Ah yes.

I worked for Best Buy, in Geek Squad, for 4 years.

Hands down, one of the worst companies I ever worked for in the attitude they have towards their employees. I was treated better working at a gas station than I was at Best Buy -- and paid more, too.

I made $15 an hour cleaning drink machines at gas stations, whereas I made $12.00 an hour at Best Buy fixing computers .. I started at $10. Had to fight to get to $12. When my co-worker got his A+ and brought it in, the manager literally laughed at him and told him it was a worthless scrap of paper and told us certifications were useless, meaningless and there was no encouragement to acquire them.

The other managers fought me, constantly, to try to keep me from doing good, timely work for the customers that came into the store for Geek Squad services. They instead tried to make me act as a cashier, do returns/exchanges, deal with angry customers or sell things around the store. Basically, do anything but my job in Geek Squad. Literally hundreds of customers got less than promised service because of this interference from management. I became an expert at dealing with disappointed customers in that store. Management didn't care if we did our job, just that we got people to pay us.

The entire Geek Squad team in my store got fed up with it and all 10 people vacated in less than a year. I still know people who work there, and rather than cultivating a culture of respect, rewarding people for being good at their job or getting better at it and solving the management problems or paying people a decent amount of money, they've started telling employees to do silly crap like a "badge ceremony" to try to save the horrific morale. Doesn't seem to be working, given they've had a 300% turnover rate in the last 2 years.

I had my job threatened hundreds of times while I worked there despite being told, repeatedly, that I did great work and was a great employee - I was on time every day and didn't miss a single day of work for over a year and got numerous customer compliments over the span of my work there, but when it came time for raises they told me I had to explain to them why I deserved anything, they'd disagree, and just puts "3" across the board out of 5, unless I insistently, vehemently argued, then they might put one or two things at a "4." My last raise was 12 cents. I walked out on my lunch break and never went back.

They also demoted my friend as part of a restructure, who was doing business work for them, to pay him less. They tried to offer him what he was supposed to be paid when he told them he was quitting. He told them to fuck off, and makes 300% more working for a much better company now.

Since I left, the store manager was demoted out of the store and quit and virtually every manager has been fired or laid off, all but two out of 100 or so staff of the entire store is completely different from when I worked there 2 years ago.

Also, They pressure their employees to sell you shit you don't need, and find excuses to fire them if they don't sell it to you, so the whole 'not on commission' thing is a clever ruse to make you think they're not trying to sell you extra crap. My store, for example, had a requirement that 1 in 20 laptops be sold with a portable 3g access point with a 2 year contract.

tl;dr : best buy treats their employees like shit, pays shit, don't work there unless you hate yourself, don't buy the extra crap they try to sell you.