If there’s one thing that I truly hate in this modern digital world of ours, it’s spam. (Those pesky ads you get in your email inbox, not the delicious canned pork; the latter I enjoy!) It seems like every single time you buy something online or sign up for a new service or website, you get added to a brand new mailing list. No, thank you, I don’t want to be bombarded with useless emails all week long! Here I am, trying to be all zen about life and I get distracted by the plinks and bings on my phone that herald the arrival of email marketing, flying through the aether. Specifically, to annoy me and me alone, it seems.
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Reddit user u/thehotshotpilot isn’t a fan of spam, either. So much so, that the ‘Best Buy’ employee decided to protect their customers from those annoying emails and, instead, teach their own corporate overlords a lesson. Privacy and data protection aren't just buzzwords.
The ‘Best Buy’ employee, who lives in Alaska, explained how due to new regulations, they’re now forced to enter in a customer’s email every time they buy an Amazon ‘Fire TV Stick’ (aka a ‘Fire Stick’ or ‘Firestick,’ a portable media streaming thingumabob that you plug into your TV to make it ‘smart’). However, instead of doing that, the employee decided to teach their superiors a lesson and give them a taste of their own medicine. Read on to find out how u/thehotshotpilot turned the tables for the sake of their customers.
An employee working at 'Best Buy' shared how they're protecting their customers' privacy at work
Image credits: Sigmund (not the actual photo)
Here's the full story, in their own words
The redditor put it bluntly when they said that “nobody,” absolutely nobody wants to get spammed with offers for free trials and such. A while back, the employee could simply close the prompt to enter a customer’s email whenever they rang up an item. However, things changed recently.
Now, if the cashier closes the prompt for the email address, the system removes the ‘Fire Stick’ from the order. In other words, if you want to buy the item, you have to enter an email address. Does it have to be the customer’s address? No, of course not. How could the system tell? So, the ‘Best Buy’ employee decided to have some fun and show their superiors that getting spam isn’t fun at all.
They did a bit of research and started entering in corporate emails. They also told the customers about this. We salute u/thehotshotpilot for sticking up for their customers (shopping shouldn’t have to be a chore that wastes more of your time down the line), though we’re not sure how long they’ll be able to keep this up. Hopefully, someone in corporate will get the message and change things for the better. Or am I being too optimistic here?
I’ll be honest that I’m not actually sure why ‘Fire Sticks’ are even a thing at all, technologically speaking, but that might just be me getting old and grumpy. I just want things to be simple and clear. Confession number two, Pandas: the first time I saw the product, I thought it was a remote that had something to do with fireworks. But, I mean, with a name like that, it’s not that hard to justify my mistake. For some reason, I also remembered a line from the fifth Harry Potter book where Kingsley, an Auror, mistakenly called firearms ‘firelegs.’
According to Business Insider, ‘Fire Sticks’ plug directly into your TV’s HDMI port, just like a USB flash drive. In short, the device lets you watch TV shows and movies from streaming apps like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Now, and of course, YouTube. Though, keep in mind that simply downloading an app onto your ‘Fire Stick’ doesn’t mean that you automatically create an account. You still need to subscribe to things the usual way. And the last thing that you need, while you’re fiddling about with the device, is getting spam in your inbox.
A lot of people were impressed by the employee's dedication to their customers. Here's what they had to say
