Forgive me for buying at Best Buy
H.R. Laser
Parallax software released the source code to their Descent game a couple
weeks ago, and since a couple programmers have ported the game "Descent"
to the Amiga, I went out this morning to buy a legal boxed copy of Descent
so I could use its game files (.hog and .pig) with the new Amiga engines
that will run the game on my machines.
I thought about which computer store might carry it - called Creative
Computers in Lawndale CA (I'm in Torrance), and gee.. despite their web
site claiming 45,000 titles and $1.8 billion in inventory (and if you
believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you) they
didn't have "Descent I and II the Definitive Collection" which contained
the files I needed. All they had was some other Descent box.
(Creative Computers is the company that owns both MacMall and PCMall
online stores, btw, and they started life in the late 80s as a 100% Amiga
store. Hard to believe. Now they don't even utter the word "Amiga."
Then I thought hmm.. what else is nearby who might possibly have it?
Well, the local Computer City store shut down a year ago. There's a Comp
USA down the road but that place makes my skin crawl - they never have
what I want and they're in a shitty location.
Fry's? Well I've been to their Manhattan Beach CA, store, which is a
long, ugly drive from home, many times and rarely buy anything. The place
is a total zoo - their parking lot is about 1/4 of what they need and
jockeying for a parking space is like Medieval jousting matches. I've
actually seen fights break out in their lot over one guy jumping into a
space another guy was waiting for. Then there are the interminably long
checkout lines, and the floor clerks who couldn't find their ass with both
hands. Last time I tried to buy something there was 2 months ago, when
Doom was ported to Amiga and I wanted to get an original Doom CD. Guess
what.. they didn't have it. The single most popular computer game in the
world, and they were out.
So I decided to go to Best Buy, which has a store 1/2 a mile from home.
I really didn't want to, but the devil made me do it.
I walked in, started to peruse the racks of games, and sure enough, there
it was, the Descent box I was looking for, for $19.99. Cheap, even. And
my god, they even had a bunch of them. "This is too easy" I thought to
myself.
I took it up to the checkout stands. Two stands of eight were open with
six people in each line. Fun, I thought.. I'll be standing here forever.
After five minutes of the line not moving at all, another clerk came and
opened a third line and waved some people from the first two lines over.
I stayed in the line I was already in as three people ahead of me ran to
one of the other ones.
The clerk in my line walked away, off into the bowels of the store, to
check a price or something for the person at the head of my line. Five
minutes later she came back (all the time I was shifting my gaze to the
other two open lines to see how they were progressing and if it would be
a good or a bad move to jump into one of them).
Finally she came back, finished the first guy's transaction and then the
guy in front of me had his turn. He was buying a modem. He wanted the
$40 rebate coupon for it which he couldn't find. As she rang up his modem
she told him to go look in the coupon rack outside of the checkstands. So
now we got to wait for that. He came back without the coupon and she
instructed him to pay for it, then go back to the computer dept. and look
for it there. Heh. I wonder if he ever found it.
Why don't these idiots keep the rebate coupons for a given product, on a
holder on the shelf where the product is, instead of putting them in a
huge combined rack which you have to then stand there and eyeball, with a
very good chance that even if the coupon you need is there, you could
overlook it?
Finally, after some 10 minutes in line, I got up to the register, paid for
my box, got my receipt and bag and headed for the door. The security goon
at the podium there actually came over to meet me, scrawled his initial on
the receipt and I was out the door.
Thus, unlike some other experiences in this store, they actually had what
I wanted, at a low price, and the only bad part was the gridlock at the
checkout stands, which, as usual, had too few clerks to serve too many
customers.
Harv | "Do you recognize the
ha...@amigazone.com | Bell of Truth when you
http://www.amigazone.com | hear it ring?"
A1200/030, A2500/060, CDTV :) | - Leon Russell
Kenneth and Alisha Price
H.R. Laser wrote in message ...
. The security goon
>at the podium there actually came over to meet me, scrawled his initial on
>the receipt and I was out the door.
It seems like everytime I go in there, the security alarm goes off while
trying to exit, so this security "goon" rummages through all my bags, and
checks everything on my receipt while the whole store watches, wondering if
you're a thief! Only to find out, the checker never removed the the
thing-a-ma-bob! Different checkers every time, coincidence or what?!? Never
again for me!