The best thing about Radio Shack (or is it RadioShack) is that you get to leave it after fighting your way through “the help” to get what you want and make a purchase. As in every two minutes one is assaulted with “can I help you” or “still finding everything okay” when it should be obvious that I’m shopping there as entertainment.
I mean, and maybe I’m in a minority of one, I like to wander around aimlessly while browsing electronics. I like to muse the possibilities presented by a drawer full of coax connectors. There are schemes and ideas that just don’t come to you unless you are standing in front of a stack of motion detectors. So having someone hound you about finding stuff gets a little irritating after the first ten minutes.
And it’s not the individuals in the store who are to blame for this. It is the whole RadioShack culture thing. Every store I’ve been in across several states and over the last decade has been exactly the same. Crappy phones and other low-quality consumer electronics artfully arranged in the front two-thirds of the store and the alpha clerk hovering vulture-like with the “hi there, can I help you find anything?” unless he is busy trying to sell some poor schmuck one of their phones. Once you break past this clerk you get to the useful and interesting part of RadioShack…the forgotten back corner where they hide individual components, wire, connectors, and other useful junk you generally cannot buy anywhere other than online. Hiding back in amongst the good stuff is the junior sales associate who is so very desperate to make sales that they practically stand on top of you.
For instance, today I’m there trying to buy a short length of 50 ohm coax, a PL-259 connector, and some relatively thin, insulated copper wire–say 22 gauge. I’m also there to look for stuff like twin-lead or ladder line, ceramic or glass insulators, and otherwise waste about half an hour before I have to get back to work. I find my required purchases quickly enough so the rest of the time is devoted to daydreaming. Yet this associate asked no less than seven times whether or not I was still doing okay.
Granted, I was the only person in the establishment not employed by RadioShack.
Oh, but, are you ever in for a treat if you actually engage in conversation with the non-alpha associate. As in, I finally let on that I’m pretty cool with my selection of PL-259 connectors thinking this would assuage her fear that I’m actually drowning in this sea of technology. Here we embark on a discussion that what I probably want is an ‘N’ connector because that’s what most coax connections are. Even after I explain this is for a nearly 30 year old radio and that “right there in the damned manual” it states the antenna connection is SO-239 <--> PL-259 she wants to tell me that I’ll probably be wanting one of these nicely packaged on a spindle ‘N’ connectors instead of the musty PL-259 I pulled out of the drawer. If I had a PDF reader on my iPhone I could have shown her the manual. As it was, I was reminded about the return policy a few times in the event I had chosen incorrectly.
So, fine and good, it’s time I go back to work. As I make my way back to the front holding some connectors, some coax, and some bog-standard wire, the alpha clerk swooped in to ask me if I was interested in hearing about their collection of cellular phones. Seriously. I gave him the 1K yard toad stare until he was uncomfortable enough to move on. Like I had gone to RadioShack to get a cell phone but had been confused for the past half hour by the lack of nifty cell phones in the back corner of the store and, despite the non-cellular phone merchandise in my hands, what I really wanted was a damned cell phone and, thank god, this dude was here to help me out.
After that its only a matter of trying to hide as much of your unrelated yet personally identifying data while performing a transaction and still maintain a self-image that doesn’t seem overly paranoid. I’m one of the many RadioShack customers who live in the 60613 zip code at 1060 West Addison, Chicago, Illinois and who do not have any phone service whatsoever.
“Hey, how weird…you want to learn about the various cell phone options available here at RadioShack?”
/me cries
I figure having to deal with all of the direct mail advertising is what keeps the Cubs’ front office from really buckling down and putting together a useful baseball team. But, really, I absolutely hate shopping at RadioShack because it could be a much more enjoyable experience than it turns out to be. Nerd nirvana turns in to retail clerk customer service training horror film.
In other news, I’ll be tuning the bands tonight.
