howzat

Seriously, how does Radio Shack stay in business? I go there pretty regularly to buy solder and micro-switches and geeky stuff like that, but nobody else does, from what I can tell. For all the times I’ve been there, just once have I seen anyone else in the store, shopping for a phone. I wanted to walk up to him and ask, “Really? You needed a phone and the first store that popped into your head was Radio Shack? How?”

Every other time I’ve been there, I was the only customer in the store. Which has its up side. The clerks always say “Hi” when I walk in the door, and they very nearly demand to show me to the very spot where I can find what I’m looking for. On the rare occasions when I don’t already know where it is and take them up on their offer, they’ll take me up the correct aisle, pull open a drawer and take out several examples of, say, terminal lugs, describing each type and finishing up by letting me know that, if these are exactly the right kind of terminal lugs I’m looking for, they’ll be happy to call the other Radio Shack stores to see if they can find what I want.

I took one of the clerks up on that offer, too, when I was looking for a big spool of wire. Unfortunately, I have to report that her call did not start with, “You’ll never believe who’s here! A customer!”