The manager can generally change the price on a single item (one sweater has a small stain on it? discount), but the manager can’t change the price of that whole batch of sweaters, even though many customers might complain that it’s absurd to pay $X for those sweaters. And that’s what someone was complaining about, that the regular price of an item was way too high. A store manager CAN’T lower the price on those items on a company wide basis, though s/he might discount a particular purchase. And if the manager lowers the price on a store wide basis, without approval from the higher ups, s/he is going to have some explaining to do.
When you really need that useless diode to complete that electronic science project you’ve been working on since the ninth grade, you fly to the rescue, Radio Shack Dude…so here’s an ice cold Bud Light…
Radio Shack sales droid: “Can I help you?”
Kevbo:“Not in my experience.”
This is making me chuckle much more than it should. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been in a Radio Shack (no, check that, I was there about three years ago to get some piezos) but it’s not the same place it was when I was in my youth in the 80s/early 90s. The people there used to actually seem to know their shit back then, but now it just seems to be selling consumer electronics, and the people working there are more typical salesmen than the electronics hobbyists I remember of my youth. But maybe that’s just my age and idealized memory of the past showing…
Yeah, the same people who gladly hand over their rewards card to the store clerk, which now logs who you are, your gender, your age, what you bought, what time of day you bought it, whether or not you paid full price or bought it on sale, your address, and probably your marital status and income bracket as well.
“You want my postal code? No way are you invading my privacy like that!”
Lovely town, but I can see how it might confound Corporate:
“Holy cow, Joe! A guy from Intercourse, PA just bought an overpriced diode from a location in Kalamazoo!”
“WTF?! We have 7 stores he could have shopped at, between F’Town and Kazoo! Let’s look into this.”
“We got a bigger conundrum, Joe.”
“A conundrum, Duane?”
“97% of the citizens of Intercourse, PA are amish… what are they going to do with a diode?”
“I’ll mobilize the Investigative Team, and meet you by the helipad.”
Can you go into a Radio Shack without getting pissed off?
I guess, if you went in there to start a shooting spree.
Maybe we should establish a shared fake number/zip code for these things, rack up absurd numbers of points, and randomly get rewards for lying to the stores. (I regard such things as a creative challenge. I enjoy picturing some datamining drone obsessing over why a Guatemalan papaya farmer would be shopping for cookware in Texas.)
As to Radio Shack…it has fallen far. It was tolerably useful in the early 90s. Now I just go to Fry’s or one of the more specialized components shops if I need something too urgently to wait for an online order. I’ve been using a line similar to scabpicker’s for years–“You’ve got questions, we’ve got blank looks.”
You laugh, but the bass from a Maytag dryer is Amazing!
Moby Dick, my friend, Moby Dick!
Do those electronic toy kits actually teach much about how electronics work, or do they just provde plans that the kid builds by rote?
There’s a reason Radio Shack is nicknamed “The Hack Shack” in the industry.
Also, the employee you met, unless they were the manager or assistant manager was a part-timer making whatever the minimum wage is in your area, so no they’re not going to have any influence on company policy.
That, my good sir, is fucking funny.
.
Well, this is the situation. A chain of small stores can’t compete with the internet. So first they lost their geek market. Then fund managers noted that they were keeping all sorts of odd stuff in stock and that they should focus on the high margin items. They did so and this worked for a while. By that time, it wasn’t such a fun place for underpaid geeks with an engineering bent to work. So they left.
Radio Shack is a place to go when you need an item now, as in today. If you can wait a couple of days, you may as well have Amazon ship it to you priority mail. That and the confused is their market.
The stock has since tanked. But the geniuses who recommended their current strategy a half decade ago have long since sold out their interests. So everything worked out ok really.
I have to shrug: you may as well vent on Blockbuster Video or a bricks and mortar record store.
I don’t use the fucking spy-cards either. They don’t get anything out of me but cash and the list of items I bought.
Those of you who are remembering when Radio Shack was good (and this includes myself); we are dating ourselves. It’s been twenty years or more since they’ve been good!
That’s good. They’ll have a harder time tapping your phone and tracing your web searches this way. Make sure you shred all your papers before putting them in the garbage.
They’re out to get you, man.
I’ve been told by an RS manager that the few days after Christmas is their busiest time, because everyone’s buying cables & adapters to get their Christmas presents hooked up & working.
17506 comes before 17534.
Heh. I went in once for the simplest thing I can imagine: this. I didn’t find it after looking on this shelves in the telephone area so I asked. Blank stare at my description. Went to Kmart and found one for $1.49.
If I were radio shack, I would become the headquarters for all things android.
If Radio shack can be for android what it used to be for ham radios, then hi fi stereos, then electronics and computers, I think they can turn themselves around.