Your Best Buys
We are standing in the Phones and Phone Accessories section at Fry’s Electronics. Its mascot is an anthropomorphic computer chip, smiling in newspaper inserts and amateur CGI television commercials beaming that "Your best buys are always at Fry’s!”
The store itself sells the regular things Best Buy does - video games, audio CDs, DVD players, home appliances like vacuum cleaners - but it also sells those one or two things that reminds everyone if there was such thing as a low-end electronic store, Fry's would be it: a 60 pack of Mountain Dew. Porn DVDs. Old computer casings and old microchips. We’re in long aisle stashed with what's supposed to be the latest in telephones and telephone accessories. But with everyone now using cellphones rather than home landlines, the aisle products was replaced with telephone systems suitable to an office - plastic telephone systems with jacks for multiple phone lines above, boxes with attractive, middle-aged multicultural people shaking hands on the shelves beneath. The entire aisle has a look of a tech office of the late 80s; precisely the target audience Fry's is built for, when you think about it. Fry's reminds me of Best Buy's trashier younger cousin who once dabbled in meth and you think she's pregnant again, but you still visit because you need to buy cheap weed for your friends.
My mom slowly walks up and down the aisle, making faces or side comments to herself in Chinese at the display models in front of her: "No, this won't do." "I'm not looking for a cordless phone; they are too uncomfortable." "This phone is black! It does not match the living room furniture."
I hold up a display phone, white with big clear buttons for her to see the numbers. "This one is perfect for you," I say in English. It also includes a visual indicator that lights up if the phone is ringing, and I glance over the fact that the phone is marketed toward the visual and hearing-impaired.
An older Asian man in a suit that is a size or two too large for him overhears us loudly discussing phones in two languages, and walks up to us. So many people are staffed at a Fry's Electronics that an employee is assigned for every aisle - a passport-style photograph of each aisle manager is placed at the top of the aisle sign, with an 8 by 11 printout of the persons name, in Times New Roman font. Cables and cable ties, Maria Robledo. Computer casings, Duc Nguyen. And this man, managed the Phones and phone accessory aisle.
The people that work there are a combination of younger people - the type you see at the mall, managing the sunglasses kiosk - and older immigrants from other countries, like Ethiopia or Bulgaria or the Philippines or from El Salvador. I assume the latter group of people are working at a Fry's because they have a friend who talked them into it, and it probably pays well for the skill set they have. Maybe it's less demeaning than a housekeeper or a fast food job, since it deals with electronics and you wear a white shirt and a tie. Standing at the check-out line and staring at the sea of diversity of people in business attire scanning bar codes, it would make for some great stock footage of the ultimate example of the American dream - but none of the employees look like they want to be there. But come to think of it, none of the customers look like they want to be there either. I’m not thrilled.
He looks like my moms age - in his seventies - but realistically he's probably a little younger than that, in his mid-sixties or so. I look up at the aisle sign, and there is his photograph, with a last name of thirteen letters, so he's probably Laotian or Thai. You know, I've been to enough Fry's over the years to never really notice what they do. Were they supposed to manage the aisle inventory? Were they also supposed to act as sales staff? He stood five or six feet away and glared awkwardly at us.
My mother points at one of the display phones and turns in his direction. "YOU. HAVE. NO BLACK?" By default, I answer in English this is Fry's, not a shoe store, and that the phones they have on display are probably the only models they have inside the store. But my mother keeps her gaze at the Southeast Asian man.
"No," he says.
"OKAY, SAN KYU," my mother says, expecting the man to slip into the background while we continue our shopping. Instead, the man nods and stays in his exact spot.
We spend an extra fifteen or twenty minutes deciding between possible telephones, holding up cordless handsets, debating the merits of light gray plastic handsets versus dark gray plastic handsets, all the while the old Asian man is standing there staring at us. It clearly makes my mother uncomfortable, and when she turns to him for an especially loud "SAN KYU," his head bows and he acknowledges the thanks accordingly, but again stays in his spot. My mothers fake smile - the "public face" smile she makes whenever unfamiliar people have to interact with her - freezes in place, not quite sure what to do next.
When we do decide on a telephone - one of those blank office phones with a useless LCD display for caller IDs, but with a column of buttons for speed dial and big clear buttons that my mom likes - we take the box and turn towards the cashier, but the older man smiles and insists on taking the box first. "I mark up first," he says. "Make form for cashier. It same price." After a couple of minutes, he comes back with a box with a form, with his long Laotian last name in the "SALES REFERRAL" box. My mom is frowning and talking to me in rapid-fire Mandarin Chinese as all of this is happening, getting increasingly agitated: “They’re all like roaches! Ai-yo, what lack of matters! He just can't leave anyone alone!" She continues this as I purchase the telephone for her at the cashier's register, then as we look for her Honda Accord in the asphalt field of automobiles, then some more as I drive her home.
