Steve wrote:
When they talk about Radio Shack changing for the worst, they aren't
kidding. Yesterday I went there to pick up some hookup wire. I've
purchased it there many times before, and for as long as I remember it
sat in the same place in one corner of the store. However, yesterday it
was gone. An employee asked if he could help me and I explained what I
was looking for. He had no clue what I was talking about, and kept
gesturing vaguely in the direction of some power cables. (I guess he
was hoping he'd luck out and point at the right item without even
knowing what it is, but no luck.) Eventually he got his manager. I
talked to the manager and explained what I was doing, and the manager
also had no clue what I was talking about. Not only was the hookup wire
gone, no one even remembered its ever being there. I felt like I was in
the Twilight Zone or something.

I went to the Radio Shack in Tonopah, Nevada. Tonopah is one of those
old mining towns in Nevada where once the mine went belly up, the town
nearly folded. This store was a combination Radio Shack and Western
Auto (a car parts store). Now the amazing thing is this Radio Shack was
the best stocked store I ever saw. Even more shocking, the store
manager knew what he was doing. When I mentioned this was the biggest
Radio Shack I ever saw to the store manager, he told me that the nearby
Tonopah Test Range and the Nevada Test Site used this particular store,
so regarding components, they had at least one of everything in the
Radio Shack catalog.