Retail geeks aren't geeky enough (NewsForge)

Posted Jan 21, 2005 5:44 UTC (Fri) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link]

I'm still a bench monkey at BB and in my 1 1/2 years there I've seen 3 PC's/laptops with Linux. 2 of those 3 times was the same guy with a Dell Inspiron and RH9 and in both cases I had to show him how to mount a USB thumb drive. Anytime someone comes in with a Linux box (or to the sales floor with a question about whether a certain peripheral or hardware component will work with Linux) the usual response from the salesperson or tech is "I don't know" or "We don't support Linux."

Being from Texas, we have a lot of non-native-English speakers as customers, and I often hear "Can a Spanish-speaking associate please report to the Home Theater Department for customer assistance?" over the P.A. system. It would be interesting to hear "Can a Linux-speaking associate please report to the tech bench for customer assistance?" It seems that the retailers really don't want to shut out a portion of the population due to a language barrier. Now the retailers need to reach out to the Linux-using population...