Haha. I remember when they made us come in at 7am on a Sunday morning (and did not provide any refreshments because we weren't allowed to spend any petty cash) and they made us watch these videos. Then they quizzed us.

I have not seen the vids yet... but I must day, I typically find these propaganda films kinda creepy in addition to being ridiculous. The first thing that came to my mind when I read this was the training video from a company that - what was it - shipped balloons or something? The whole creepy things about putting on a persona, and becoming one with the company, and all the fake terminator smiles interlaced with fembot perkiness...

@DaBull: There were better videos that were released after CC declared Chapter 11. If someone has those, they're 10x funnier than these.

Love the employee faces at :36 in that first video.

Circuit City was different from Best Buy, that's for sure. But in NO WAY was is worse. I'd throw a party if Best Buy boarded up. I really would. I hate that place with a passion. That corner they take up near my house doesn't even exist to me.

This reminds me of an off-site meeting CC had when Best Buy first came to the Southern California market. Except that instead of bright lights and fireworks in a convention hall, they roasted a large pig over a giant bonfire in the parking lot.

It was... weird.

@DaBull:
man this kind of stuff scares me because it feels like its a huge hive mind trying to work together to lure customers in. Not on the basis of honest practices but almost in a cult like fashion...

I couldn't make it through either video, but I'm hoping there was a mention of "synergy" at some point.

@narc1: NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA LEADER!

@DaBull: I work for Bestbuy and we get meetings at 7am like this about every month, they buy us breakfast from dunkin donuts (bagels, donuts, coffee, etc) to help us get thought the videos and power point presentations

The reasons why CC folded:
Duplicity, zipped lips, gundecking, and hosed accounting books.

They maintained a facade that everything was ok while their house of cards were falling down around their ears.

That video was in direct contrast to the Radio Shack broadcast where the former CEO Len Roberts lashed out at the sales management and associates. I wish I could find a copy of that somewhere.

I wonder if the liquidators are willing to sell the Northstar concept

I'd pay up to $1.55 for it.

I remember seeing inane shit like this when I worked retail as my first job at 16. It irked the fuck out of me. How do they think workers see these videos? They can't possibly expect us to take them seriously or to buy into it. Managers might drink the Kool-Aid, but the sane always view these videos through a cynical scope and have contempt for them along with the corporate indoctrination culture.

What a bunch of jackasses. At most, workers will humor their propaganda like you humor a senile grandma.

@Psychosocial: I would agree 100%. Last year when shopping for a laptop for my wife I looked at Best Buy's selection on the floor, and chose one. I asked the rep to go grab me one, and 5 minutes later he came back: "Sorry, that's not in stock". After two more rounds of this with two other models, I asked him "Why don't you just tell me what you do have in stock?"

Circuit City had 12 of my first choice in stock. And my warranty is still good, so I'm fine.

Talk is cheap. The fact that they fired their best sales people because they made too much money sez it all...

Certainly creepy. I expected them to start shouting out "YES WE CAN!" any minute.

I'm always amazed at these ridiculous corporate videos. They use them to try and promote and foster loyalty and morale. I can't imagine they actually work. The companies I have worked for that had fiercely loyal employees and high morale didn't need bullshit videos to get people on board. They simply compensated their people well, treated them like family and made sure people were rewarded for exceptional performance. They also had a tendency to, in relatively short order, fire the fuckups. When you work with good people, you are paid well and you know the company won't tolerate fuckups, you do a good job and you're loyal. I wonder if places like Apple and Microsoft, both known for having happy and loyal employees, utilize videos like this. My guess is no. Of course, the consultants that recommend these videos and the companies that produce them likely swear on their mothers that they work and are well worth the expense.

You say optimism and I say "mental illness."

It's already no fun working on a ship that's sinking. Add a committee of batshit captains at the helm and it's tantamount to torture.

Circuit City's biggest liability was Denial.

I remember the first video being shown to us. I believe it was in 2006. Several months later, they truly did help us ("us" being the employees with the best performance and most experience) They helped us right out the door. Management was even kind enough to provide an escort.

@MostlyHarmless: Yeah, these kind of motivational tools always have the opposite effect on me. My greatest motivational tool is my paycheck.

@G.O.B.: Come on!: Amen to that.

@G.O.B.: Come on!: I couldn't have said it better.

@SegamanXero:
CC used to do that, until they were hemorrhaging money, then they stopped springing for food.

@G.O.B.: Come on!: agreed.

@mbd:

This was the beginning of the end. I watched it happen. At my CC location, we had a salesman in the camera department that was like a walking encyclopedia. If you had a question about ANYTHING camera related, he could answer it. Even if it was about a model that we didn't carry.

Of course, he was there for years, and made too much for CC's liking, so they laid him off. They replaced him with 17 year old high school students, who didn't know a thing about camera. Needless to say, customers weren't too happy about it.

I had to look up "gundecking". I'm glad I did.

@Esquire99: Good point about the successful companies (though I do believe McDonalds used audio recordings for their new hires for a while). Companies tend to treat these things as if bad morale and poor returns could be inoculated against and these are the vaccines. If the everyday experience is good, these are superfluous, and if it's bad, these are ludicrous.

@Dave J.: Yeah, the long-haired woman didn't seem entirely on board, did she? I'd be cynically interested in a "where are they now" followup on everybody featured in this.

@ben gardners boat: No, but there was a mandate to be "authentic," "vulnerable," and "open." And increase conversion rates.

@G.O.B.: Come on!: Bullseye, dude.

@zacox: I thought it was the river in Egypt.

@Nighthawke:

At least a few others know the real reasons for the company failing so hard..

That and those bastards stole Northstar from our store and never gave credit..

@Esquire99: From the Video: But everyone was excited at the launch of the FireDog Service, you could feel the energy in the air, and everyone was wondering what the name would be.

Really? When I as a consumer heard the FireDog name I asked myself WTF is this?

5 years later and a really bad corporate video, and I finally know the answer. "The Color, The name, Fire invokes passion, dog invokes loyalty"

So they will "loyally" say that your computer can not be repaired and try to sell you a computer that you don't need while they take your most "passionate" photos off of your PC! Oh NOW I get it!!!

"FireDog

I've worked for companies that showed videos of this sort and even arranged little parties around them. So I speak from experience when I say that the majority of workers watching them, have one word floating in the backs of their minds while they watch:

B--ls--t!

They're also thinking something else: This company spent thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of dollars to make these videos; they stopped us from working and made us all troop in here to see them; they went through all this rigamarole to construct this propaganda campaign ... yet, they can't pay us a little more, hire more people to help out, or even just be bothered to treat us and their customers a little better?

The upper-management types love this kind of crap, because it — and the management consultants who talk them into it — foster the illusion that the things they do really matter, down in the trenches, in the "real world" of the business. As I said, though, this is largely an illusion. A suited executive chatting it up while in his office at the company headquarters, really has very little direct impact on the business. The real impact is handled by the folks in the trenches, regardless of who's sitting in the executive suite.

They think they can keep themselves relevant, by hiring consultants to come up with this crap, dish it out to the plebes who work for them, expecting it means something to them, then expect to be looked up to by those same plebes as "trend setters" or mentors or guides or something.

But those plebes know better. It's all BS. 100% pure, unfiltered, fresh-from-the-pasture, steaming-rising-from-it bovine excrement. And so do we, the customers of said business, when finally we catch wind of it. And it's not a pleasant odor.

@G.O.B.: Come on!: Incredible...you got it in one, and only used seven beautifully-written sentences to do it.

Where do wish your LOLcatz award sent?

@RecordStoreToughGuy_Has$240WorthOfPuddin':
If work were fun, they wouldn't have to pay us to go.

If I ever ran a company, I would ask that we would produce a motivational video like one big Tom Vu infomercial.

Man , even if you were an employee paid to sit or watch this stuff . OUCH !

By most accounts Circut City was a done deal by 2003 . But with in months of death they're pulling this crap 5 years later ?

This stuff is creepy. I have had to sit and watch similar stuff as well . It's tacky , gaudy and hopelessly over done . This should be used as an example of what NOT to do .

Starbucks' former CEO was talking about his goal of opening 40,000 new stores until just a few months before their profits tanked and he got fired.

@Esquire99: I have sat through way to many of these inspirational videos to give a rats ass anymore. For some reason the company thinks this will increase moral and production. Some of the new people fall for it but they soon find out that it is back to business as usual after a few weeks. They always use words and phrases like enpowerment, team effort, respect for employees, change. It's just such bullshit. The smart ones are the people who put this propaganda together and sell it to companies like mine.

Oh, I love crap like this. You can see BS floating out of their mouths toward the camera or over the heads of the lemmings.
My first taste of this "motivation" training was when I worked (shortly) for a redneck cinema chain, Cobb Cinemas, as a manager. The company wanted to increase sales of concessions (90% of the profits for cinemas). However, they didn't want to pay commissions on sales at all to managers. They had us gather for a "motivation" seminar and hired these bozos who danced down to the stage dressed like Fred Astaire singing "That's Entertainment". I knew at that point we were in for a long craporama. They tried to get us to cheer and dance and get hyped up about selling popcorn and soda for the Big Wigs back in Birmingham, AL. Sorry, that just made me feel more like a slave.
So many companies have no idea what motivates employees and try to go the cheap route with these revival meetings that everyone forgets about within a week.

@osiris73: You get this stuff everywhere- the military has it worse.

@G.O.B.: Come on!: you got it exactly right! After a day of this my fellow retail managers would make fun of this crap on the way home, it didn't work on the vast majority of us.

@Psychosocial: I agree as well. I stopped shopping at Best Buy years ago. I find it very unfair that a company like Circuit City where the employees were always helpful and didn't give you the run-around when there was an issue goes under but those assholes at Best Buy keep treating their customers like shit and raking in the money.

At 1:52 in the video, in the background you see an interesting word. It's "Authentic". Something we were encouraged to be anything but, in my time at Circuit City as a computer sales man (486/pentium 133 era). I quit because being required to manipulate someone to purchase a poor quality piece of equipment to get a SPIFF seemed like no way to go through life. Especially when the customer often wouldn't get the extra Circuit City protection, even though they paid for it. At least that was my experience.

@Applekid: Whoa! I love the racist comment at about 1:27.

@Method of Steepest Descent: Sorry, its at 1:20.

@MostlyHarmless: Precisely what I was about to write.

You want to motivate me? PAY ME MORE. It's very simple.

When I tell that to employers, they then say I'm not a team player.

I say you're not a team player, because you don't motivate me as a employee.

This is fun to do, especially when one is planning on quitting in a month or two.

I do not do well in corporate enviroments.