I am yo manager, B$%^&!

I am yo manager, B$%^&!

It's late. My allergies have launched an all-out assault against me and I have to be up in a few hours, but I've been putting this one off and I don't want too much time to pass or the details to get fuzzy. In a sentence: The Geek Squad is the WORST!

My family computer was fried by a power surge back in March. In doing what made logical sense I went to the Geek Squad. Their commercials would lead you to believe they know what they're doing. Well everything went downhill as soon as a walked through Best Buy's doors.

I ignored several red flags:

• There was only one person behind the counter.
• This one person seemed completely unconcerned with the line forming behind the person he waited on.
• This same person never called anyone for assistance.
• Another Geek Squad team member emerged from behind a black curtain made of thick shreds of plastic, looked at something on the counter and went back to wherever he came from.
• It was 11 am. The store had only been open for an hour.
• All of their prices (not cheap) had a range.
  

A fraternity brother of mine used to build my computers when I first got out of college. I gave him a grand or two and he spent a day putting together my CPU, no differently than I would play an intense game of Scrabble with a group of friends with large vocabularies. But as with everything, he's married with kids now, and I have no idea where he is and I don't know any real geeks after leaving my last gig.

Which brings me to my second point:

Standing behind a counter wearing dingy black Dockers or 2 dollar black slacks, a white oxford shirt that looks like it was slept in, a black tie you wore to your third grade school Christmas play, white tube socks and black clodhoppers DOES NOT merit you being a geek. Horribly dressed? Yes. Geek? Not necessarily. Ethnic determinants that also don't apply: being African American with large glasses or an untrimmed goatee, or having a mouth full of crooked teeth; neither does being skinny and East Indian or talking incessantly about the computers you have running 24/7 autosaving where you left off in D&D and whatever the hot RPG of the month is. Geek? No. Social misfit? Probably.

Which brings me to my third point:

If I worked for one of, if not the nation's largest consumer electronic retailers I might be pretty adept at repairing computers since I would have access to any and every piece of software and every electronic component I could get my hands on. So it's not a matter of expertise, but rather access and resources. I realized this when I had to speak with the store manager on my 4th visit to the store and he explained what needed to be done on my computer better than any of the Geeks did.

Which brings me to my final point:

I don't know about all Best Buy based Geek Squad operations or the Geek Squad guys that drive around in the VWs, but the one I went to was laden with a batch of Best Buy employees masquerading as computer technicians in ill-fitting Men In Black Casual Friday attire. [Run-on Sentence Alert] And it dawned on me this past Saturday, MAY 3rd, when my computer was finally ready after 3 mix-ups, and 4 visits to the store, when on one visit I witnessed 2 customers ready to throw blows with these guys, and after one of the most ill-handled displays of customer service I've ever witnessed (complete with upselling at every turn), the whole thing was eerily comparable to somewhere else I've had to spend money. I was at the counter with my receipt and there were several Geeks working, all with their backs to the counter, talking amongst themselves. After about 10 minutes of this, one of them turns around and tells me he's sending someone out to help and walks into that 70's lounge area with the black curtain. A guy who had been standing there with me glanced over my way and WTF? was written all over his face. I shrugged my shoulders and said it was a sign of the times. That's when it clicked. One word summed up my entire experience, between the money I spent, the poor service I got and their aloofness to the whole thing: Kinkos. Dave Chappelle beautifully potrayed this experience during the first season of his now infamous show..."I am yo manager, B$%^&!"

The Geeks weren't all bad, but most of them were. But what these clowns don't know, but may find out sooner rather than later, is that I have a business relationship with a Best Buy regional executive and I was simply waiting for this fiasco to end before I let her know how one of her stores conducts business.

Stay tuned...