Fools!
Yesterday, I went to Best Buy to pick up the new Depeche Mode album. I was never heavily into Depeche Mode, but my sister and I are thinking of seeing them in San Antonio in November, and new releases are always real cheap at Best Buy (I will leave out the discussion of the ethics of buying music from loss-leader retailers). It’s the first album they’ve release in about five or so years, and generally they have a large and loyal following, and so you would expect the album to have a decent amount of demand.
The album wasn’t in the new release section, which didn’t surprise me too much. I went to the sorted racks and looked there. They had a bunch of older releases, but they didn’t have the new album. There was a little marker/divider for it, too, but you could tell there wasn’t much room for the albums themselves. So I went to ask the guy working in the music section about it. He looked probably about my age, if not a little younger than me.
“Do you guys have any copies of the new Depeche Mode album?”
He stares at me blankly for a moment.
“Uh, let me go check the computer.”
We walk over the computer and he asks me, “Uh, how do you spell that?”
“Oh great,” I think to myself, “he has no idea who Depeche Mode is.” I don’t expect everyone to know who they are, but for goodness sakes, if you’re going to be working in the music section, it would be nice to have knowledge of the basics. Actually, I’m pretty aware this is an unrealistic expectation, especially at a Best Buy, but it can be a little annoying.
I spell it out for him and tell him the album’s title (“Playing The Angel”) and, of course, they don’t have any copies, but he tells me they expect three copies to come in the next morning.
Three copies.
I call my sister to tell her this, and she couldn’t believe it, either.
So today on my lunch break, I went to see if I could pick up one the copies. To my mild surprise, there were none. Either they never came in, were still in the back, or they were already picked up. I went to the guy (different guy) working the music section.
“Do you guys have any copies of the new Depeche Mode album?”
He responded much more immediately (a plus!). “Let me look.” He went to the new release section, took a glance, and decided to see what the computer inventory said. The fact that he was able to look it up without asking me the name of the album was reassuring.
“Hmm, yeah we’re out. But there is a shipment of 80 on the way, but it probably won’t be in until the weekend. Sorry.”
Eighty copies. That’s more like it.
Update
Now I also see that the album is featured on the front of music section in Best Buy, although they still don’t have an image for the album cover. Yeah, they flubbed this one. And now I’m off to get a copy!