STACKING

In the computer department, at any given time, there were 2-3 employees per shift. To keep things fair between them, everyone followed the 'one-at-a-time' rule, ie. you help one customer, and when you were finished, you could move on to the next. So when it got busy, all employees got a fair amount of business and everyone was happy.

At least, that's how it was supposed to happen. In reality, bloodthirsty employees would practice stacking. Watch this short play to get an idea of what stacking is all about.

Jim: "Can I help you?"
Customer: "No, we're just looking right now."
Jim: "OK, I'm Jim, here's my card, ask for me if you need any help!"

5 minutes later, the other innocent employees finish their sales and look for other customers to help.  But behold! There's an entire department full of customers who are ALL carrying 'Jim Stawiarski' business cards, and who don't want to be helped by anyone else. All the employees starve from lack of sales, and Jim rings up one after another while chortling all the way to the bank.

Incidentally, this dark practice is how Jim got his nickname, "The Stackmaster".

STROKES

Nobody likes a Stroke.

A Stroke is a customer who comes into the store with no intention of buying. Strokes will sit there for hours, playing with the computers, asking tons of questions, but never actually purchasing anything. You can recognize Strokes by such sayings as "One of these days, I'm gonna upgrade that old computer..."

Strokes are a bane to Circuit City employees. When you work on commission, every hour wasted with a Stroke is a hundred dollars you lost because somebody else bought a computer at the same time. Even worse, if you're a computer expert, Strokes will learn your name and come back to ask you pointless technical questions. It's a lose-lose situation.

A bit of trivia - as shown in the illustration, Strokes often wear bright orange, yellow, or red shirts. After years of research (standing around), the Circuit City gang theorized that this is a Stroke Warning Signal, similar to how poisonous snakes and toads often have bright colors and patterns. Based on this information, Jim Stawiarski could easily ignore a Stroke, or worse yet, pass one off to you, claimed he had questions that 'only you could answer'. That bastard.

CHEESE

Ahh, Sweet Cheese. Cheese is the nickname for selling an extended warranty. Why's this such a big deal? Selling a $1000 computer might net you twenty dollars.  Selling a $200 warranty will add forty bucks on top of it. So selling warranties is the #1 goal of every Circuit City employee, bar none. After every sale, when the salesman walked back over to the employee crowd, he's always asked "You get the cheese with that?"

According to Circuit City legend, the term cheese was originally a code word. All stores used to have a Warranty Expert, who was the best salesman in the store. If the normal salesman didn't think he could sell the warranty, he would call in the Expert to take over the sale. To see if the salesman needed this help, the floor manager would stealthily interrupt the presentation by saying something like "The pizzas are here in the break room, did you have extra cheese?" If the salesman confirmed, they brought in the Expert.  Interesting, no? I didn't think so. But you haven't lived 'til you've heard Jim Stawiarski say "That was some sweeeeeet cheese! Hee-hee-hee!".

SPLITTING

Another law of the Circuit City Code covered Splits.  Sometimes, an employee would help a customer who didn't buy that day. The customer would come back a day later, but the employee was off. In that case, the new employee who took over and the original one would split the sale, each taking half the commission. This policy fostered trust and teamwork among the employees, and taught them to take care of each other's customers.

Again, a good policy in theory goes horribly wrong when Jim Stawiarski is involved. The weakness of the Split program is that you're off work when it happens. If your customer comes in on when you aren't there, you aren't going to know. Now I wouldn't call Jim Stawiarski a liar, but let's just say he's come up with some pretty creative reasons why he didn't split sales of yours when you weren't around. Even more frighteningly, he actually checked the sales of every other employee on his day off, to see if any of them matched up to what he was showing a customer the day before - and if it looked like you possibly swiped something of his, oh yeah, there was hell to pay. (If you consider 'hell' an old man nasally screaming at you until you gave up and handed him half a sale)

GRAVY

If you start work, and 10 minutes later, make $200 off a big sale, it's all gravy from there on out. Once you make a hundred dollars or so, you've got a day's pay, and sometimes the floor manager would send you home early so that the other salesmen would get a fair chance. Jim, of course, never went home early, and always stayed late to earn some extra "gravy", or bonus cash. Incidentally, if you got a streak of several quick, profitable sales, it was known as 'ridin' the gravy train."

THE SWIM MOVE