5 Apocalyptic Realities Working At A Modern Day Blockbuster (cracked.com)

[busman_49]

http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-2112-5-post-apocalyptic-realities-working-dying-retailer.html

I don't know if any one else has seen this, but I ran across it today.  It was an amusing read.  They talked to former Blockbuster AND Kmart employees.

[TheFugitive]

As a veteran of four extinct retailers, I can relate.  Particularly the bit about pestering customers at the
checkouts for zip codes and credit card applications.

Service Merchandise got terrible about this towards the end.  They made it MANDATORY that the
customer give their phone number to start the transaction.  Then they made the cashiers try and
sell them a Service Merchandise credit card.  If the customer said no, we had provided them training
on the features and benefits, and tactics to overcome the objection.

Then if they bought some item that qualified for a Service Plus extended warranty, the cashier was forced
to try and sell them that.  If the customer said no, they were again told to turn to their training on how to overcome objections.

A customer who did not want a credit card or an extended warranty could tie up the checkout line for a good 15-20 minutes, arguing with the cashier, as she kept trying to overcome the objections in a desperate attempt to save her job.  (we were forced to fire some very good and productive employees because their closing percentage on selling the warranties was too low....towards the end something like 55% of the company's bottom line was coming from extended warranty sales!)

I have seen customers in line behind such an argument lose it and just about go postal.
Our extremely arrogant corporate management was, of course, oblivious.

[shore72]

Thanks for the link...aside from this one, there were a number of other well-done features in that series. I wasn't expecting something of that caliber from Cracked!