Hi again!

Once again I want to thank each and every single one of you for the support. The attention this has gathered is because of you! So thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I have had more conversations with store leadership as well as high ranking corporate leaders. These conversations have been reassuring but also shows the lack of concern for customers and employees by the corporate culture that has surfaced, with a major catalyst being the COVID-19 pandemic. The fact that it took reporting to store leadership team, Best Buy ethics team, creating this petition, and posting publicly on facebook; to receive transparency and effective communication from the corporate team and store leadership is a symptom of the poor culture of Best Buy. 

I had a long conversation with Ray Sliva, President of US Retail, that was relatively receptive but his responses had a decent amount of push back. He informed me that the corporate team has statistical data on cases per store that they have kept private. I shared with him that this data should at least be made available to employees and compare the data against local data. He was reasonably receptive to this idea and suggested that he would raise this idea to his team and see what was possible.

Throughout this conversation with Ray Sliva, as well as with my conversation with the employee relations team, they both continually questioned the accuracy of my claims. They both claimed that these experiences are in direct conflict to their standards, procedures, and guidelines. I had to multiple times assert that even though they aren't seeing or experiencing these concerns does not mean they aren't happening. The experiences I am having in my store are also the experiences others are having in other stores. 

I also raised the idea of enforcing a form of reasonable quarantine for employees who choose to travel. I presented multiple different forms that this could take; a full 10-14 day quarantine to a 5-7 day quarantine with multiple tests to ensure they are negative prior to returning to work, along with other variations of these. He responded negatively to this idea. He asserted that Best Buy does not want to control what people are doing outside of their job, but this is exactly what any corporation already does with policies about what their employees can or cannot discuss outside of work publicly or their already existing COVID-19 screenings. For Best Buy to continue operating as an ethical business they need to ensure the safety of all employees and customers. He also questioned if an unpaid quarantine was fair to employees who chose to travel. I responded that if an employee was able to take a vacation they can afford to take a quarantine, and if they can't afford the quarantine they cannot afford the vacation. Travel is unnecessary and dangerous during a global pandemic; it poses many ethical concerns for those who do choose to travel and business that claim to operate ethically need to enforce adequate safety standards for those who choose to travel. 

Both Ray Sliva and the employee relations team have asked how the company can resolve these concerns and I have asked that they: adequately respond to each of my concerns, properly adjust their safety standards, procedures, and guidelines to prioritize the safety of employees and customers, and create a better system of transparency and communication about the safety standards, procedures, and guidelines.

Between my conversation with Ray Sliva and the Best Buy employee relations team I have felt that Best Buy is still willing to put profits above the safety of customers and employees and would rather approach safety standards, procedures, and guidelines in a very hands-off manor. They are also showing how much it takes to receive relevant information about our current and future safety standards, procedures, and guidelines. These concerns and the reactions to them is extremely disheartening for an employee of 2+ years that used to be proud to consider myself part of the Best Buy team, enjoyed my job, and was excited to work with my colleagues. Through the last four months I have seen the culture perpetuated by corporate, and thus trickling down to the store level, be an incredibly telling of the kind of business Best Buy is; it is an unhealthy and negative culture. 

I thank everyone who has supported this petition and continued to put pressure on businesses to operate with the priority of safety during these unprecedented times. I hope you are all staying safe and healthy.

-Joseph Roberto