Staff quality at Radio Shack

[Martin]

Terry,

Small world.  I worked in the Hyattsville Lafayette Radio in Hyattsville in
the early '70s.

I thought it was their overinvestment in quadraphonic audio gear that did
them in.

Martin

On Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 12:53 PM, Terry N4TLF <n4tlf at wb4jfi.com> wrote:

> 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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