Slashdot Mirror
RadioShack Stops Being Nosy
jackbang writes "One small but positive step in the gradual erosion of personal privacy and increase of corporate intrusiveness - RadioShack will no longer ask for your name and address when all you want to do is buy some batteries. Now if only they would agree to remove the motion sensor that rings a bell every time someone walks in or out of the store..." Always freaked me out being asked my address just to buy some solder or something.
....this will piss the Pentagon off. Just when they were all set to track consumer purchases...
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
Now the poor sap named Dick Hertz who lives at 123 Main St will stop getting thousands of Radio Shack catalogs each week in the mail.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
But I had fun introducing myself as Richard Nixon With a phone number of (123)456-7890.
I had even more fun when they argued with me.
It's too bad that they started being pains in the asses about this. I really wanted to get their catalog, but I'll be damned if I'll give them a name and address.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
...do they still have the FREE BATTERY of the MONTH club? Gez, I used to work in a RS store while in college and this little kid would come in with a battery card, get a D battery, go home, change into his little league outfit, come in and get another D battery, go home put his cubscout outfit on, and come in....and so on. He'd have like 4 FREE BATTERY cards.
Smart kid, but shame those old red RS batteries would last about 1/4 of the time a normal batter would. I used to just laugh and go along with it.
Relive the BBS Past - One Byte at a Time! www.ssabbs.com
They have all our addresses now.
With this news, radioshack has killed my purchasing alter-ego, John Shamus of 200 Arroway Lane. See, I created a whole personality for use in radio shack. Besides a fake name and address, my character John spoke in a funny voice, had an interesting career (limo-bus bathroom attendant), and even had a wife with a kid on the way (which made it easier to justify my purchases of children's toys). He also had about a dozen cuecats.
Screw it, I'm going to keep going in to Radio Shack as John, anyway. It's not like my life was going that great to begin with...
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
The name/address question was redundant, since they're now doing retina scans as folks enter the store. The bell actually indicates a database match.
Ding!
It's true! RadioShack stops being nosy. At first I didn't believe it, but a devil ice-skated by selling a Linux that was ready for the desktop and said it was true.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I always just told em my name was Elvis Presley and I lived at Graceland in Memphis. Always got plenty of laughs, but they keyed it into their POS terminal anyway.
I always used:
"Raymond D. O'Shack", you can call me Ray!!
Ha ha
M
I actually have two 20 footers in series piping a signal from the output of the amp in the stereo down through the central vaccum tube, above the ceiling panels in the basement and down to my computer. It's ugly, but it works.
Me: I'm looking for an RF Modulator so I can plug my DVD player into a TV without AV inputs. (Don't get me started...)
Shack Sales Clerk: Uhmm... That's like a VCR, right? We've got all our VCRs on that wall right over there.
Me: Uh, no. It's a signal adapater. (Surely someone who works around electronics every day should understand this, right?) It converts composite audio/video signal output to rf signal for a coaxial cable input.
Clerk: It's an adapter?
Me: (Thinking the light has finally turned on) Yes! It's got a coaxial output on one end and RCA style audio-video inputs on the other.
Clerk: Here ya go! (He hands me a RCA 'Y' splitter.)
Me: *Sigh*...
I did manage to get the guy to give me an RF modulator, but only after I retrieved a Radio Shack ad from behind the counter and pointed at it in the ad.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
"You don't need to know my name and address."
"I don't need to know your name and address."
"You will sell me this battery."
"Seven twenty five Please."
"SEVEN TWENTY FIVE! Are you nuts?"
"I am nuts."
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
You b*****d I found you at long last!!! Love, Dick
I don't believe all radio shacks do it, but in a number I've been to (Fairfax VA area) the employees (or somthing) is fitted with a microphone and this transmits the conversations into the back stock room.
It always freaked me out to be looking for LEDs and hear a disembodied voices saying:
"can I help you?"
"yes do you sell power adapters?"
"we sell all sorts of power sir."
I refused to give my name once, and on the receipt, it said "Thank you Dick Dick, for your purchase" (or something like that).
I noticed before I left, and was sure to thank the Dick helping me.
I can't think of Radio Shack without the obligatory Simpsons quote:
Homer: We'll search out every place a sick, twisted, solitary misfit might run to!
Lisa: I'll start with Radio Shack.
(www.snpp.com)
Follow this example, one of the winners of the 1991 rec.humor.funny comedy awards
Q&A at Radio Shack
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
... now people won't get this joke anymore.
All in all, it added 20 minutes for me. The store has great prices so we compromised. I gave them my ex-girlfriends phone number and home address.
I'm sure that spiced up dinner conversation when her husband finds my mail in his box!
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
I pulled the "it's legel tender, you have to take it," and the manager pointed to the "we reserve the right to refuse to do business with anyone," and sent me on my way.
That Radio Shack never saw anything but my middle finger after that, and went out of business a couple of years later - the manager (yup, same guy) was caught embezzling.
Har. There is a god, and she has a vicious sense of humor.
"What is your name and address please?"
(* wave hand *)
"You don't need to know my name and address."
"I said what is your name and address?"
(* wave hand *)
"You don't need to know my name and address!!"
"Yes I do and stop waving your hand. What do you think you are some kind of Jedi Hobbist! I'm a Sales Droid, mind tricks don't work mindless minions. No name and address then no batteries!"
Just say:
Alan M Ralsky
6747 Minnow Pond Dr.
West Bloomfield, MI 48322
- "That's just the kind of fuzzy-headed liberal thinking that leads to being eaten."
This usually works on the weak-willed. If they don't have a weak will when they start working at RS, a couple of months on the job will give them one:
Me: I'd like to buy these batteries
Sales: I need your address
Me: You don't need my address (wave hand -- this part is very important)
Sales: I don't need your address
Me: You serve your master well and will be rewarded.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
When some nosy salescritter asks for my address, I always give tell them it's 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC 20500. Sadly, 90% of the time they don't even get it.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Hot chicks in radio shack? Please. What is the world coming too?
XML causes global warming.