Level up!

I kind of expect incompetence from retail employees but sometimes I am left truly stunned, aghast at the enormity of their uselessness score.

On Saturday Wendy and I decided to buy a new computer.  (She wants to use it to play WOW with me again.  Yay!)  We walked into Best Buy with the idea of just buying a computer there.  We gave them our general needs - a gaming focused machine, good graphics card, ~$800 price range, desktop.

You might think this was a slam dunk for the salesperson.  We aren't overly picky about our requirements, our price range is reasonable, we are actually ready to buy and not just window shopping.  Everything is going this guy's way today.

You would be wrong.

The sales guy spent most of our visit on his smartphone looking at the Best Buy website trying to figure out what they offer in terms of computers.  He tried to show us some things on a display model but couldn't get it to get off of the basic display screen.  He ended his presentation by informing us that they might have a model that could potentially fit our needs but it might not be in stock and he wasn't sure about the specs.

Then he gave us directions to a computer store nearby.

Dude!  We are literally *surrounded* by computers!  Your store is a computer store!

So we went to another computer store, found someone who knew lots about tech, and got them to figure out a machine that would work for us.

I don't know how much blame to lay at the doorstep of Best Buy and how much to blame the salesperson, but overall this experience has set a really high bar for most incompetence.

On the other hand he did end up directing us to another store where we got exactly what we wanted so maybe he is delivering great service after all by sending us away from Best Buy.  Depends on your point of view, I suppose.