Triumph of big-box geeks

Tech workers are newest pop icons

James Newton with his Geek Squad Volkswagen Beetle at his home base, Best Buy in Milford. He's part of the store's in-house technical support unit. (Jodi Hilton for The Boston Globe)

MILFORD - James Newton, 32, loves his uniform: a clip-on tie, white short-sleeved shirt, white socks, black pants and shoes. Being a member of the Geek Squad, Best Buy's in-house technical support unit, has its other privileges, too. He gets to play with the latest shiny toys and to drive up to customers' homes in his company-issue Volkswagen Bug.

And now, he gets to watch his counterpart on television. Lately, Newton and his identically-dressed colleagues have had fun comparing themselves to Chuck Bartowski, the protagonist of the new NBC series "Chuck." Bartowski works by day at a store called Buy More - for a tech-support outfit called the "Nerd Herd" - and moonlights as a reluctant CIA spook.

Chuck is only one version of the newest pop culture archetype: the reluctant, ironic hero plucked from the endless aisles of the big-box store. On the CW series "Reaper," a group of young slackers do the devil's bidding from within a thinly-veiled Home Depot. On the ABC sitcom "Cavemen," a well-meaning Cro-Magnon, hoping to assimilate, works at a store that looks just like IKEA.

And in the portrayal that crystallized the trend, the high-grossing 2005 movie "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" is set in an electronics store called "Smart Tech," where buddies coach one another in life and love while fending off ornery customers.

Perhaps this setting is not a surprise, given the growing prominence of warehouse-style stores with fluorescent lights, corrugated roofs, and seemingly limitless merchandise. Big boxes are quickly expanding into the suburbs and exurbs, said Marshal Cohen, chief retail analyst with the market-research firm The NPD Group.

They emerge in clusters, Cohen said, like the one where Newton works, which rose from a granite slab in Milford last spring. The complex also has a Petco, a Lowe's, a Staples, and a Bed Bath and Beyond. They represent the values of convenience over luxury, price over service.

And in movies and television, they are replacing the office cubicle as the quintessential workplace. The differences are telling. The office worker - exemplified by the comic strip "Dilbert" - was an industrious, downtrodden sort, beset by middle managers and neutral-colored walls, nursing a quiet rage. In the 1999 movie "Office Space," workers smashed a fax machine to the pounding strains of hip-hop music.

Hollywood's big-box worker is a gentler sort, an amiable slacker who finds subtler ways to be subversive. On "Reaper," the heroes pass time by riding the paint-stirring machine like a mechanical bull.

For the show's creators, the big-box store represents a frame of mind: postcollegiate arrested development, fear of real life.

"It's a nice backdrop for Sam," said co-creator and executive producer Tara Butters, referring to the main character, who learns, at 21, that his parents have sold his soul to the devil. "If you haven't moved on and you're still doing the same thing you did in high school, still live at home and you're working in this big store . . . no one expects much of you."

In "Reaper," Sam has greatness thrust upon him: He becomes a bounty hunter, recapturing souls escaped from hell with the help of "vessels" culled from the store's merchandise, such as a hand-held vacuum. (An early version of the show was set in Staples, Butters said. But when a studio executive confused it with The Home Depot, the creators decided that had better possibilities.)

Butters's father works in the carpet department of a Home Depot in California, and his colleagues are tickled by the show, she said. They come up to him regularly, suggesting material.

But among the Geek Squad set, "Chuck" is earning mixed reviews. Robert Stephens, who founded the company in 1994 as a one-man operation in Minneapolis, said Hollywood producers have been calling him for years, looking for ways to turn his clever marketing idea into a "Revenge of the Nerds" tale of triumph.

Stephens, who later merged his company with Best Buy, wasn't consulted on "Chuck," and he says he isn't a fan; he doesn't think the mix of action and comedy quite works. But he understands the appeal of the misfit hero. "It all started when a computer geek became the world's richest person," he said. "The tidal forces began to shift from brawns to brains. The metrosexual has given way to the technosexual."

And he hopes the show will wind up boosting morale. "The fact that the Geek Squad agents know that they're being copied by NBC, that's incredibly motivating," he said.

Some of his employees, past and present, have approached the show with more literal critiques. On his blog "The Technology Perspective," Nathan Kimball, a former Geek Squad agent who is studying computer science at North Dakota State University, recently outlined the differences between "Chuck" and real Geek Squad life. Chuck wears a full-fledged necktie instead of a clip-on, he wrote. Chuck once said he programmed something "using a TRS-80" instead of "on a TRS-80."

But in an e-mail, Kimball said he also relates to the characters' vague resentment of their Buy More bosses - and chafes at the image of nerdy employees that the company cultivates. Best Buy's ads suggest that Geek Squad employees "are losers who never leave the house and never get dates," he wrote. "Many Geek Squad agents that I worked with had negative feelings toward Best Buy as a result of this."

But Newton and some of his Milford colleagues say they like the faux-hero getup; it looks professional, Newton said, and breaks the ice with customers. And he and his colleagues seem to accept mild indignity - their bags are regularly checked for stolen merchandise - in exchange for employee camaraderie and discounts on the latest high-tech goodies.

"It's cool to be at the forefront of technology and life," said Gary Oliveira, 29, the store's general manager, who said he loves showing customers the joys of his merchandise. "What we're here to do," he said, "is find the unmet need."

That's what Belmont-based author Tom Perrotta saw in the big-box electronic store: a place where appealing products are used to salve the soul, a perfect setting to explore the culture wars. In his new novel "The Abstinence Teacher," a Best Buy employee with a rough past and unfulfilled ambition thinks he's found happiness working at the store. Then he glimpses a Bible and goes into a trancelike rampage, which ends when he smashes a boombox into a plasma TV.

"He was at Best Buy doing that humble work, but feeling like he was part of something," Perrotta said. "And then he started to sense something malignant underneath him."

But even Perrotta understands that Best Buy has its appeal. One of his friend's sons had a dream, for a time, to grow up to be a member of the Geek Squad.

"I don't think it was his parents' ambition for him," Perrotta said. "But it does have a kind of ironic superhero quality."

Joanna Weiss can be reached at weiss@globe.com. For more on TV, go to www.viewerdiscretion.net