Value your health? Then you better not return that speaker cable...

[T-post Tom]

Ah, the pressures of "retail":

Radio Shack employee punches customer

The Associated Press

EAU CLAIRE, Wis. - A Radio Shack employee faces disorderly conduct and battery charges for punching a customer. Police said the customer was trying to return an item Sunday, but the employee wouldn't let him. The customer then asked to talk to a manager.

That's when the 52-year-old male employee began punching the man. A bystander called 911.

The employee is due in court May 19.

[joesomebody]

Originally Posted by |Zach|

People are completely and utterly reeruned with returns...the wire was prob like split up or smelled like piss and he was flailing around wondering why they wouldn't take it back.

The lengths people go to try to return hit is stupid.

Agreed. I put a year in at customer service at the Super Target in Liberty. People get pissed when they can't return something. I understand being mad, but I assure you the poor guy/gal making minimum wage behind the counter has zero control over the policies.

My favorite when we had a bunch of people trying to return printers without the ink that came with them. If you are going to buy a printer to steal the ink out of it, at least put your empty cartridges back in the thing.

[wild1]

What could realistically be wrong with speaker wire?

[88TG88]

Originally Posted by Adept Havelock

Heh. Whenever a company asks, I tell them 99723.

Barrow, Alaska. Northernmost zip code in the US.

I like giving them 90210.

[doomy3]

Originally Posted by |Zach|

People are completely and utterly reeruned with returns...the wire was prob like split up or smelled like piss and he was flailing around wondering why they wouldn't take it back.

The lengths people go to try to return hit is stupid.

Yep, I was an area manager for a retail store for 10 years, and as of December I no longer work there. That's the best part about it, not having to deal with ****ing reeruned customers.

[Joie]

I worked in the infant department at Wally World in high school. My manager made me take back infant clothes that were worn out and had baby food all over them. It was freaking ridiculous. There's no way that should have been returned.

[Saul Good]

You've got questions...Now who's asking the questions muthafucka?

[Miles]

.

Even CEO Can't Figure Out How RadioShack Still In Business

April 23, 2007 | Issue 43•17

FORT WORTH, TX—Despite having been on the job for nine months, RadioShack CEO Julian Day said Monday that he still has "no idea" how the home electronics store manages to stay open.

"There must be some sort of business model that enables this company to make money, but I'll be damned if I know what it is," Day said. "You wouldn't think that people still buy enough strobe lights and extension cords to support an entire nationwide chain, but I guess they must, or I wouldn't have this desk to sit behind all day."

The retail outlet boasts more than 6,000 locations in the United States, and is known best for its wall-sized displays of obscure-looking analog electronics components and its notoriously desperate, high-pressure sales staff. Nevertheless, it ranks as a Fortune 500 company, with gross revenues of over $4.5 billion and fiscal quarter earnings averaging tens of millions of dollars.

"Have you even been inside of a RadioShack recently?" Day asked. "Just walking into the place makes you feel vaguely depressed and alienated. Maybe our customers are at the mall anyway and don't feel like driving to Best Buy? I suppose that's possible, but still, it's just...weird."

After taking over as CEO, Day ordered a comprehensive, top-down review of RadioShack's administrative operations, inventory and purchasing, suppliers, demographics, and marketing strategies. He has also diligently pored over weekly budget reports, met with investors, taken numerous conference calls with regional managers about "circulars or flyers or something," and even spent hours playing with the company's "baffling" 200-In-One electronics kit. Yet so far none of these things have helped Day understand the moribund company's apparent allure.

"Even the name 'RadioShack'—can you imagine two less appealing words placed next to one another?" Day said. "What is that, some kind of World War II terminology? Are ham radio operators still around, even? Aren't we in the digital age?"

"Well, our customers are out there somewhere, and thank God they are," Day added.

One of Day's theories about RadioShack's continued solvency involves wedding DJs, emergency cord replacement, and off-brand wireless telephones. Another theory entails countless RadioShack gift cards that sit unredeemed in their recipients' wallets. Day has even conjectured that the store is "still coasting on" an enormous fortune made from remote-control toy cars in the mid-1970s.

Day admitted, however, that none of these theories seems particularly plausible.

"I once went into a RadioShack location incognito in order to gauge customer service," Day said. "It was about as inviting as a visit to the DMV. For the life of me, I couldn't see anything I wanted to buy. Finally, I figured I'd pick up some Enercell AA batteries, though truthfully they're not appreciably cheaper than the name brands."

"I know one thing," Day continued. "If Sony and JVC start including gold-tipped cable cords with their products, we're screwed."

In the cover letter to his December 2006 report to investors, "Radio Shack: Still Here In The 21st Century," Day wrote that he had no reason to believe that the coming year would not be every bit as good as years past, provided that people kept on doing things much the same way they always had.

Despite this cheerful boosterism, Day admitted that nothing has changed during his tenure and he doesn't exactly know what he can do to improve the chain.

"I'd like to capitalize on the store's strong points, but I honestly don't know what they are," Day said. "Every location is full of bizarre adapters, random chargers, and old boom boxes, and some sales guy is constantly hovering over you. It's like walking into your grandpa's basement. You always expect to see something cool, but it never delivers."

Added Day: "I may never know the answer. No matter how many times I punch the sales figures into this crappy Tandy desk calculator, it just doesn't add up."