Sadly, this is probably going to be the last post in my series covering the time that I worked at Radio Shack.

It was an interesting three years and I truly did learn a lot during my time there.

As I mentioned before, Radio Shack was really fun to work at in the beginning. It was all about learning new things and helping customers out. The I worked at is right down the road from the plant of a major chemical manufacuter in the state of Michigan.

We would get engineers and all manner of people in our store looking to build a solution for whatever they were working on. In fact, I had two guys that would frequently come in and compete with each other to see how much they could put on their corporate credit cards.

Those were some great times when all you could do was just sit back and watch because those guys were way more knowledgable about electronics that we were. They made some crazy stuff with the most mundane of items.

A final funny story I can remember is the number of times a customer would come in the store asking if we had the stuff so they could "bug" their phone line. We did, but we always had to remind them that Michigan is a two party consent state, so you can't record someone without their consent.

More often than not, they would buy the stuff anyway. Apparently catching their cheating spouse was more important to them than breaking the law.

I am sure many of them found out the hard way that none of their evidence would be admissible in court if it ever got that far...

One of my scariest stories happened around Christmas time. There was an item in the store that had been mis-priced. It was a pretty significant error so it should have been obvious to anyone.

A customer demanded that we honor the price that was marked. I was the keyholder but didn't have the authority to make that big of an adjustment. I explained to the customer I couldn't do what they were asking. I let him know he could come see the manager the next day.

That wasn't acceptable to him and the customer locked the door to the store with everyone inside. Luckily there was another employee with me who was a bit older than myself and the irrate customer. He was able to keep the customer relatively calm until the police arrived and got him to leave.

Remembering times like that make me glad I am not in retail anymore.

Eventually, the focus of Radio Shack started to drift away from electronics and more towards cellular phones. I really feel that is what started the downfall of the company.

I can remember when we were told to stop answering the phone "Radio Shack Eastlawn, you've got questions, we've got answers" and to start answering it "Radio Shack Eastlawn, house of wireless". Many customers were so confused and Radio Shack as a corporation started relying on cell phone sales as their bottom line.

Our district and regional manager expected us to offer to sell a cell phone to every customer even if we could plainly see that they already had one. The workers from the chemical plant that were just looking for some batteries or a capacitor didn't need a cell phone pitch every time they came in the door.

It is disappointing that Radio Shack ended up the way it did. As I started this series, I recalled the joy and wonder that store would bring visiting it as a child. These generations will never remember the excitement of getting that Radio Shack catalong each year and analyzing every page like it was a religious text.

Thanks for reading along, but don't worry, my story isn't done. I left Radio Shack and move on to another job that I can tell some stories about.

Finally, if you are old enough to remember, and you ever wondered:

Yes, we were required to ask for your name and address every time and yes, we could skip that part if we wanted to.

I can't be 100% sure, but yes, they did use your name and address to send you flyers even though they probably told you that wasn't what it was for.

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