CompUSA closes for good
Friday, December 7th, 2007 - 4:19PM
Yep, WSJ confirmed my story: CompUSA is closing for good. And as a former employee, can I just say good riddance? I know, a lot of people are losing their jobs (and that really sucks), but it had to be said.
I worked at store #717 for a couple of years in high school as a cashier. It was my first “real” job and considering the job market for a teenager with no work experience I was happy to be inside and not working food service. There weren’t a whole lot of memorable moments aside from the times we were robbed, being yelled at several times from various irate customers, and the god forsaken mail in rebates. CompUSA treated their employees like dirt and I watched the turnover soar until I was considered a senior employee for my store. I managed to not rock the boat enough to be fired and after two years walked away with a good job reference and enough customer service experience to land a much better gig. The absolute best perk of working at CompUSA was you got everything at cost. Sucks for a lot of the bigger items but rocked for those high margin items like cables or surge protectors.
One of my favorite stories happened back when 3Dfx was still around and had just released a new card that was retailing at 399.99. Being a major gamer and geek I was well aware of this and chatted up the customers I saw purchasing said product. One day some kid gets in my line and nonchalantly hands me the box without saying a word. It was pretty suspicious to me - this kid couldn’t afford this card unless he has saved up, was wealthy, or getting it as some type of gift. I scanned it with my barcode reader and it rang up “39.99″. No freaking way. I scanned it again and while doing so noticed that the barcode looked a little suspicious. The kid started to feign impatience stating his friends were waiting and needed to pay and go. I told him that this box was obviously misabled and tore off the sticker that was placed directly over the legitimate barcode. A third scanning showed the 399.99 price, totally busted. He now was feigning shock and quickly left the store empty handed. I let the store manager on to the little ruse and he miraculously gave me $50 out of his own pocket for my vigilance. That was pretty neat. Shrinkage at that store was out of this world though. I saw soooo many people get fired for stealing, god knows how much they got away with.
Comment by Evan Jones — Friday, December 7, 2007 @ 6:05 pm