Windows ‘gurus’ set to invade retail stores
Next time you’re at your local mall, keep an eye out for Microsoft representatives. No, we’re not talking about Seinfeld and Gates in the shoe store; rather the 155 ‘gurus’ who’ll be hitting electronics outlets soon to advise customers on the company’s products.
The workers will be taken on as full-time Microsoft employees whose official role will be ‘technical training and sales’. However, they’ll be earning a fixed $20 an hour, which should avoid the high-pressure hype that often comes from staff on commission. They’ll be stationed in stores such as Best Buy and Circuit City in 65 cities, mainly on the West and East Coasts.
The role will be to “take the fear and complexity out of technology” and “demonstrate the power of the PC in fun, inspirational ways”. The gurus will also be expected to “create a legacy through memorable customer service”, though you have to take it as read that this should be a positive legacy and memorable for the right reasons.
The money to pay for the staff is apparently coming out of the same $300 million budget which is covering both the Mojave experiment videos and the Seinfeld/Gates campaign.
The scheme has been trialled with 25 workers since October 2007 and the new staff should be in place by the end of this year. If it takes off, there’ll likely be a nationwide expansion in the future.
Mac advocates have already pointed out this is somewhat reminiscent of the Genius Bar, the support service available in every Apple store. However, the Microsoft role only involves demonstrations and answering questions, with no repairs or technical support involved.
Apple itself hasn’t responded to the guru scheme, though given that the Microsoft representatives will be based in non-company stores, it’ll be interesting to see whether Apple tries to get its own staff into Best Buy and Circuit City (and whether Microsoft’s arrangements would allow this).
Indeed, if there’s even the slightest possibility of that, Microsoft should probably screen its candidates very carefully and weed out anyone who’s overly strait-laced for fear of the scheme turning into “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC – LIVE!”
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September 14th, 2008
Poor bastards. The amount of smartass abuse they will take from people with Microsoft Derangement Syndrome (The knee jerk insanity complete with foaming mouth and sincere belief nothing Microsoft has ever or will ever do is wrong) is going to make this a bumpy ride.
September 15th, 2008
Oops. I meant right.
September 16th, 2008
The term “Windows guru” is an oxymoron. No one who is clever enough to be classed as a guru would be so foolish as to have anything to to do with Microsoft, or with any of their products.
September 16th, 2008
Hugh,
Might want to check with the 99% of businesses who use Microsoft software with Exchange, SQL server, Sharepoint and the like. Your knee jerk posts of Microsoft hatred is making your message as credible as the wild eyed old man in a stained sheet holding a poorly hand printed sign repent and screaming “Monsters, save yourselves”.
I’ve been in IT for 29 years. I don’t like many of the practices Microsoft uses in it’s business and marketing, but c’mon. What Microsoft has accomplished is pretty impressive.
I personally have expertise in many MS Server side systems as well as your beloved Linux. Your insulting post has denigrated many of us hard working slobs. Like it or not, it’s a fact it that there is no way any other OS brand or company is anything but a small sliver of the process.
You are looking like a man running in a round room trying to piss in a corner. Look at your posts before hitting submit and attempt to see if it actually adds anything besides “Microsoft is teh suck”
Your post is what I was talking about in my first imperfect one.
September 17th, 2008
Hello Ken,
Sorry that my post came across as an insult; no offence was intended.
I’ve been in I.T. for 27 years. I personally despise the practices of Microsoft, although (as you have quite correctly pointed out in a previous post), other companies are hardly lily-white – before Microsoft it was IBM, and I was just discussing with a work colleague today about how Google may turn out in the years to come.
My post was really made in response to the ridiculous quotes from Microsoft in the article – “take the fear and complexity out of technology”, “demonstrate the power of the PC in fun, inspirational ways”, and “create a legacy through memorable customer service” – which are nothing more than meaningless marketing tripe: evidence of a company that has been protected by a monopoly for too long, and that simply doesn’t know how to compete.
As for being impressed by what Microsoft have done, I would have to say that I most definitely am not. Microsoft have “succeeded” (I use the term very loosely) through business practices ranging from the sharp to the plainly illegal. Microsoft have a lot of money and influence, but so does the mafia – are you impressed by the accomplishments of the mafia? As I have said before, I suspect that Bill Gates was not the beneficiary of a proper upbringing, since he shows no respect for others, or even for the law. He is a dissembler, a liar, a cheat and a fraud. To tell the truth, I actually feel sorry for him, because for all his money he can’t buy class, erudition, discernment, wisdom, or – above all – respect.
Now, as for a “wild eyed” man, one need go no further than some of those videos that show Steve Ballmer in action. Now *he* is someone who really appears to have a screw loose – and he is running the show at Microsoft! (Perhaps those clever people at Redmond think that he is an example of a “Management Guru”, but I can tell you that he’s not someone I’d ever pick as a CEO).
Finally, regarding “Microsoft is teh suck”, I take a fair degree of care with my English (as you are no doubt aware), and I am rarely guilty of transposing letters in my posts (I understand that such howlers are often the hallmark of those neuron-challenged fanboys whose powers of reasoning sit somewhere between negligible and non-existent).
Cheers,
Hugh
September 17th, 2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teh
Furthermore, teh can be used in front of a verb in a novel form of gerund, and it has the ability to turn nearly any word into an intensified noun, which can take the place of a superlative. The best-known example of this is the word suck. Thus, the phrase “this sucks” can be converted into “this is teh suck” (”teh suck” being equivalent to the superlative “the suckiest”); the word pwn can be similarly converted (teh pwn or teh pwnage). The latter phrase is primarily used by the computer gaming community, and often intended humorously.
Aside from a fanatical and obsessive hatred of all things Microsoft, I don’t see why you bother. It’s a nice try to slide the subject over to Ballmer, but I was serious.
Microsoft has done some shady things, but if you think that’s the only reason they have succeeded, well words fail me.
They aren’t the Mafia, they aren’t cutting off horses heads and leaving them in people’s beds.
It wouldn’t have made any difference what they did, if the products didn’t work they’d be done.
Up here, any bank, any store, any warehouse, any office will be running MS. In spite of all the slogans you keep tossing out, it works. Businesses run it, not because someone is whispering that if they ever want to see their children alive again……
They had the largest revenue year in their history last year. I believe they are competing. Regardless of what you think of the methods, they standardized the market. If you waved a magic wand and made them go away tomorrow, the absolute disruption and devastation would be horrendous. Bumping Novell from the leader in networking involved none of the illegal stuff you keep tossing out.
I’m wasting my pixels. Such is the burden of fanaticism. I absolutely use other choices where it makes sense. I run Linux on my personal machines and have LAMP deploys at work. I’m far from MSes biggest fan.
I won’t pass judgement on someone else’s character and place aspersions on their family based on third and lower based accounts. That says more about the person making the comments than the person that is the target.
September 18th, 2008
Hello Ken,
Thanks for the link; that clarifies things regarding “teh”. The U.S. is a country whose inhabitants fairly butcher the English language, but I must confess that I am very impressed by your command of the language as betrayed by your use of the term “gerund”. I have only ever heard this word used by my father – a man who, as a member of an earlier generation, received an education the like of which it’s hard to find today (in Australia, anyway).
I’m glad to get some points for the idea of mentioning Steve Ballmer. I sometimes think of his chair-throwing fits of pique when die-hard Microsoft opponents are castigated as loonies – it seems a little like “projection by proxy”, as it were. (So I was really half-serious myself, with the seriousness tempered by the knowledge that one cannot blame Microsoft users for the fact that Mr Ballmer is the man at the helm).
Cheers,
Hugh