It’s hard to regain normalcy during a pandemic. It’s even harder after having to endure a natural disaster, too.
That’s what Best Buy General Manager Alex Trufin is facing after a tornado flattened his Jonesboro, Arkansas, store in a matter of seconds while 17 employees and two customers sheltered inside.
“I’ve been there 13 years. That was like my home,” Alex said. “I felt like we had built a dream team. The day before the tornado, we finished first in the company for sales.”
You’re trying to work from home. Your kids are trying to learn from home. To add to the stress of living through a global pandemic, your home network goes on the fritz.
Then, you get pinged by a remote support technician from Best Buy. He’s already aware of your network issue and he’s on the case.
“In these times of social distancing, when customers really want to get their stuff working, I can do the same things remotely than I can do in their homes,” said Damion Santos, a custom services technician who’s a pro at ensuring devices around a home work together harmoniously.
Long before news of the coronavirus emerged in late 2019, researchers have been studying the effects of isolation on older people.
Now, as the world responds with unprecedented speed to the threat of COVID-19, the urgency of helping everybody stay in touch is an urgent priority – especially for vulnerable seniors and the newly telecommuting, homeschooling, stressed sandwich generation, who coordinates their care (now from a distance).
Physical social distancing is a critical precaution to “flatten the curve.”
Back in 2007, Melissa Freidus was bothered by how quickly trash cans around her Best Buy store in Gainesville, Georgia, were filling up with soda bottles.
One day, the solution to her garbage woes walked right through the store’s front door: a man wearing a City of Gainesville sanitation jacket.
Melissa told him she was interested in recycling and asked if he knew how she could get started. She found the right person, he told her, because he was the superintendent of solid waste for the city.
A team of Best Buy employees is helping in the fight against COVID-19 simply by turning on their computers.
They’re among more than 700,000 people worldwide who have downloaded Folding@Home, a software that crowdsources users’ computing power to help crunch COVID-19 data. The program simply runs in the background of a PC or Mac when it’s turned on but not in use.
It might sound too good to be true, but it’s an example of how people are using science and tech to come together for the greater good.
UNION CITY, NEW JERSEY — Sometimes in life, we have to fail to succeed. Just ask Justin Howell, an aspiring esports basketball star from New Jersey.
After getting passed over in the 2019 NBA 2K League Draft, Justin doubled down. He practiced more, built a support network and changed his mindset.
What a difference a year makes.
On Feb. 22, Wizards District Gaming picked Justin, 19, in the second round of the 2020 draft. He was one of 229 players vying for 68 open roster spots in the 21-team esports league.
From the time Molly Hayes could crawl, she would go exploring, take things apart and try to put them back together. And while some children might prefer a song or story when they had trouble falling asleep, Molly calmed her mind in a different way.
“I would ask my mom for long division problems, and I would work through those in my head until I passed out,” she said. “Luckily for me, my mom was a teacher and noticed my aptitude.”
For months, Prince Moyo would get up and go to work, then return home to his quiet two-bedroom apartment in Dallas. He was alone, with his family half a world away.
Prince’s fiancée, Bee, had been trying to come to the United States to be with him, but a lengthy visa application process kept her in their native South Africa. And, in the meantime, the couple had welcomed their first child, making the separation even more trying.
“It was a long wait, trying to make sure we were a complete family — instead of one on one side [of the world] and one on the other side,” said Prince, the operations manager at our Best Buy distribution center in Flower Mound, Texas.
Black History Month is an annual celebration of achievements by black people in America, past and present. This February, Best Buy is proud to highlight the central role its black employees, leaders and vendors play in writing the next chapter of the company, our communities and the tech industry.
Picture a summer afternoon in a park in Pittsburgh. Teens are playing basketball and baseball, hanging out on the grass and chatting. A young man is selling hotdogs to the crowd. Suddenly, there’s a buzz overhead.
Walk into the Best Buy store in Maple Grove, Minnesota, and there’s a good chance you’ll encounter the bright smiles of Kalif Ahmed and Amir Mussa – first-generation Americans, cousins and co-workers.
Ten seasons as a professional football player have given Michael Johnson the ability to give back to his hometown of Selma, Alabama.
One way he’s doing that is by sponsoring a Best Buy Teen Tech Center. In a Teen Tech Center, youth learn new tech skills, stay on-track with school, nurture positive adult and peer relationships and get exposed to new career possibilities.
Michael sees the Teen Tech Center as a way to provide access and opportunity to students in Selma.
Erick Rodriguez felt helpless when the earthquakes rocked Puerto Rico earlier this month.
The 22-year-old Best Buy employee moved to Medford, Oregon, from the island last June. So, he was now thousands of miles away from his mother and two sisters.
“It was heartbreaking,” he said. “For the first couple of days I couldn’t get in touch with anyone down there. I was assuming the worst.”
His family was safe, it turned out, but their home was damaged and they were sleeping in his mom’s car.