Best Buy Firing Employee Because He Makes A Funny Video That Doesn't Even Mention Best Buy (original) (raw)

from the no-sense-of-humor dept

There’s an amusing text-to-speech animated video making the rounds (I’ve been sent it half a dozen times already) mocking iPhone-obsessed buyers going into stores and not caring that phones like the HTC Evo might have better specs, because they just “want an iPhone.” It’s amusing (though, probably not safe for work from an audio standpoint — so wear headphones, or work with cool people):

Well over a million people have seen it. It’s definitely gone viral. But that, of course, doesn’t make it a story worth mentioning here.

What does is Best Buy’s incredible stupidity about the video. Wait, you might ask, what does the video have to do with Best Buy? In the video the store is called “Phone Mart,” and there’s no mention of Best Buy at all. There’s absolutely nothing about the video that would have you thinking about Best Buy. Until now.

Andrew F points us to the news that the creator of the video actually works at Best Buy — even though pretty much everyone who watched the video had no idea. And now, Best Buy upper management was so afraid that Apple/AT&T might get upset at the idea that Best Buy was mocking the iPhone that it suspended the guy who made it and are in the process of firing him. Yes, despite the fact that no one was associating this video with Best Buy, Best Buy decided to do the one and only thing that would suddenly associate this video with Best Buy in a way that is not, at all, flattering to Best Buy. If it was afraid of how this video would look for Best Buy, it probably should have considered how much worse firing the guy who made it looks.

Filed Under: firing, htc evo, iphone, video, viral video
Companies: best buy