"John H" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 16 Jan 2009 21:40:58 -0500, "Eisboch" wrote:
"hk" wrote in message
news:tOKdnSJgIZhGpezUnZ2dnUVZ_jOdnZ2d@earthlink. com...
Circuit City to liquidate, shutter stores
Fri Jan 16, 2009 8:08pm EST
By Karen Jacobs and Emily Chasan
ATLANTA/RICHMOND, Virginia (Reuters) - Bankrupt electronics retailer
Circuit City Stores said on Friday it will liquidate its assets and
shutter hundreds of U.S. stores after failing to reach a deal to sell
the
company.
Good riddance. Circuit City was one of the worst retail stores for
consumer
electronics (or anything for that matter) that I can think of. Sales
"associates" walking around with cell phones stuck in their ear, talking
to
friends or congregating in groups yuking it up while customers wait at the
register to pay for purchases or need assistance. We had two in this
area,
one was in business for several years, the other relatively new. Both
stores had the same cavalier culture when it came to the customers.
Plus, typically they didn't know anything about the products they sold.
Most
were high school kids working after school. At least Best Buy has some
trained sales associates that know something about what they sell. For
the
market it was supposed to serve, Circuit City was no better than a Target
or
Wal-Mart.
I am surprised they stayed in business as long as they did, economic
slowdown or no economic slowdown.
Eisboch
I wish someone could explain the satisfaction Harry finds in the fact that
companies are going out of business.
Is this good for liberals somehow? Circuit City had employees who had
jobs,
even if those folks did nothing. Is it in the best interest of liberals
that the unemployed numbers grow larger?
I'm missing something somewhere.
Yes, you are missing something, and so is Harry. Circuit City was in bad
shape way before the economy went down the toilet. There are badly run
businesses and there are well run businesses. Capitalism is based on
competition - the survival of the fittest. Circuit City deserved to die. I
feel bad for their employees, but hopefully, a few of them will learn a
lesson from their experience. Probably not, though, because their managers
expected to make money for doing pretty much nothing special, so they were
lousy role models.
When I was in the audio business, we expected new employees to learn every
piece of equipment in the store. On slow days, we'd send them to the
upstairs office during lunch with a receiver or whatever, and told them to
learn it until they could work it blindfolded. If there were no customers,
we'd stick them in the sound room and tell them to listen hard to all the
speakers until they could describe the differences adequately. We made them
study, in other words. We all took home demo pieces overnight to learning
purposes.
A friend from those days is now an independent sales trainer. He said "no"
to working for CC after one disturbing experience. He played customer &
called our local store, asking if they had a certain Harmon Kardon receiver
in stock. The employee told him they didn't carry Harmon Kardon. My friend
knew, of course, that they carried HK, and several HK items had been
featured in their Sunday newspaper ad that same week. When he told their
regional manager about his experience, the guy pretty much yawned and said
"That's why we want you to do training for us." My friend said no thanks,
figuring that if the employees didn't care enough to walk around their own
store and see what brands they carried, sales training was the least of
their problems. Even worse was that the manager didn't have clue about the
real problem.
The only advantage CC offered me was the ability to order online and pick up
an item at the store. That's pretty expensive real estate for what amounts
to nothing but a warehouse.
Meanwhile, we have the perfect model of capitalism here. Maybe Rochester
customers have high expectations because of this company:
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3795
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2003/1124/166_print.html
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortu...4048/index.htm