• hperrin@lemmy.ca
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    1 day ago

    If they’re like they were in their heyday (innovative computer tech), RadioShack for sure.

    • HiddenLychee@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      We have a few around me still. One in my town and one in the neighboring town. A bit pricey but I try to get what I can there since a best buy just opened up near them.

  • shrewdcat@lemmy.zip
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    2 days ago

    I miss Fry’s. It was nice if you were building your own PC to go in and get parts immediately. Amazon with their unfair no-taxes that crippled big box stores and mom and pop’s, and Netflix for videos by mail (remember getting DVD’s in the mail?) and then streaming began wiping out most of these, except Friendly’s.

  • rozodru@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    As someone who used to be an Assistant Manager at Blockbuster…keep that thing dead and gone. Like as a consumer, sure I get it, but working there absolutely sucked. No one remembers the late fees or the fact Blockbuster would send you to collections for ONE late fee (like a whole $3.25) and then send you those bullshit cards in the mail letting you know that you owe them less than $5? yeah I remember cause on a near daily basis I’d get someone in the store yelling at me that they’re trying to get a loan or a house and this little card is fucking it all up for them. MOST of the time the late fee was because the absolutely ancient computer system we used that they never updated…at all…since the 80s…would skip barcodes randomly on scans. That or some vengeful employee at another store would just manually add fees to someones account (yes that was possible, yes we could just add fees to random accounts willy nilly)

    also my District Manager was a douchenozzle. Mike, rot in hell.

  • Fives@discuss.online
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    3 days ago

    Radio Shack. And not the recent version. The OLD version with breadboards and soldering irons and electronics kits.

    • Somewhiteguy@infosec.pub
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      3 days ago

      We were in there once or twice a month getting solder and random assortment of components for little home projects we had going. The workers also knew how to help and always had suggestions for the projects we were doing. I remember the day we (grandpa and I) went into the store and realized it wasn’t the same anymore. Only a small selection of components and the whole front was full of RC cars and random expensive electronic gadgets nobody asked for. We only went back once or twice, but it became evident that we can’t find what we were looking for there anymore. We started sourcing our parts from overseas vendors for fractions of a cent per unit, but we had to buy in bulk. We stopped doing those small projects because it was taking too long to get components and the cost was out of hand with thousands of unused components in boxes in the project room taking up space. Well, made myself sad for the morning.

    • Atomicbunnies@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 days ago

      That would be my pick as well. I still have a few of the free CueCats they gave away. After some easy modding, I use one to scan the barcodes of my books to add to a database on my comp. I miss old RS so much.