Improve Everywhere - the Best Buy mission

There is a group of pranksters who operate in New York City, who go by the name of Improve Everywhere.

These guys are freakin’ amazing! Sometimes they do a small scale prank with their core group of pranksters, and sometimes they get dozens of people to join them in a large-scale “scene”. After causing their scene, the group tends to pretty much evaporate, disappearing into whatever crowd has gathered.

They call their pranks “missions” and the pranksters are “agents”. They usually have several people either snapping photos or filming what happens, so they can share it with the world. Many of these are extremely strange and extremely funny.

On one of their recent outings, they contacted a large group of volunteers and asked them to show up to a certain location wearing a royal blue polo shirt, khaki pants, a belt and black shoes, but told them nothing about what they were going to do - just when and where to show up.

A crowd of 80 agents formed at the rendezvous, looking like a large bunch of Best Buy employees - and they quickly found out that was exactly where they were headed. They infiltrated a local Best Buy, one or two people at a time, and once inside they were told to spread out and take up positions standing near the ends of aisles, facing away from the merchandise. They were instructed not to shop and not to work, just to stand around. If a customer asked them a question, they could answer if they knew a helpful answer, but if an employee asked them what they were doing there, they were to say that “they were waiting for a friend who was shopping”.

The effect was that the number of employees in the store grew from maybe 20 or 25, to over 100, and the Best Buy management totally flipped out. Some members of the group dressed as regular shoppers and smuggled in hidden cameras to film the fun. One very smart individual just smuggled in a blank memory card, popped it into one of the demo cameras, and filmed with the store’s own camera, on the pretense of making a purchase.

Check out their story, along with pictures and videos of the fun, on the Improve Everywhere website at
http://www.improveverywhere.com/mission_view.php?mission_id=57