Pros
+ Decent pay (It's not minimum wage..) + Bonus! (If your store does a good job hitting budget, you get a bonus known as Blue Crew Bucks. Our store has consecutively hit 5 times in a row.) + Interesting employees + Interesting customers + Best Buy discount is one of the best around. + Management is very friendly + Lots and lots of training available via LearningLounge + Good hours if you do your job well (I'm part-time and for the most part I never get less than 27 hours a week. However another co-worker of mine is fairly new to the company and only got about 12 hours this week total. How do they expect these new people to progress if they're never working? I am a fast learner so I picked up on things pretty well but I can see where others may struggle due to lack of "playing time." ) + Schedule is usually consistent. You know what kind of shifts you'll get. + Builds character + Gives you a strange insight on how people think and they spend their money.. + Break room is awesome.
Cons
- Always being sent to another department where you have no training or experience in and expected to make that sale. I am constantly being sent all across the store in order to help a customer or finish up a sale by ringing them out. Most of the time they immediately ask me a question that I cannot answer and I am left aimlessly staring at the product card or box. You'll be lucky if the answer is right on the card or box but most of the times it isn't and requires some sort of knowledge in that area. All of this just leads to pissed off customers and a bad experience for everyone. - Security seems to be out-dated, at least in our store. We only have one person who watches the entire store and they are located at the entrance where they have to greet customers, check receipts, help with carry-outs and perform other random tasks. Why do we only have one guy watching an entire electronics store?! Working at Best Buy, I realize how easy it is to steal from there. Any well coordinated thief (or thieves) can easily sneak out the door with hundreds of dollars worth of products. "Shrink" affects our budget and they can't expect us to hit that when thousands of dollars worth of equipment is stolen (on multiple-occasions) - They kind of just throw you out on the sales floor after you're done with orientation. It can be very overwhelming if you're not prepared or knowledgeable in your department. Even though LearningLounge provides tons and tons of training, a lot of the mandatory sessions provide little to no help in product knowledge. They barely scratch the basics and any customer with intermediate knowledge can make you feel at a loss of words. - Some managers have a tendency to only stay one side of the store (Home Theater and Computers). It sometimes feels like you don't matter if you're not in those departments. NOT REALLY A CON BUT.. I had the new GM of our store ask me what call-outs meant and why we did them. I don't think it was a trick question.. He genuinely did not know what the meaning of "Put me down for a _ year GSP and a mixer." He told me he's heard a lot of people on the radio saying that stuff and was wondering what that was and when I gave him an answer he asked me why we did it. It was odd..it made me wonder what kind of Best Buy store he had been at (or if he had ever been in one.)