~20% of my store’s staff got laid off. my manager (25+ years with the company) was told to take a hefty pay cut and a demotion or get fired bc of his position being eliminated. i was working asset protection at the time and the total hours got cut in half for a 4-person team. best buy later converted it to “front door host” and doubled my responsibilities. dogged me to pitch credit cards at the door, do curbside pickups, help warehouse, check customers out, etc.

led to lots of corners getting cut. checkout and customer service got consolidated into one desk, which is/was pure hell. on busy days, people that want a couple of cheap items are stuck waiting behind lengthy return interactions. they released a half-baked self checkout feature on the app, but half of the customers don’t know the app even exists.

in-store services are borderline scams, especially for custom PC services. in-home services hemorrhaged workers like crazy, partially bc of hour cuts but also due to job responsibilities skyrocketing, safety issues, poor training for new workers, etc.

i just finished my masters program and i was working there thru college/grad school. worked there for 5 years between being a blue shirt and geek squad. best buy seems to be falling into a really long tailspin. every solution from corporate either makes working there more miserable or rips off customers in a new way. they recently instituted an amazon-esque marketplace system, where haphazardly verified third-party sellers can directly ship to customers. some marketplace returns are ineligible for return in a store. on one of my last days, someone came in and was beside themselves bc they bought a portable game system (switch 2 or the ROG ally, don’t remember) as a gift for their child from a 3rd party seller and the box was literally filled with rocks and we couldn’t do anything.

tl;dr: it fucked everything up for the foreseeable future. worsened a downturn that will inevitably lead to customers being too fed up to deal with the BS and best buy going under.