Thank you for paying attention.
Oh, you… 
How, pray tell, are they to accomplish this?
You can always get accessories cheaper online or go to a Best Buy or Wal-Mart or Target or mall kiosk for the same stuff at the same or lower prices. And the idea of a brick and mortar app store is asinine.
They could build market share among electronics hardware of various vintages because there was no internet to make shopping easier and cheaper. That’s just no longer the case. Their business model is just plain busted. They’re just another in a line of retailers like CompUSA or Circuit City that’s on the way out. To be honest, I’m surprised Best Buy has managed to hold out so long, but even there the signs are pointing down over the long haul.
I suppose Radio Shack could try to get Google to sign some kind of exclusive rights deal, but I rate the chances of surviving a fall from 30000ft without a parachute much higher.
Maybe they were just shocked that you still have/use a landline phone.
You mean the mobile OS Android, or androids in general?
You can build the circuit by rote, and it’ll work, but the manual (at least the one I had as a kid) explained how the circuit worked, so if you put some thought into it, you can think of ways to modify it, and learn something that way. That’s how I learned electronics.
The RatShacks in my area tend toward “nice, but clueless” staff. Of course, when I’m walking in with part numbers and printouts from their website… 
Excuse me, are you disagreeing with the almighty Focus Group?
I went into my local Radio Shack about a year ago cause I needed a simple 12 volt relay to install something in our car. There was a 20something clerk there. I was all prepared with a part number, a layman’s description of a relay, etc cause I just knew he wouldn’t have any idea what I was talking about. I tell him what I was looking for, he walks right over to a drawer, pulls it open and hands it to me. I didn’t quite know what to say. I gather this experience is not typical nowadays.
I have known a couple of electrical engineers that moonlighted at Radio Shack as Christmas temps. Not sure if it is still the case, but at one time they got paid commission.
Don’t take it so personally. IRL it was just “No thanks.”
And Tandy reduces the commission rate from Thanksgiving to New Year (or at least they used to). Management refered to this time as “The Golden Quarter”, but the employees all called it by the name above.
Another Christmas Miracle: The sales floor got flooded with part-time cute teenage girls who knew nothing. The fulltimers got to answer questions about, and ring up 3 amp fuses while the teenyboppers rung up $100’s of sales of RC cars. :smack:
Heh. This was back in, oh, 2002ish. But yeah, the house I lived in still used fuses which blew if you plugged in more than half an appliance.
Eh, I went to one recently for the first time in years to pick up an off-contract iPhone rather than order it online through Virgin America. The young man behind the counter was helpful and professional, and had me quickly in business.
Fry’s.
I walked into Fry’s for the first time out of sheer desperation to find a fiber optic ST to SC conversion cable. No fucking way would they have it. I was fucked.
They had it.
Gob. Smacked.
I’m fairly certain if you need a part for a Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator, they probably have that too somewhere.
Regards,
-Bouncer-
Uh huh. And what do you do when you’re in a town that’s big enough to have a Radio Shat but not anything else? I was doing a project at my brothers house.
Open up his stereo system or TV, and yank the part you need. He watches too much ‘idiot box’, anyway. He don’t need a TV.
Uh…!:eek:
I was setting up a home theater system for his newly remodeled rec room. Your plan would kind of not work.
Yeah, well…
Fry’s Electronics is certainly deserving of their own Pit thread. Although they have a reasonably good selection of electronic components, their prices are too high, and their sales staff is at least as clueless as Radio Shack’s.
Huh. I’ve had mostly nothing but good experiences there, and if I don’t feel like mail ordering electronics, that’s the cheapest place around here, as long as you stick to their sales items. The only real idiot I came across was years ago when they had a $150 desktop sale; thing came installed with some sort of Linux flavor–I think Linspire. The guy warned me about this. I said it’s okay, I’ll just install Windows over it. He seemed to think that wasn’t possible. I don’t think he was trying to upsell me, I just think he didn’t know what he was talking about. Confused, I walked over to the hard drive department and asked the guys there if there’s any truth to that. They laughed and said “no, you’re fine.” So I bought it and had no major iissues installing Windows over it (although I do remember a minor glitch at first, which briefly caused me to doubt myself.)