I worked for Radio Shack corporate headquarters for nine years, up until this year. During that time, I only went into a store half a dozen times (excluding the one attached to the campus), because it was still cheaper to buy almost everything I wanted elsewhere, even with my employee discount.
I do wish everyone would go and buy lots of stuff from them, though. I want to dump the rest of my stock, and I’d like to do it at a decent price.
Awww, c’mon, dung beetles are kinda cute.
Speaking as someone sheltering behind the mealie bags (counter) in electronics retail, trying to fend off hordes of Zulu Impi (customers)- and worse, being 2IC of the defence- I have to say that there are valid reasons for having staff seeming excessively… clingy, for want of a better word.
Firstly, it’s a good anti-theft deterrent.
Secondly, it very quickly weeds out tyre-kickers, ie people who are simply wasting our time by “just browsing”. At this time of year, we are insanely busy, and really don’t have the time to deal with people who just want to find out what we know about a product, unless they’re determined to buy it then.
I agree it’s annoying, and I discourage the staff I work with from doing it as a result. Still, it’s amazing how many times one of the staff will approach a customer, ask if they need help, be told “No”, and then 15 seconds later the customer will grab another staff member and ask them for assistance on something.
I don’t work for RadioShack, though, so I can’t speak for their policies or procedures.
Do the Radio Shack people get sales comission? The last time I was in there I needed a simple 6 foot VCR coaxial cable, got it myself, got in line, and the clerk started browbeating me for not getting the 50 foot one with solid gold connectors, telling me the picture quality would be better, etc. on and on, then tried to sell me a cell phone, batteries and everything else on the checkout counter. They are the worst.
I think so, but I don’t know for sure. (My job involved sending information electronically between RS and its vendors, and I didn’t have anything to do with the stores directly.)
Yes, IF their total commisionable sales exceed a certain minimum amount (I forget the exact figures). If not, they get slightly above minimum wage. So, there’s quite a drive to make commission, and the more aggressive associates generally get the lion’s share of the pie, so to speak. There are also additional incentives called SPIFFs, which are paid on selling services like cell phones and satellite TV, as well as on extended warranty plans and a few other things. That’s why they’ll bug you for certain things when you go in–those are the things with the highest SPIFFs.
I don’t usually have a question formulated the instant I walk in the door. I would much rather walk over to the appropriate aisle and look for myself to see if you have what I’m looking for. But questions may arise once I’m standing in front of the merchandise. So I can actually imagine not having a question, but then having one 15 seconds later, once you’re staring at the merchandise. For example, let’s say I’m looking for 9 feet of coaxial cable. Chances are I can find it myself easily. But perhaps I don’t see it on the shelf, and then I would want to ask the sales clerk, “Do you carry this in 9 foot lengths?” I think most people prefer to find the item on their own if possible, rather than be led around by the hand. Clerks tend to be pushy and say, “Here it it; shall I ring this up for you?” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve found a similar item in the same store that’s better or cheaper than what the clerk was trying to sell me. I like stores that allow me to browse first, but are still helpful if questions come up.
“Hi Welcome to Radio Shack! Can I help you find anything?”
“Not if past experience is any indication.”
The commission angle makes sense. I’m sure most sales jobs want their employees to be agressive in pushing sales, but employees not on commission soon realize it isn’t worth their trouble. But if you’re getting a cut, then I can see being agressive, as in auto sales.
It’s not just commission that motivates them. Radio Shack, like a lot of retail companies, employs ‘shoppers’ who will come into the store pretending to be a customer, then write up reports afterwards critiquing the salespeople, cleanliness of the store, whether procedures were followed, etc.
Sometimes they’ll even test your honesty by doing things like grabbing something for $2.49, throwing a $5 on the counter saying, “I’m in a hurry - I don’t need a receipt” and going out the door. The salesperson is supposed to write up the sale anyway, but a dishonest employee might realize that with no customer in sight, and no sale rung up, he could just pocket the $5. Later on, the day’s books will be audited to verify that the sale was appropriately recorded. If not, bye-bye employee.
Back in the day, we were supposed to be pretty insistent about the name and address thing. Trust me - employees hated it as much as the customers. Back then, all sales were written by hand on an order form, so having to write out a name and address for every customer got old pretty quick. On a busy day, you could write out over a hundred of them. So a lot of employees would just ignore the directive and write, “Customer didn’t leave name” or something like that. God help you if you did that to a professional shopper, though. And since you never knew who they were, you just gritted your teeth and asked for the address.
The company I work for as a security consultant does these types of services [I myself very rarely do them, the few times I do I would never post on these boards about it, and Radio Shack is not one of our clients]. Each client has their own special form for critiquing the shop, yet every one has a section asking about asshole behavior like following the customer around and breathing down their neck (“did the employee make the shopper uncomfortable with their presence”).
I’m stunnded that RS wants that type of behavior.
This is EXACTLY the way it’s done, except that 2 shoppers are sometimes used, each entering the store separately. One does this, the other remains to see what the employee does with the money.
Out of curiosity, what are you supposed to do? Chase after the customer and insist they come back and wait for their change?
You do realise that this makes no sense in the context of a thread about people who don’t want to be bothered by salespeople, don’t you?
What lowbrass said. I want to look at what’s there, get sorted out what my options are, read pertinent packaging and then and only then, if I still need more info will I ask. Trying to cut this short is counterproductive because if I get hassled I’ll probably not buy on that occasion, and probably won’t shop with you again.
I don’t like to admit it, but I used to work for the RS. In between the fun times, as decribed earlier, and the shit times now. Worst place I’ve ever worked. And that is sayings some serious shit!
I have nothing but pity for any RS employee now. I can’t blame them, and I can’t urge them any more vigorously to be become bums on the streets ( its cold where I live).
Ask them about the “Golden Shower”. Feel what it like to ruin someone’s day.
It’s more an FYI thing. FWIW, our customers want us to help them- they complain if they have to wait at the counter for two minutes to find things on the shelf, even if said items are in plain view. It’s just the demographics of our area.
Under normal circumstances you’re completely right- but at this time of year, we’ve got a store full off people and only finite staff with which to serve them. We aim to offer help to every customer, but since we can only serve one person at a time (per sales staff) we need to know who really needs our help and who’s just having a look around. Clingy salespeople annoy me too, but a lot of it is simply loss prevention more than anything else. YRMV, of course.
I worked at Radio Shack back when I was 16, and I quickly realized that I do not have the personality to sell people a bunch of crap they don’t want. Luckily I had a really laid-back boss who didn’t encourage us to hassle people. We would greet anyone who walked in the door and ask them if they needed help, but if they said they were just looking we would leave them alone. And we didn’t have to push really hard to add things on at the register either. Happily, we were in a location with enough traffic that I could make 7 or 8 dollars an hour without being pushy, and since all my friends were working at McDonalds for $3.35 an hour I was thrilled with the job. Plus I didn’t have to wear a stupid uniform and come home smelling like grease.
We did have computers, so at least we didn’t have to fill the tickets out by hand, but they used the computer to track all kinds of stats about our sales in real time, and we had all these “targets” as they called them. We were supposed to sell $100 worth of stuff per hour, we were supposed to average 3+ “lines” (items) per sale, we were supposed to get addresses on 95% of customers, we were supposed to get a certain number of people to pay with American Express (never understood this one), and we were supposed to sell a certain percentage of extended warranties. Our district manager would call several times a day and ask for all those stats on everyone working there. The one I always kicked butt on was the address percentage. I always got addresses on 100% of my sales, and the DM was always singling me out at staff meetings as the best address-getter in the district. When you rang up a sale, you were supposed to ask the customer for the last four digits of their phone number, which is how the computer would find them in the database. That moron DM never figured out that 95% of my sales were to the same fictitious person whose phone number ended in “1234.” And he had such a hard-on for addresses that he let me slide on the lines per ticket, which I was always short on.
I did encounter the secret shoppers one time. A woman came in and bought an electronic game that was displayed on the counter by the register and cost $10. After completing the sale, the woman said she wanted another one, grabbed one, stuffed it in her bag, threw a ten-spot on the counter and walked out. It didn’t even occur to me that she was a secret shopper, I just rang up the sale and forgot about it. The next day the DM came in to the store and went straight to the filing cabinet. He had the receipt from the first sale so he knew right where to look to see if there were two identical sales. When he found that there were he made a big show to my cow-orkers about how honest I was. And he was such a frickin moron that he didn’t even realize that both of those sales were to the same fictitious person with “1234” as the last four digits of their phone number.
So it was a pretty good job for me, but I could see how it could totally suck. Actually, the once or twice a year I am forced to go there, I’ve found that telling the salesperson that I used to work there will make them back off and leave me alone.
:smack: I messed up with a secret shopper when I worked at the grocery store. They put a big bag (pet food or something) on the bottom of the cart and I didn’t check like I was supposed to. And they brought up something without a price tag and I took their word for it. It will sound like a lie but it really was the only time I fell for that one!
The best approach for me is “Hi, let me know if you need any help.” Then I just have to say, OK, thanks, and not explain that I’m just browsing, etc. BTW, “just browsing” to me means I have a high likelihood of finding what I want there, but that I want to find it on my own. It doesn’t mean I have no intention of buying.
The handful of times I have fallen for “What can I help you find?” the person couldn’t find it anyway so I gave up on that.
Seems to me that if you weren’t busy bothering the people who didn’t ask for help, it would free you up to help those who have asked for help. So isn’t that policy somewhat counter-productive? And as to your last point, are you saying that the salepeople follow the customers around to make sure they don’t steal anything? Seems like that ought to be the job of security, not the sales staff.
In many retail stores, including Radio Shack, the salespeople ARE the first-line security personnel. The shoplifting deterrent isn’t so much about following customers around as simply acknowledging their presence and letting them know the store employees are aware of their presence. Shoplifters don’t want to be noticed; they want to get in, get their booty and get out again without being observed. This is why stores typically want their salespeople to actively engage customers; it’s standard policy at most retail stores.
If possible ask them if they want their change as they’re leaving. Failing that (or if they don’t want it) ring up the sale and leave the change in the register. If managment is picky about draw overages make a note.