Heads up, the headline is kind of misleading. “Going sleeper” is just their internal slang for getting laid off. It doesn’t mean some kind of protest or activism.
Edit: not really sure why I got downvoted. The whole article is like 20 sentences. This isn't some kind of high brow journalism. The whole thing takes less than a minute to read.
I used to go to Best Buy weekly to look for new movies and games, but since they eliminated movies and scaled back games, I've been doing all that shopping on Amazon instead... I guess it shows who wants my money and who doesn't.
Best Buy is going to end up being just another "Hey, remember Fry's? Circuit City? CompUSA? Good Guys? Tower? Computer City?"
I remember software etc. They had a big event for the dreamcast being released. 9/9/99. I wore that free shirt with the date that I got there from playing sonic adventure for like 15 years
We had one in Minneapolis at the Mall of America when it opened. It had a great selection but I was still partial to Cheapo, Northern Lights, and Positively 4th St. Cheapo is still around and I stop in there a few times a year. The other 2 closed down a long time ago -- possibly before MOA opened in the early 90's I think,
I only ever remember RadioShack selling prepaid phones, RC cars, and other consumer electronics, but apparently at one point in time they sold small-scale electronic components for hobbyists.
They did indeed, and the Radio Shack in my town was one the last ones I ever saw to still sell individual components although the selection did shrink rapidly in the final years. The other locations around and about seemingly all turned into basically exclusively cell phone stores, right around the time the cell phone boom was happening. The problem with that: So was every other retailer on Earth, but most of those other retailers also had other product lines to fall back on. The inevitable tanking happened shortly thereafter.
There are somehow apparently still around 500 Radio Shack stores still operating, I believe all of which are privately owned. I have seen a couple in my travels, all of them located far out into the sticks in Appalachia and the Midwest, presumably all locations that are not served well by larger competitors or the internet.
And the infuriating thing is you get to cross of CompUSA twice from your list, because after they tanked the first time they got bought by TigerDirect, the brand was resurrected, and then they tanked again.
BestBuy has always sucked, and the only reason I'd ever go there is if I'm really hard up for something and I'm willing to get fleeced for the convenience. That's it. They have:
crappy selection
bad prices (I guess they price match)
unhelpful staff (not their fault)
bad store layout (everything I want is hidden in the corner somewhere)
But it's the only tech store in my area, aside from whatever Target or Walmart happens to have, so if I really need a SATA to USB cable or something, it's my only option for same day stuff.
So I'd be a little sad about them going out of business, but not overly so because they completely suck. I can count the things I've bought there on one hand, because the shopping experience is awful imo. I purchased tons of things at Fry's in the 2-ish years I lived near one and had money to spend. I prefer to buy at a brick and mortar (I spend a ton at Target), but BestBuy ain't it. If a Microcenter opened up near me, I'd do all my tech shopping there, but I refuse to shop at BestBuy.
The only time that I ended up going into Best Buy over just ordering something off of Amazon was when I found that they would price match an online Amazon retailer and was capable of buying something at nearly 65 to 70% off. But I was capable of having it directly delivered to a store where I didn't have to worry about some porch pirate taking off with something that had a general MSRP of like 1,500 bucks and was capable of walking in looking at an inspecting it and deciding whether or not I was actually going to take delivery of it cuz if it was damaged for the Box had been dropped or anything like that I was going to refuse it on the spot and tell them to get me another one which isn't something you can do when you order off of Amazon.
I also used them to price match a TV that was on Amazon that they still had sitting on the shop floor got it Hefty $50 off on that one but it wasn't anywhere near what I got off for the new amp/source that I ended up buying.
15 years with geek squad and you're not wrong, I got caught up in these layoffs and thought I'm stressed the high hell, I'm not surprised. There wasn't work to do, I was struggling to barely get 30 hours.
They recently changed there subscription modle and people stopped scheduling on site jobs.
Without having looked at any of the subscription changes, my guess is they increased subscription costs with minimal if any increases in offered services. Is that correct?
FBI offered to Geek Squad a bounty on incriminating evidence found on long-term storage of computers they serviced and a lot of GS techs made those reports.
That is to say GS had no concern for privacy or fourth amendment protections during the era of rising surveillance awareness.
Yes, a handful of BestBuy employees accepted payments from the FBI to report on CP found on a customers device. So let's all feel good about underpaid workers losing their jobs in this economy.
It's up to you, but over here it looks like an abuse of power and a violation of trust. If they can't be trusted not to look at the data they're trying to restore (except directly in the service of restoring it) they they can't be trusted with a business PC containing accounting data or legal correspondence either.
And a violation of trust in the service of law enforcement is still a violation of trust in the public. Considering how this would poison the service for business clients, I am surprised it doesn't run contrary to Best Buy terms of employment (outside of mandated reporting, which is why mandated reporting laws exist for some cases).
On the other hand AT&T will gladly spooge your phone call records to the police if they ask for it. (No warrant necessary.) And Amazon's Ring doorbell videos are sold to law enforcement whenever they want it (without permission of the doorbell owners.) But that's finally resulted in trouble, and Amazon is rethinking this service.
It is interesting that in this economy which is intentionally managed to create a shortage of jobs and to lower wages, that employees are expected to betray the public trust and even engage in illegal activity at the behest of their employers just to stay employed, and that some of us might find this as an acceptable state of affairs. And yes, when business goes sour for the company, those employees will be discarded with no additional acknowledgment for their loyalty.
The problem isn't that the computers had CP, it's that the techs looked through the data.
Yes, if they happen to see CP while doing their normal work, they should report it. But their normal work shouldn't involve looking through pictures at all in the first place.
Are you thinking of this instance? It's an instance that could happen to any of us. The CSAM in question was found (and only found) in garbage data in unused storage. And it means our GS tech had actively scan (go out of his way), rather than just fix the machine.
It also means it's inconclusive, since that kind of stuff can end up in your webcache through malware vectored through advertising. CSAM is weaponized in malware. Heck, there are CSAM images in the Bitcoin blockchain file (or were, if they found a way to scour them). Not that innocent websurfers have not been falsely convicted due to invisible crap in their cleared webcache, but we should know better by now.
It does raise a question about what you believe regarding the limits of our civil rights. Do you believe evidence illegally obtained by law enforcement should be wholly admissible if the crime is heinous enough? SCOTUS does, and ruled that even drug possession discovered during an illegal search should be admissible. But that pretty much means you and I cannot rely on constitutional protections from unreasonable search and seizure.
Here in the States, preserving our protections and our privacy sometimes means defending the worst people. See, it's supposed to be a penalty against the state for poorly executing the law when someone can't be convicted due to inadmissible evidence. If a guilty citizen is improperly treated by law enforcement (according to the legal theory that supposed Blackstone's ratio) then they should be acquitted, and the public has only the incompetence of state actors to blame.
Law enforcement is supposed to respect your protections, and if we let them conduct illegal searches (such as buying data from brokers, or using IMSI spoofers without a warrant, or asking Google for everyone within a mile and an hour of a criminal incident) then they're going conduct those same illegal searches when you're working with your mutual aid organization or are protesting against injustice. If serial killers and child molesters aren't protected from overpolicing, then you aren't either, and if you happen to be nonwhite, LGBT+ or part of another marginalized group (Juggalos!) then you're in far more danger of illegal searches, false convictions and prison time, assuming you're just not the victim of an officer-involved homicide.
If you live in the US, it's very difficult not to commit crimes, particularly federal felonies. There but for your privacy (and / or the grace of prosecutorial discretion) goes your freedom and reputation.
That said, the FBI has been super sloppy in its pursuit to hunt down CSAM traders, even letting their high-end malware leak into the public to be dissected and used by black-hats, and interests of rival nations.
sacrificed a lot of personal time and experiences just to be let go
Corporations have one goal: making money.
Right behind that is self preservation, which is in full service of continuing to make money.
If corporations show that they care about you, it is in service of you making money for them. They do not care about you, they care about money. You have to make an effort to look out for yourself, and for your team mates that you care about. Make sure you and your close team mates are not being overworked, because the company will not do so unless they are forced to or unless they think that doing so will make them more money.
Right behind that is self preservation, which is in full service of continuing to make money.
That secondary goal is falling far, far behind in importance.
These days most shareholders will insist on a higher payout this quarter, even if it directly threatens the long term viability of the enterprise.
The shareholders are not in it for the long haul, they only want to get in, make a quick buck, and get out as fast as possible before the whole thing collapses.