Staff quality at Radio Shack

[Terry N4TLF]

Hey guys,
RS has always been rather poor in general when it comes to the "help".  It 
got much worse after Tandy purchased them.  I worked at the Lafayette Radio 
store at Seven Corners back in the late 60s & early 70s, and even then RS 
was known to be less helpful, according to our customers coming in.  (I 
worked every position in the store except cashier and manager).  Even then, 
in general RS stores did not treat their employees very well, which led to 
lots of employee turnover.  I've heard horror stories over the years about 
their policies.  So, it's no wonder that virtually nobody sticks around, 
unless they have a stake in a particular store.  Of course, there are 
outlier employees who just love the job as well.  Some smart people, 
including hams, worked at those stores.  Most, not for very long, however.

Lafayette got killed by over-investing in the CB craze.  RS did similar with 
the cell phone market and computers, plus their propensity to overcharge for 
most of what they sell.  Plus, the Internet, with ALL its virtual stores. 
Why pay a marked-up price at a RS store, when you can get it for MUCH LESS 
within a day or two elsewhere (and maybe better quality).

I was sad to see RS go (for the most part), but they mostly did it to 
themselves.
73, Terry, N4TLF

-----Original Message----- 
From: lstoskopf at cox.net
Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 2015 3:15 PM
To: tacos at amrad.org ; Iain McFadyen
Subject: Re: Staff quality at Radio Shack

Ian:  You aren't old enough to remember the old RS.  A lot of those 
employees were somewhat trained or already knew about electronics.  And they 
had a good stock of supplies.  Since their near death/near bankruptcy 
experience and down sizing there are no long term careers there.  Our two 
have a total of one guy who has been there a long time and knows whats what. 
Sad that one side of the store has a lonely Sprint sales girl and the other 
an almost as lonely RS guy.  Most of the computer stuff is gone and they 
have cheap discounted electronic toys that are still cheaper direct from 
China on Banggood and the parts cabinets.  And I wonder who in Salina needs 
a SMA to BNC connector with fake gold....I've go plenty.

Now Amazon carries their own branded cables, etc. and if you have Amazon 
Prime you can get them in 2 days post paid.

Times changed a long time ago...

Speaking of changes: at coffee today we were discussing the movie: Bridge of 
Spies, which everyone needs to see.  Powers got shot down by a salvo of 
nearby missile explosions which stalled the engine.  The Ruskies finally had 
ones that could get high enough, but no accurate enough for a hit.  Which 
led to one of the group talking about one of his relatives working on our 
WW2 project on proximity fuses....the batteries available had a max shelf 
life or 4 months...supposedly a farm boy told the PhD guys that they needed 
wet/dry batteries like they bought for the farm.   Was 
told...ridiculous...how do you charge in a projectile....spin down the 
barrel would break the liquid container and activate.  Good story anyway.

Which led to our discussion of the recent Russian plane.....heard yesterday 
that our guys reluctantly admitted that they saw two heat sources 
surrounding the affair:  one when the plane blew up and the other when it 
hit the earth.  I'm sure they didn't want to reveal too much that we could 
in real time pinpoint an isolated, unscheduled incident in a vast space on a 
fairly continuous basis.

And our Ham SDR guys are happy to be up to a couple of dozen SDR receivers 
on a PC +.  Barry was at Bletchley.  How many gals were there copying CW 
signals that now could be replaced by a good Skimmer app?

RS aside,  these are great tech times.

N0UU

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