Best Buy employees buy Wii U for customer, video shows

The holidays came early for a young Best Buy customer in Valley Stream when the store’s staff gifted him a Wii U console, a moment captured in a widely shared video on YouTube.

In the video, a group of Best Buy employees approach a boy sitting at the store’s Wii U display. The employees tell him they’ve noticed him visiting the store frequently to play video games at the display and wanted to give him a gift.

“We all got together and chipped in so you could have one yourself,” an employee, identified by Best Buy as store worker Ken Fernandez, tells the boy.

The boy looks shocked at first but Fernandez assures him the video game system is his.

Fernandez was the leader of the group and arranged to collect the more than $300 needed for the gift, Best Buy spokesman Shane Kitzman said.

Kitzman said Rahiem Storr, a Best Buy store manager, posted the video on behalf of the Valley Stream employees on Dec. 7 on YouTube, where it racked up more than 1.5 million views.

“This kid came in every single day to play the display Wii U, the employees in this store saw an opportunity to make a child smile and did just that,” Storr wrote on YouTube. “They chipped in and purchased a Wii U for him with their own money.”

The Associated Press also reported that the employees also gave the boy a video game and a ride home, so he didn’t have to walk with his new Wii.