Graduate with Honors, Ninja Genius Sex Machine School

February 22nd, 2006 Posted in 2006

One of the great things about living in Manhattan is its ongoing resistance to corporate conglomerates like Walmart, Best Buy or Pizza Hut waltzing in and driving local retailers and restaurants out of business. Take that, Big Business! Family-owned businesses rule!

Conversely, one of the truly shitty things about living in Manhattan is realizing over time just how awesome corporate conglomerates like Walmart, Best Buy and Pizza Hut are. It’d be nice to have the option of buying a coffee maker for $9.99, or finding an alternative to the 392,019,556 family-owned New York pizzerias currently selling the exact same pizza. Bite my corporation-loving balls, Mom and Pop—you can go ahead and starve, I want a motherfucking five-dollar keyboard.

Given the void of large retailing outfits here, I was short of options when hunting around for a wireless router for my apartment earlier this year. I ended up having to go to RadioShack for it. (The technologically inclined among you will immediately note this is a lot like saying, “I couldn’t find any supermarkets selling fresh fruit, and ended up having to go rooting through a garbage bin behind an Olive Garden.”)

Long story short: I went to RadioShack, bought a wireless router, set it up, smelled the scent of burning circuit board a week later, went to RadioShack, argued with the cashier, got a second wireless router, set it up, am currently waiting for the scent of burning circuit board. The fact that I bought a piece of shit from RadioShack and it didn’t work isn’t exactly late-breaking headline news, so I didn’t alert Tom Brokaw on this one. What was infuriating, though, was RadioShack’s rebate policy, of which I’d been previously unaware.

Here’s what the pricetag looks like on RadioShack merchandise:

The (A) here represents the price of an item, emblazoned in 150-point bolded font that can be seen from across the store; the (B), on the other hand, hidden at the bottom of the tag in eye-stingingly small 5-point font, represents the actual non-mail-in-rebate price of the item. I first became aware of this after taking the wireless router to the cashier and forking over my credit card, and so felt a little cheated.

To get the 150-point font price, you have to rip apart the box your item came in with a pair of scissors so you can cut out the price code; fill out a long questionnaire; and mail both in with your receipt for the rebate. This is a fantastic way of doing business, assuming you’re from 1920’s-era small-town America and enjoy activities that allow you to use newfangled items like post offices and scissors. If you’re living in present-day America, it’s a hopelessly outdated and irritatingly misleading business tactic.

Angry that I’d been fooled with a bait-and-switch, I of course cut open the box, filled out the form and mailed both in with my receipt for the refund as soon as I got home. Two months later I have yet to receive it, of course—though RadioShack’s rebate policy certainly came in handy when their product inevitably broke, and I was forced to get a replacement with no receipt and a cut-to-shit box.

Jumping through hoops like this for a major corporation makes you wonder at the sorts of magnificent retards they must have making decisions at their head office. So I felt vindicated when I read this article yesterday, in which RadioShack’s CEO stepped down amid controversy and embarrassment after it had been revealed he’d lied about all of his credentials. So it turns out the question “How could anyone with a business degree think that selling non-functioning crap using misleading price tactics is a good idea?” has the uplifting answer of “It turns out they don’t!”

I’ve actually fudged a thing or two myself on resumes. When you’re right out of college with no work experience, let’s face it, it pays to be a little creative with your past accomplishments. But I stretched the truth while applying for jobs like Administrative Assistant and Mail Boy; these are the Arby’s Dishwashing Technician jobs of the business world. What kind of colossally huge balls do you have to have to lie at a job interview for CEO of a company? This isn’t Beverly Hills Cop—people shouldn’t get to be surgeons or CEOs by freaking out in a lobby or putting a few bananas in a tailpipe. It’s fucking lunacy, and it worked.

Ex-RadioShack CEO David J. Edmondson: for putting down “former astronaut” and “Graduate with Honors, Ninja Genius Sex Machine School” on your RadioShack CEO application, and getting the job anyway; more importantly, for falsifying your credentials so you get to smoke expensive cigars while getting fellated by underage Taiwanese runaways on your yacht, while the rest of us try to exchange your shitty, non-working products while arguing with minimum wage-earning teenagers at RadioShack; you officially receive the JayPinkerton.com Biggest Balls in the Universe Award.

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Edit 03/05/06: I just stumbled on a funny blog post by Mark Evanier on his blog about RadioShack’s incompetence (and massive shut-down of some 700 branches) that seemed too relevant not to tack on. An excerpt: “I took [the ringer] back and, lucky me, got the same clerk who suggested maybe I’d installed it wrong. (You plug the phone into it and it into the wall. A blind Amish person could get this one right.) I finally got him to exchange it for another one on the shelf…and watched as he put the one I said was broken back in its box and back on sale for someone else to buy.”

Another funny RadioShack rant, this one from Rudy Panucci. Excerpt: “I’ve got a suggestion: How about actually having stores filled with electronics and the parts needed to repair them, and hiring sales people who care about what they’re doing and have a clue about what they’re selling?”