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My Dad worked there in the 80s between contracts for a couple months. "Well this contract ends this month, and I've got an awesome database migration contract
by VLM 12y ago
My Dad worked there in the 80s between contracts for a couple months. "Well this contract ends this month, and I've got an awesome database migration contract starting in 6 months, so I've gotta find something to do meanwhile (decades before FOSS type stuff), and I've spent tons of money at RS since it was allied radio and I was a kid ..." This was before they turned into Cell Phone Shack. About half the time they got well over minimum wage back then, even on low sales stores. Sounds like they earn even less now than in the 80s, not adjusted for inflation! One thing that didn't change was the Shack expanding to own your life, so it starts as part time and somehow 3 months later you're an asst mgr (why?) and "working" 90 hours and then a couple months later you're all WTF am I doing here at 100 hrs a week, my contract job starts next week, bye!
The article had a lot of weird stuff about not understanding why people wouldn't leave a crappy job. Well, perhaps 90% of the time the only crappy part was the paycheck, you just hung out and screwed around and occasionally sold stuff to people. So I'd take the city bus to his store after school and we'd play video/computer games for HOURS during the slow times. We had kind of a game on betting when the last customer would come in, maybe 6pm or so most days, then we had the store to ourselves till 10 or so, literally a kid in a toy store. It honestly was a lot of fun almost all the time, just not much pay. You could make a ton of money at lunch and after work rush, and saturdays, like $40/hr (which in the 80s was a lot), but you had to hang out all night long at minimum wage if you wanted the plum hours. Sales were extremely uneven over time. I still don't understand why they ever opened before noon or were open after 6pm or so.
I can prove he worked there... in the mid 80s each shipment contained a hopeless VCR tape of sales blather not for public consumption. Sell Sell Sell!