A couple days ago my wife and I went to the Best Buy in San Francisco to get a new TV. We were prepared to spend several hundred dollars but needed to scope out what was available, and we needed advice from a sales clerk.

While we were talking to the clerk, we had to raise our voices over some booming hip-hop music coming from the adjacent aisle. I went around and looked, and there was a teenager standing in front of a huge stereo setup, soaking up the music. I came back to the sales clerk and asked if he would ask the kid to turn the volume down, since it was really hard for us to hear each other. He did, and the volume went down for a little while, but a minute later it was back up loud and we were shouting to each other again. This time my wife dragged the sales clerk over to the kid and made him ask the kid again.

Again, the teenager turned down the volume and we went back to our discussion of contrast ratios and the meaning of “720p.” Again, a minute later the music was up loud again.

“Do you have a manager here who can ask the guy to turn it down?” my wife asked. Our sales clerk said something to another clerk, who simply shrugged.

“What, are you afraid of the kid?” my wife asked, getting pissed off. “Just go over there and unplug it.”

“Well,” our sales clerk said, “he’s just testing the system really.”

“No he isn’t,” she retorted. “He’s just standing there entertaining himself. He’s been playing the same song for 30 minutes. He’s not going to spend any money… and ya know what — neither are we.” We walked out without a television, went home, and ordered one on the internet. On the way out of the store we passed a security guard who was apparently there to keep people from stealing small items — say, $20 DVDs. So while he was there saving the store $8 on DVDs, he was unavailable to keep order in the store, which lost our hundreds of dollars in business.

I wasn’t surprised to have this experience at Best Buy. I’ve always found it super-noisy and claustrophobic, a hellish environment. The sales clerks are evidently poorly trained. I suppose you could cheaply buy some gadget if you know exactly what you want, but as far as a shopping experience, it really sucks.