The Worst Employee of the Worst RadioShack

In light of the bankruptcy of America's largest battery and wires store, we brought you a mishmash of RadioShack memories hastily thrown together by Motherboard editors and a bunch of random people on the internet. That post inspired many comments from RadioShack old-timers and some ex-employees.

One of them, true or not, nearly brought one of our employees to tears, because we are an emotional bunch over here. What follows is the story of the self-proclaimed worst employee of the worst RadioShack and many others that have flooded in. We have no way of confirming these, but they're worth a read anyway.

The Worst Employee of the Worst RadioShack

I worked at a RadioShack in college. We never had any customers… ever. I spend my shifts getting really good at driving RC cars. One time I did knock over some expensive floor standing speakers. When asked about it, I told my boss a customer must have knocked it over when we were busy… which was never. Anyway, one day my boss said to me—and you have to understand that, like so many other national companies. RadioShacks are divided into regions of regions of regions of stores. He said to me…. "We are the worst RadioShack of all the RadioShacks in all the regions."

:(

He was so team RadioShack I thought he was going to cry. I patted him on the back annnnnnd actually quit a few days later for a sweet job working in the electronics lab at my school. I'll miss Jeff, "my boss" and RadioShack. So much cool stuff there and so many possibilities. That's a bit of my childhood dying right there. They really did start going down hill with the whole stupid cell phone thing…. I mean there are Verizon and ATT stores…. and Walmart if you're really desperate.

-Stewgy

Back when I was much younger (late 70s), RS was the place for electronics geeks, of which I was one. There was a time when most of the store was electronic components and tools. It was the only place for us to get capacitors and such, unless we wanted to wait for mail order. Over the years, the hardcore components have been displaced more and more with outdated toys and crappy phones, things which you can get anywhere. A few years ago, when my kids started getting into "maker" culture, I saw an opportunity for RS to earn back a new generation of their original customer base, by filling their stores with 3D printers and raspberry PIs. I wrote them a long letter about that, because people like me really benefit from being able to just go in a buy a particular resistor, instead of waiting and paying shipping. Last time I went into a RS, all the electronic components were in a little cabinet in the back corner of the store, and the capacitor I needed was out of stock. Not that the people working there know what a capacitor does. That was another issue. Back when I was a kid, I could walk into RS, tell the clerk what kind of thing I wanted to build, and he could sell me all of the components and suggest different ways that I could wire the circuits. I know that RS has started sponsoring "instructibles", but it came too late. They had a good opportunity to regain relevancy and market share, but they blew it.

-Toadboy

I was an early 70s fan, there for those capacitors, resisters, transistors, super cool LEDs, solder, boards and wire. Super hip when they introduced small special purpose ICs (remember the 555 Timer?). The displays of discrete components was sort of a nerd's equivalent to 101 jelly bean flavours. All good things come to an end though. Just too bad it was such an ignominious end.

-Confuscan

I bought the parts for a 6 tube radio at Radio Shack in 1968 for Electronics in High School. I bought many parts for DYI projects before that. I used to hang around the store in the early 60's lusting after resistors and capacitors and short wave radios and test equipment. I bought my first computer, a Radio Shack Model I in 1977 for Christmas at the Bellevue Square Radio Shack Store and it launched me in a career selling computers and supporting them ever since.

What is sad is RS thinking that selling cell phones and 40 dollar USB cables was the way to go.

-CitizenX

RadioShack is one of the reasons I'm in computers today. It started in 6th grade with a Science Fair 150-in-1 Electronic Project kit in the 70's. RadioShack was the cool place you went to when you wanted to build or create something that none of your friends had. It had all the instruction manuals, tools, and electronic components to build a variety of great things. I remember that AM Radio transmitter I built from scratch that let me pretend to be a radio DJ. I built my first "robot": a gutted remote control car that was hardwired with electronics to either follow a flash light automatically or to scurry away like a cockroach and hide in the dark once a light was turned on. Then there was the Trash-80 as we affectionately called their CPM-based early microcomputer. I'm sad. Today we have the Rasberry Pi and similar escapes; if we could only get our youth to look up from their thumbs blurring way from texting, Instagram, and Facebook to take a glance at them.

-Mark Lawler

My first experiences with RS were in the late 60's. It was mostly a parts store for a young hobbyist teenager. Sure, the solar cells only generated 1/2 volt, but I could line up a few to drive a little motor. And that's where one would get a germanium diode to make an AM radio that was powered the radio waves themselves. True, only got the local Brockton station, and those were strange headphones, but they worked. In the early 70's, that silly Batter-a-Month club. Those RS batteries really sucked, but you got one free every month.

They never knew what they wanted to be. Every temporal fad they picked up, and discarded, or kept a little bit hidden in some corner. I was shocked I could still find a drawer with resistors the other day. Did they sell one part per month, or per year? And then, they stacked items BEHIND the cash registers. Do I push sales people out of the way to see them and the prices?

And in recent years I could never figure out how they staffed the stores? I would see one person one day, another person the other, and while they seemed to know where everything was, they would be replaced another.

-Nattering

I remember going into RadioShack as a kid, walking in, seeing items stacked from the ceiling to the floor, there were all sorts of gadgets, equipment, parts and things that I knew nothing about, but it was mesmerizing regardless. I was lucky enough to see it at its peak of success and watch its decline. Regardless, in its best of times it was a place where you could use your imagination and create or repair something with your own hands, that's something this newer generation will probably never experience.

Many people have become great inventors and have obtained high end careers because of Radio Shack. The chain closing is not their fault, it's just a sign of the times. They tried to hang in there as long as they could, through the worst of everything. Thanks Radio Shack for allowing me to expand my own mind and be creative. Your free, long handled flashlights were pretty cool too!

-Beast6228

When I was kid, kids, Radioshack was where you went when your cheap electric guitar components started popping, cutting out and going to shit. You'd just walk over from the grocery store where you worked, buy a handful of patch cables and a bunch of solder and spend the rest of the day in the basement, just breathing it in, burning your guitar from the inside out—like Jimi Hendrix but nerdier and inadvisable amounts of mercury.

But hey, I'm no rockist. For the more electronically inclined, there were also synthesizers made specifically for Radioshack. I briefly owned a Moog Rogue, which was sold at the 'Shack as the Realistic Concertmate MG-1. You got to crack that bad boy open and clean out the components all the time. It was great.

Computer-based music is now very easy to make and doesn't require soldering anything, which are two good things for everyone except for Radioshack. Computers in general want to keep you out of there, and I'm fine with that. I was never a tinkerer except by necessity of buying cheap shit all the time because I worked in a grocery store.

I ended up selling that synth to some dilettante at the SAIC who was "getting into electronic music…like you know James Blake?" I took his money, and wished him well.

-Ben Richmond

For my birthday in the mid 1970s I asked for and spent $100 for a trip to RadioShack; my primary (and nerdy) hobby since the 1960s they were the only retail electronics component store within 100mi of my small northern town, a veritable technology desert. I later became a part time RS employee in college (studying electronics); nearing my graduation they unofficially offered me a store of my own, promised good pay and benefits, but I instead chose to work for a top five computer company. Wise choice in retrospect. But it was great fun; many people truly enjoyed buying, fixing, building, and using technical things even when it was obvious they did not have the time or inclination to do that as their day jobs.

-Fred from Michigan

Back around 2004-2005 I was an employee for RadioShack but I worked at a kiosk in Sam's Club call RS Solutions, RadioShack's very first attempt at selling sell phones to uneducated young and elderly people. They had Cellular One and Sprint. The kiosk manager was a younger version of a used car salesman who taught us our job was to harass people walking by our kiosk while trying just to get to the freezer section. Which brings me to my Shack memory. Honestly, I love the place, being the 32yr old geek I am, homemade electric chair parts? Guitar parts? Audio recording? Get the parts you need with instant gratification at The Shack! When the Internet offered lower prices on the same parts, sales slumped, District managers kicked into fear full on harassment techniques, past pre-2000 levels. Forecasts not met, raise prices, they should of started a regional distribution system much like auto parts store and maybe they could survive. Maybe a price matching scheme like Best Buy would help. One thing is for sure RadioShack you have done this to yourself, now more than ever people want and need your products that you are known for, more DIYers are coming of age and you are our Mecca, time to clean house. Good Luck!

Brian from Western NY