion as a student what the best option was whether students preferred the cheaper ebooks at the expense of no hard copy or the cheaper paperbacks that run the risk of losing pages or would they prefer the hard copy that is more expensive often they'd only be allocated one type of order by their departments and the ones i spoke with really were trying to be accommodating a lot to the pressure for new additions came from higher up the totem pole the people who were invited to those pearsons promotions events another thing that may not be obvious sometimes you can be screwed with buyback there's a national use book dealer mbs that we give our spare inventory at the end of the year and by new inventory from for the new year it's where we get the majority of our used books from there are laws surrounding the buy and sale of international editions it's policy that we can't buy back an international edition occasionally some employees somewhere will buy one back anyway it gets sent to mbs and then they'll send an international addition to a new store the next year some college kid who doesn't give a frick will put the isbn on the book anyway instead of telling their manager and pulling it from the shelf and then it gets sold you might be able to sell it back at the end of the semester or you might get an employee who follows procedure and tells you they can't buy it back it sucks protip if the book has black duct tape down the spine or on the cover anywhere it's probably international if you intend to try and sell back asked for another copy when i worked the cafe my manager told me that selling one grand cup of coffee was basically the cost of the entire brood batch like we buy boxes with a couple dozen bags for coffee in it if you divide out the cost of the total number of batches by the total cost of the box it was roughly the cost of one medium coffee lol i worked at hobbies as a young adult and i ran the numbers on soda turns out the cup the soda came in cost more than the liquid in it i've worked at a few of them case the corporate complaints line will do just about anything to keep from getting bad pr the employees generally can't do anything other than stand there and recite company policy so don't get mad at them just call corporate also the special buys for 24.99 19.99 aren't pieces they normally carry they are made specifically for that event they don't retail normally for eighty dollars macy's a majority of the stock is on the floor at any given point in time at least where i worked arguing with the employee to check the back normally result in a few seconds of peace and quiet in the stock room target if they have a mobile phone department chances are the person in the black shirt has no clue what's going on in the rest of the store they are there is a vendor to cell phones and have little to no cross training yeah that's the big ones worked in target managing the phone section black shirt i was bored so i learned the store better than most employees but since i wasn't target i couldn't handle electronics key i was a manager and could have keys to thirty thousand dollars in phones but not a sixty dollar video game case so even though i was standing in electronics we'd have to wait one five minutes for someone to help you annoying everyone involved i framed pictures at hobby lobby for a while the christmas crunch is a true thing i would work through nights on sundays and even up through christmas eve to get your pictures finished i tried really hard to make sure everyone had their gift on but at a certain point it's closing time on the 23rd of december there are 300 orders in line ahead of you and i honestly don't care how important your particular thing is so no guarantees know who will guarantee your order is completed on time a discreet andrew jackson people tip a lot in those gigs and they get treated better just a heads up if you know how to frame stuff and you have ready access to the supplies needed talk to tattoo shops about it i know a few tattoo artists and most of them are into other forms of visual art paint drawing photography and they always need a lot of custom framing done but that crap gets real expensive my artist is always looking to trade to to work for frames worked at best buy there wasn't any commission made unless it was like a magnolia home theater but sales associates had legit hourly daily goals for sales which is why you sometimes feel bombarded by employees and they would want to close the sale right then and there before you went somewhere else because a lot of times another employee who would ring up the sale would put their numbers in and then get credit for the entire sale even if they didn't help with it at all also if you don't hit those goals consistently enough even if it's like an extremely slow season there was the threat of being fired however behind the scenes you were able to get some of the best deals ever to the point where i usually recommend putting up with a part-time one-day week shift just to get them the best buy brand stuff was super cheap so like phone chargers were like 80 cents then there were like online quizzes we could take on products to become store experts on them which usually resulted in getting insane deals like 60 off a sony tv if you did those all like i combined two at the time and got my netgear nighthawk for mad cheap also geek squad protection was crazy cheap as an employee so we used to get it on like bluetooth headphones and when they broke we would just use the protection to replace them with headphones or equal or better value finally a lot of those tv deals around black friday that are door busters that are too good to be true usually were and while they weren't terrible they weren't made with the best parts walmart regularly hires people to work full-time hours but calls them part-time so they don't have to give them benefits they say you'll be working 25 ish hours per week and then book you for 40 and say it's temporary it's not they also don't care if you're being harassed i had a fellow employee threatened to run me down in the back room with a walker stacker machine and when i told management they laughed in my face the woman who threatened me had a history of doing it to new employees literally i worked at walmart for three months as part-time but i was getting 45-50 hours a week they didn't let me lower my hours because i made a commitment to work and then i had a fever one day showed my boss and said i was gonna leave and they said if i left that day i'd be fired i left and was fired i had mono and was in bed for two weeks the narc population at walmart is just as big as ever we have them all over the electronics and automotive sections look for anyone that gives off the middle-aged divorced dad vibe huge giveaway is also when they linger but have empty carts i've heard of other locations employing younger people to play their narcs but if you know what to look for they're impossible to miss there's one at this walmart i go to younger guy around my age 26 ish dresses in just jeans and shirts every single time i go in there without fail he follows me a couple times like come on dude you've followed me plenty to know i don't jack crap my mom worked at michael's for over a decade after they were acquired by bain capital all these costs started getting slashed she used to stock the shelves after they unloaded the truck at 5am bane implemented a policy that they wouldn't turn on the lights or hvac until an hour before the store opened when most employees arrived there was no way to override this as everything was timed and controlled remotely so the early morning staff including my 60 year old mom wore parker's and those miners head lamps paid for out of their own pockets for a few months before someone threatened to go to the press when the temperature was down in the 20s and there was no heat for four hours my mom also bugged the crap out of corporate to change another policy she used to be an elementary art teacher for a rural public school she was basically given a bucket of markers and a box of construction paper every year meanwhile michaels is throwing thousands of dollars of high end over stock art supplies into the trash compactor every month with a corporate policy not to let them leave the store mum started a letter writing campaign more like a letter writing assault and they eventually let her donate the supplies to local schools and community programs frick bain capital your mom sounds like a really good person i have various family who work at walmart they have a customer satisfaction guarantee and will return just about anything within reason even well past the warranty the magic words are that's it i'm calling 1-800 walmart if you are being given a hard time as they will nearly always override the store i just learned this yesterday whilst meeting my family member at target when you press the button summoning help they have 45 seconds to respond and an automated call goes out to all two-way radios fast service needed in department who is responding if they don't respond in time head office is informed stores are judged harshly if too many cause time out so please be nice to the flustered looking team member who helps you they may have literally ran from the other end of the store our sam's club and others i'm sure have a very generous return policy that i don't think people really know about you can literally return anything no matter how long it has been we had someone return a grill they had bought five years ago rusted and very used and exchange it for new model we received that spring sure it's taking advantage of the system but sams will accept the return another customer asked how long they had to return their mattress if they didn't like it after they had bought it i had to ask a manager cause i didn't know at the time his reply as long as they have the receipt they can return it whenever whether that's 10 days from now or 10 years tell the member to tape the receipt under the bed thanks sam walton pretty much every big box hardware store operates on a skeleton crew and only offer more managerialist benefits for employees to stop them from having a revolving door of staff or unionizing yeah working at lowe's we were usually one person short per department sunday nights good freaking luck finding someone not already busy since five people on the sales floor covering multiple departments each and i only heard from customers it was worse at home depot current team member at target all cameras in the store have facial recognition and at my store we usually have a good bit of security walking around pretending to shop oh and here is a little known tip for everyone yelling and making a scene at guest services does not help when we deny a return which we have the option of denying for any reason the superstore has a policy that if a customer complains enough they'll just do the return the gift cards from the clothing section joe fresh can be used on anything in the store that we can look in the back for your size of clothing unless it's clearance we keep all clearance on the floor i worked as a manager in training at target for a summer about 10 years ago the most interesting stuff was in loss prevention there's usually an undercover person in the store shopping they always profile women with bags and watch them on cameras there was an unbroken line of cameras from the exits to the high-end electronics at the time it was ipads whitening strips and diabetic test strips were heavily monitored because of their size to price ratio i guess i was being watched last week then i was in the electronics section looking at wireless mice lost the receiver online and brought my laptop bag and cause i was coming back from school but while i was in the logitech section somebody actually stole the phone and all the tech people were wondering how it happened so fast i worked at walmart for a year back in the day they spent an insane amount of money and time keeping the sales floor clean and organized the back room on the other hand was a hoarder's dream it was a room about the size of a small gymnasium and it was just piled to the roof with boxes and merchandise going back to the 90s plus it stunk to high heaven from the rotted food and the dead rats i worked at academy sports for one summer i really enjoyed working there for the most part employees got a 20 discount on everything in the store except gift cards and dear feed items would often go on clearance based on our computer system that we had no control of if the clearance item wasn't sold within that week they would lower it another 10 percent or so rinse and repeat until it was sold once we figured this out some of my co-workers would hide the best clearance items behind the counter and buy it ourselves once it got marked down like 80 percent i had a co-worker get a shimano reel that was like 120 dollars normally for 25 dollars some of the different breads in the bakery are actually just a french bread cup before we bake it and then charge more one will cut in half so you have two skinny loafs but charge double for the same amount of bread most artisan lmao store bread is garbage and has little to no taste big stores have forever killed quality there is way more employees than you would ever think work there like you don't realize the mammoth size of store combined with all the stuff going on in back you have people unloading trucks taking inventory bringing out stuff that needs to be stopped stocking it cleaning even night shift with about 40 people during slow nights shopping holidays add 10 20 people to that day shift pretty much at 60 or so and did about quarter of stocking inventory stuff i worked in walmart it for many years it was growing work working a minimum of 45 hours per week and supporting walmart ho sam's club and other it teams around the world the benefits were men i left for better pay and better benefits but the experience was invaluable it was very easy finding jobs after my walmart career two key applications that help keep walmart afloat are a telink in their replenishment system i had the joy of watching both in action it is quite amazing to see how fast walmart can replenishment inventory all over the world retalink is a system that third parties can log into and check on their good they bit low to compete for walmart's business another thing that walmart was doing before any other company i think for all those unused gift cards they would put the unused money into an interest-bearing account with the 60-plus percent of people that don't use their gift cards walmart banks millions in interest maybe how little behind the scenes stuff there actually is we don't have a massive warehouse in the back i think most of the inventory in the back of my walmart was tvs people definitely thought that i had way more power than i did i'll never forget when my check reader kept jamming the customer flipped out calling me incompetent my guy i can do two things i can insert the check and wait for it to do its thing and i can remove jam checks i don't have a lot of options unlike you who can use a less inconvenient form of payment or when people complain to me that we don't have enough registers open i was a 17 year old cashier crazy i know but i have literally no sale or voice in the matters of hiring or scheduling i'll tell my supervisor i'm sure she'll definitely do something about that romeo i worked for target for six years one as a cashier one the guest services and four is the store receiver as the store receiver i was responsible for receiving all vendor merchandise into inventory coca-cola pepsi pepperidge farm miller cores etc ups fedex deliveries usually books dvds video games overnight rush deliveries of hatchimals etc food bank donation pickups processing out damage inventory and pulling destroying recall items one profit margins on vendor merchandise is usually very slim if there is any at all for example a 12-pack of soda is usually purchased from the vendor for a dollar or so more than it is sold for when they go on sale target usually loses between one dollar and two dollars on every 12 packs sold dvds are even worse too do not ever put your mouth on a soda beer red bull can i've watched cans roll around on the floor and be repacked into 12 packs for sale i've seen merchandisers stand on cases of red bull to reach things warehouses are dirty and merchandisers hands are dirtier they're grabbing cans where you put your lips just don't do it three bought some medicine cosmetics food but ended up not needing it it's hazardous waste or garbage now common medicine and cosmetics are processed through target's environmental sensitive item management process sm each item is individually bagged and zip tied sorted into one of six categories depending on its chemical makeup and stored until the sim vendor comes for a pickup komarini and all returned food is garbage it's too risky for target to resell or donate the only food eligible for donation is product that has been damaged during delivery stocking or by a guest so just keep that extra halloween candy 4. stuff is recalled for the dumbest reasons comma my favorite recall was a t-shirt that said keep your friends close keep your whiskey closer i had to pull it off the sales floor and destroy it because it was deemed offensive by guests comma worst recall was about 450 pillows recalled because a bag said made in the usa when they were really made in china filled and finished in the usa i had to black out the made in the usa label in two spots on every pillar with a sharpie the only good thing is that we were able to donate the pillows to our local food bank i remember the pillow recall they grabbed all the etls and tls to go through and had us sharpie them all if you are new to the channel you can subscribe i publish new 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Channel: UE Stories

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Keywords: behind the scenes, big box, big box store, big box store houseplant, big box stories, #updootst, updoot, reddit, r/askreddit, askreddit, ask reddit, r/, \r, r\, best of reddit, reddit stories, reddit story, top posts, funniest posts, funny, funny posts, funny reddit stories, funny askreddit, reddit funny, askreddit funny, askreddit stories, reddit stories 2021, people of reddit, sub, reddit cringe, memes, toadfilms, updoot everything, updoot reddit, story, stories, rslash, comedy, fresh

Id: 4A8us9qspu4

Length: 28min 20sec (1700 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 07 2021