Musings About Radio Shack pt. 3

Hey everyone, I know I havent been updating as much as I used to, work and other things have been keeping me too busy to work on anything for myself, and now that I got my license, even that bit of time on the bus is gone.. But Im going to Yellowstone next week, and I plan on doing a lot of sketching and painting there, as well as taking lots of reference shots.. I'll do a big update when I get back..

I have some more radio shack stories Ive been holding on to.. Havent decided how many of these i'll post up, because I wonder if the entertainment value of these is wearing thin... these are a few small incidents that I still remember cuz they gave us something to talk about afterwards..

- The Sacajawea Guy: It was a lazy saturday morning, and 3 of us were working together.. there wasnt a lot to do so we were sitting around bs'ing, looking at the cable channels trying to find something to watch.. There was a customer in the store, he wasnt unusual in any way, just looking for some phone cable or soemthing like that. He was talking to us like a normal human being, just being a regular run-of-the-mill guy.. The other guys I was working with were looking at what was playing on pay-per-view, something that woulda been cool to watch, I forget what it was.. So they start talkign about ordering it and blaming it on a customer like "oh i dunno, a customer musta ordered it with the remote when we werent lookin", that kinda thing.. just joking around.. A few minutes later he comes to pay for his stuff, it was like 7 or 8 bucks and he hands me a 20.. we were low on bills, i think all we had were 10's and 5's left in the drawer.. I asked him if he had anything smaller or if he would instead pay with a card. He said no.. I said, well, ok.. make do with what we have.. We happened to have a bunch of sacajawea gold dollar coins, so i start to hand him those.. He looks at them like I'm handing him a fistful of worms, then he goes, "Im not taking those, you know those are useless, if thats the way you're doing business here, I'll just go some place else.." I just shrug, he starts walking out the door, my co-worker goes "Have a nice day sir." The guy goes, "Oh I will," and as he's going out the door he turns around and goes "And I'm going to tell your manager what you've been saying in here." Huh?? What have we been saying? joking around about getting pay-per-view? The funniest part is, he did! He told the so-called senior manager that works at a different store. Our manager told us that he called a few days later. Obviously we didnt get in any trouble.

- The Kryptonite Guy: One time in the middle of the day, this guy who looks to be in his sixties walks in, comes straight up to me, and with a serious straight face asks me, "Do you sell kryptonite?" Thinking it was a joke, I just grin and say, "Nope!" He still keeps staring at me the same way for a moment longer, then asks me where the flashlight bulbs are.. I show him. He opens the drawer, picks up a pack of krypton bulbs, and says, "Here we go, kryptonite!" He thought the krypton bulbs were called kryptonite. THe reason that didnt come to mind was because people every now and then will try to prank a radio shack employee with things like "do you sell flux capacitors?" That kind of thing. So he wants me to do all these things for him, he wants me to make sure its the right bulb and everything, we install and re-install the different bulbs he's picked out for his flashlight.. Once we find what he wants, I put his flashlight back together, but i accidentally put the bulb in upside-down. I cant figure out why its not working until we re-open it. So I put it back in the right way. No big deal to me, nor to him...or at least I thought. He doesnt say anything then, but as i'm ringin him up he makes some snide comment about the bulb being backwards, I forget what. No big deal either, he said it trying to be funny. So he's all checked out, and he tell's me he's gonna look around the store for a while. I then take a half-hour lunch break. As I'm coming back, he's barely leaving, he turns to me, gives me this strange look, and keeps walking away. Hmm whats that about? Anyways, I get back inside and my boss asks me, "What did you do to that guy?" I dunno, what did I do besides put his bulb in upside down? "He was pissed. He kept going on and on about how you didnt know what you were doing, blah blah blah" God what a kook.

- The Red Mustang Guy: I got a phone call from a guy saying he got charged twice for the same item. He said his credit card statement said he was charged twice for a sony dvd player. He also wants to go on and on about how he just bought a brand new mustang, and how he was showing it to the guy that sold him the dvd player, and how he paid 70 g's for it, and why would he need 2 dvd players for his car, he olny needs one, how he's a lawyer and he makes a lot of money, blah blah blah, it seemed like he wanted to talk about his new car more than he wanted to get his problem straightened out.. So i'm sitting there listening to him, and finally when i can get a word in edgewise, i ask him if he can bring in his receipt and his bank statement saying that he was charged twice. He says he cant bring in the bank statement because he doesnt have it, it was his girlfriend that told him about the charge on his card. Red flag. So I tell him, if he wants to speak to a manager about it, ok, (It was the manager and the other guy im working with at the time who were there when he bought the dvd player) but without proof that you were charged twice for the same item, there's not much I can do about it. He then tells me that he'll be in later to straighten this out, and to look for the brand new red mustang, yadda yadda yadda, as pissed as he is, he still keeps going on about his new mustang. So I'm finally off the phone with him, I turn to my co-worker and ask him if he remembers the guy, he says "yeah he wanted to talk on and on about his new car, it took me forever to sell him those dvd players(he actually did walk out the store with 2 dvd players paid for). He kept bragging about how he paid 70,000 dollars for a 40,000 dollar car." I thought that was pretty funny. So later on, lo and behold, here's the red mustang. He comes out the car, with the product in hand, no box and some of the packaging.. This guy does not look like a lawyer by the way. As a matter of fact this guy looks more like he stole the car than had the money to pay for it. He comes in and gives me the receipt. I look at it, and sure enough the receipt says he paid for 2 separate DVD players, each with a different serial number. I tell him that according to his receipt he bought two. He then goes off again on that old "why would I need two dvd players for my car?" It doesnt matter to me why he bought two, but the fact was that he did. So now he wants his money back for the dvd player he doesnt have. Of course Im not giving him his money back without the product. For whatever reason he plopped his dvd player he had with him on the counter, trying to make more of a scene. By this time theres a few other customers in the store. I want him out before it looks worse than it is. I tell him I'm going to call my manager. I go in the back, explain what's going on, and my boss says "Oh yeah, he bought 2 of them. And he was pretty drunk when he came in." That was all I needed to hear. I tell him "I just talked with my manager, and he saw you walk out the door with 2." That gets him going again. He pulls the I'm-a-lawyer-I'm-gonna-sue-Radio-Shack thing, the emptiest threat in the world. The next time you see me it'll be in court, etc. He tries to confront my co-worker, who's trying to help someone else.. he feels a bit threatened by him, it's obvious by his deer in the headlights look. The guy accuses him of ringing up another dvd player without him knowing,and taking it out the back or something.. He finally leaves out the door. I'm hoping for good. He comes back in with something in his hand: handcuffs. He then goes "I'm good friends with the county sherriffs department." He holds them up menacingly, says something like "See your asses in court."
Now, do you think we ever heard from that guy again? What do you think....