# Best Buy is run by idiots, Part MCMXXI **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 9, 2005, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-buy-is-run-by-idiots-part-mcmxxi/298515 "2005-04-09T02:40:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![ParentalAdvisory](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/53a042/32.png) [@ParentalAdvisory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParentalAdvisory)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-buy-is-run-by-idiots-part-mcmxxi/298515/41 "2005-04-11T22:39:28Z")
That’s what my $3 dollar bills are for silly. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![whiterabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/cab0a1/32.png) [@whiterabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whiterabbit)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2005, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-buy-is-run-by-idiots-part-mcmxxi/298515/42 "2005-04-12T16:06:22Z")
> [@Mr. Blue Sky](#): > > Playing that game, I would have paid entirely in old, crumpled $1 bills all turned in different directions. It would have been worth the wait for the drone to turn them all the right way before putting them in the drawer. Oooooo…as a cash register drone, though not at Best Buy, I HAAAAAAAAAAAATE getting paid in crumpled bills turned in different directions. Before doing this, do consider if the whole situation is actually the cashier’s fault? Because it’s usually not. At least I have the brains to know about $2 bills, though! ---
**Author:** ![TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tellmei_mnotcrazy/32/3419_2.png) [@TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TellMeI_mNotCrazy)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2005, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-buy-is-run-by-idiots-part-mcmxxi/298515/43 "2005-04-12T19:46:57Z")
The Baltimore Sun article makes no implication that the cashier didn’t recognize the bills as legal tender, or that she thought they were counterfeit. It does sound like she was being defensively combative, and was marking the bills off in a moment of passive-aggression. The other employees asked “Are they real”, but that doesn’t imply that they didn’t recognize them as legal tender, either, just that they were questioning their authenticity (probably also combativeness). > [@](#): > > “I’m just here to pay the bill,” Bolesta says he told a cashier. “She looked at the $2 bills and told me, ‘I don’t have to take these if I don’t want to.’ I said, ‘If you don’t, I’m leaving. I’ve tried to pay my bill twice. You don’t want these bills, you can sue me.’ So she took the money. Like she’s doing me a favor.” > > He remembers the cashier marking each bill with a pen. Then other store personnel began to gather, a few of them asking, “Are these real?” > > “Of course they are,” Bolesta said. “They’re legal tender.” An unnamed employee noticed smeared ink; a cop noticed they ran in sequential order. Those two things appear to have brought about the arrest, in which he actually was taken down to the county lock up. It was there that he was cuffed to a pole, and there that the Secret Service stepped in, checked the bills, declared them valid, and let him go. I’m not a Best Buy apologist, or even the opposite. I’ve never even been to Best Buy. But I am usually highly skeptical of blog reporting. The blogger can easily put their own spin on it, with no accountability what so ever, and take a case of a pissed off man and a pissy cashier into a “Best Buy Employees don’t even know about 2 dollar bills!” event. ---
**Author:** ![TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tellmei_mnotcrazy/32/3419_2.png) [@TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TellMeI_mNotCrazy)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2005, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-buy-is-run-by-idiots-part-mcmxxi/298515/44 "2005-04-12T19:49:11Z")
Sorry, forgot the link to the article (it didn’t ask me to register, so hopefully you won’t need to.) ---
**Author:** ![TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tellmei_mnotcrazy/32/3419_2.png) [@TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TellMeI_mNotCrazy)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2005, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-buy-is-run-by-idiots-part-mcmxxi/298515/45 "2005-04-12T19:50:14Z")
:smack: [http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.olesker08mar08,1,76004.column?coll=bal-local-columnists&ctrack=2&cset=true](http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.olesker08mar08,1,76004.column?coll=bal-local-columnists&ctrack=2&cset=true) ---
**Author:** ![Trunk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/87869e/32.png) [@Trunk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trunk)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2005, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-buy-is-run-by-idiots-part-mcmxxi/298515/46 "2005-04-12T20:20:03Z")
This was Baltimore County. Not Baltimore City, which is basically, a county unto itself. This is not an indictment of the Baltimore City educational system, or the Baltimore City Police. Bill Toohey is the spokesman for Baltimore County. We have our own special brand of idiots here without having these guys lumped in with the rest of us. ---
**Author:** ![Kat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b19c9b/32.png) [@Kat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kat)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2005, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-buy-is-run-by-idiots-part-mcmxxi/298515/47 "2005-04-12T20:20:23Z")
> [@Left Hand of Dorkness](#): > > But then we woulda had an angry smelly\* guy in our office for months, which woulda sucked. > > Daniel > > - I wasn’t there, so I don’t know that he was smelly. But I bet he was. Well, if he didn’t start out that way, he definitely would have been after a few months. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-buy-is-run-by-idiots-part-mcmxxi/298515.md?page=2)