In an email exchange with a conservative think tank, tucked into an SEC filing, the electronics retailer offered to screen its employee groups’ donations to LGBTQ causes.
Best Buy offered to screen donations from its employee resource groups going to LGBTQ causes following pressure from a conservative think tank that holds shares in the company, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing made public this week.
The SEC filing contains a monthslong email exchange between the National Center for Public Policy Research, which describes itself as a “nonpartisan, free-market conservative think tank,” and Best Buy. The dialogue, which hasn’t been previously reported, shows how the center said it would make “a splash” unless the consumer electronics giant moved in favor of its demands.
In some of the last correspondence in the filing, Best Buy noted that it allows its employee resource groups “some discretion to directly support organizations of their choosing” but added that “any such contributions would be screened to ensure they do not advocate or support the causes or agendas you have identified as concerning.” One of the causes the NCPPR cited was transgender care for minors, which the group falsely described as an attempt to “mutilate the reproductive organs of children.”
This feels like a quick way to get branded as a workplace hostile to LGBTQ employees.
I kinda wish I had cause to shop there so I could very vocally share how this is losing them customers, but I haven’t needed to set foot in one of their stores for years now.
They basically exist at this point to prey on people who aren’t technologically savvy enough to realize they’re being screwed over.
“non partisan” and “free market conservative” are incompatible with each other
As is “free market” and “conservative.”
“Conservative” and “Think”….
There’s at least some tension between “free” and “markets” imo
“We believe in an unregulated free market and we are against LGBT people and equality and we’re all going to vote for Trump, but we aren’t Republicans!”
I am upset that I can’t boycott a company that I haven’t done business with in well over a decade.
Edit: never mind they have a live chat where I can let them know
It’s clear Best Buy is dying anyway. There’s not many of them around and it’s usually a ghost town when I go in one twice a year.
Best Buy is great when you need something right now. Like when a hard drive in your RAID dies and you need a hard drive right fucking now.
Buy yeah. I’ve only gone maybe once in the last five years.
I don’t know, man. I recently had a drive die on me and I was able to order it online from my local Walmart, drive over there and park my car, text them and have them bring it out to the car for me. I didn’t have to deal with Best Buy or any obnoxious salespeople and I’m guessing I paid a similar premium for not shopping around online instead.
Fortunately we have a Microcenter to solve the “shit I can’t wait for”. And this is in Best Buy’s back yard.
Unfortunately, Microcenter has yet to enter the Pacific Northwest, so I can’t go to one. The nearest one is in southern California, fourteen hours away.
Are you sure? I remember reading about one near Seattle shutting down around 10 years ago.
I’m sure. I even checked their site before I posted.
I was thinking of Fry’s
The last of those shut down about three days before I decided to give them a call and ask what their GPU inventory looked like. I was really disappointed.
Glad I wasn’t going to Best Buy anymore anyways.
Welp, glad my plans to shop there were for tomorrow so plenty of time not to go there at all.
