But Best Buy issued a statement apologizing for the price. It boils down to this: because the store doesn't sell the water by the case, there is no pricing in their system for it, so an employee set the price by just taking the price of a single bottle and multiplying it by the number in the case.
"But why didn't the employee just create a special price for it in the system?" you're probably asking. I've worked and work for a big box retailer. I, or anyone that's been an employee at one can tell you why: the employee probably couldn't. In fact, no one at the store, even the managers, could have.
Big box retailing has some upsides: for example, it helps businesses expand and spread risk. So a store has lower sales for a period. Another store has higher sales, so the profits can be spread between them to allow them all to grow and prosper. The big dark side is the constant struggle between the needs of those local stores and central management's desire for control.
Whether the employees call it "corporate" or "the home office," that battle is constant and over everything: from what prices to charge for products, what products to carry. Even the ability to apportion hours to employees (yes, corporate rations out hours for store employees, another part of how they keep employee pay low), and even when employees should be scheduled. College students don't take these jobs anymore; middle-aged and older folk do. The college student can't get hours to work around their classes anymore. A hard working go-getter can't start at the bottom and work their way up because they'll be squeezed out of the bottom by economic necessity.
So we should be mad at Best Buy for this, but not because the water was expensive, but because they, and other big box retailers like them, foster a business system and culture where local employees and managers have little or no control over how to run their stores and serve their local customers.
Should you boycott the big boxes? That's almost impossible. Who should you boycott? Amazon. That site has yet to put forward a truly sustainable business model, but it is the one setting the standard these big boxes are trying to strive towards.
So what should you do? Shop at those big boxes. And then take the customer feedback surveys. Go the extra mile and mention a person that gave you a positive experience. Flood the big box's e-mail, and, if you're old-fashioned, snail mail with letters telling them that they need to put more faith in their local teams. Even offer this bit of advice directly to those CEOs: the cast of The Big Bang Theory took a voluntary pay cut for salary parity with their co-stars. Surely a CEO making 331 times what their average worker makes can afford a similar pay cut to provide their hourly workers more hours, better wages, and even provide for more full-time employees in their local staff.
Think about it. Who do you want helping you at a store? A worker on edge because they have to do 8-hours worth of work in 4 and knowing that they have to cover for someone who couldn't get scheduled that day in addition? Or someone who feels like the company cares and has plenty of support and back-up so they don't have to rush their job and can take time to help you?
Leave a comment, and I'll be happy to give you a suggested text for that e-mail.
