The one my son worked at was also at a dying strip mall and the store got maybe a half dozen customers on a given shift with 2-3 employees fighting for what little commission there was in what they came in to buy - which was usually a cell phone charging cable or a watch battery.
It was true that they had periodic regional conference calls in which the regional manager hollered and screamed and embarrassed employees who had a low sales month (which was pretty much all of them).
The main focus of a Radio Shack store these days is selling those 2-year cell phone contracts. It is true that the employee got a $40 commission for one of those but had to have it deducted from his pay (chargeback) if the customer returned it for any reason - and that happened a good amount of time.
It's amazing how that retail chain is still in business.
However, I remember the glory days of the 1970s and early 1980s when they were the one mall store that was cool for a guy to hang out in.
For those who remember the salad days, here are some vintage Radio Shack catalogs to reminisce with. Looking at the 1979 one brought back many fond memories.
I remember Radio Shacks of the 1970s... The employees were mostly electronics knowledgeable guys. The last few times I’ve been into one I walked out in disgust. The last clerk I had “help” me did not even know what a RCA jack was...
dumping the flavradios and the Battery of the Month card was a bad idea.
Where will I go when I need a half dozen 2N3904s in a hurry?
The days of the TRS 80.
I have tried to figure out Radio Shack since the late 60s, and never figured out what they were supposed to be, or why.
Worked at Radio Shack in the late 90’s.
They had a system to split commission.
Well, the store supervisor stole everyone’s commission, every day.
Telling the district manager did nothing.
Oh, and forget being honest with customers, management hated that!
They told us to lie to the customer to get the sale.
I said I wouldn’t do that as an informed customer is a happy repeat customer, a deceived customer will be irate upon discovery of the ruse.
Got stuck doing inventory for two weeks as punishment for not lying to customers, was informed that such was the case.
they don’t let their store managers manage, for one...
but they seem totally incapable of bringing back the old heathkit days when you could buy individual components.
only thing they’re good for nowadays is hard to find batteries, and how often do you need one of those?
sad that they used to be good. used to carry good stuff, now all they seem to want to do is hawk cell phones, and there are a lot of places to get those
I guess RS and Heathkit will have alot to talk about on the ash heap of history.
Those guys could become a more specialized techie’s version of a hobby store with a little vision and a little love. They don’t see what they’ve become because they don’t understand what they were. That’s what they were, a more specialized techie’s version of a hobby store, and that segment has not evaporated.
Well, self-contained radio sets have been extinct for some time.
Ironic that they were THE electronics store for a couple of decades but that the ubiquity of the semiconductor in later years actually killed them off.
But they also earned their karmic fate with their cloying, incessant demand for personal information, going as far as a placard near the cash registers with the smiling company president attempting to justify the invasive practice. Of course they irresponsibly sold the data to anyone and everyone.
They also actually tried to turn mobile phones into add-a-sale items - even when buying a small item such as a $10 cable. Oh yes - let me add $300 to that tab! Idiots.
Best Buy is currently on the corporate-weenie track to the boneyard by annoying its dwindling foot traffic with in-store hard-sell DirecTV pitches etc.
They can moan about Amazon et al but in most cases retailers have been digging their own graves for years with or without the Internet.
There is one near here that is combined with a tire store. A friend needed a memory stick and we went there a while back. They had a 500Mb for $129.00. We passed. Checked online and he ordered a 2 gb for about $10.
Cool! Thanks for posting.
I DID NOT appreciate Radio Shack asking for personal information EVERY TIME I wanted to buy something.
That put them last on my list for buying things and with the Internet, that was the end of them for me.
Ah, Radio Shack. Sometimes I miss the eighties so much.
I remember Radio Shack during the CB craze of the late 70’s. It was a great time. The stores were always packed.
I still have love for Radio Shack. Check ‘em out again. (No, I don’t own any stock or work there)
#1 I bookmarked the site. I remember some of the catalogs from the 70’s and early 80’s.
Who needs a Mac a Dell of an iPad, when my TRS-80 gets amazing internet speeds?