Circuit City

Circuit City WAS a great place to work if you were a good salesperson who was willing to put up with working in retail (working weekends and evenings and putting up with customers who think that it's their god given right to ridicule and abuse retail sales people). If you met their sales goals including selling the company's grossly overpriced, incredibly profitable warranties you were a HERO and you were rewarded with Sales Excellence dinners, President's club rewards and a good income. Then they called us all together on Feb. 5th and told us that they were eliminating commissioned sales people immediately. The best of us (the previous month's HEROs) were laid off and the rest were told they could resign or accept a new job at an hourly wage based somewhat on their average hourly wage for last October and November. Of course in October a lot of people had just been hired on for the holiday season so they didn't make much in October while they were in training so their hourly average was pretty low.

Circuit City has said that they made this move to provide better customer service. The truth is Best Buy has been beating the pants off of Circuit City and this was the easiest way to save a lot of money fast. Sales people used to be encouraged to always move around the sales floor and make sure that every customer gets helped. Now, the next time you go to a Circuit City and someone is standing a few feet away and doesn't offer to help you it's probably because she has been told to stay in her assigned work zone and can't leave it without a manager's approval. Then, when someone does offer to help don't be surprised if they aren't as knowledgeable or helpful as they used to be because the good people have all left the company and it is now a clone of Best Buy with a bunch of high school and college kids working on the sales floor. AND you will still have to put up with the pressure to buy a Circuit City warranty because the managers have big warranty budgets and their bosses make their lives miserable if they don't meet them so they still demand that the employees push the warranties even though the latest training videos say that you should offer a warranty and when the customer says no just move on and complete the sale without hassling the customer. Also, the sales managers now have budgets and they get a bonus if the store meets budget for the month so they have to sell and use lots of high pressure to make sure they get that bonus and get to keep their jobs.

Circuit City is desperate to improve the bottom line. The first thing they did to do this was get rid of their best salespeople which makes no sense. Would you want to work for them now? Would you want to be a customer of theirs? Would you expect this company to be around in 5 years? No, No, No!

Circuit City 2

I got my radio installed there and they completely fucked it up. It completely stopped working and I had to take it to more people to get it fixed and they said Circuit City is a bunch of fools installing car radios. DONT EVER GO THERE, I got fucked once I wont again. They suck at everything, they claim they have great prices, but really they are shit.