Time to Boycott RadioShack

Around 400 RadioShack employees mostly from corporate received an email telling them that they had been let go. According to Good Morning Silicon Valley,

“The work force reduction notification is currently in progress,” read a message delivered Tuesday morning. “Unfortunately, your position is one that has been eliminated.” The e-mail went on to give employees 30 minutes to say goodbye and then leave work.

Talk about a dehumanizing way to treat your employees. Perhaps the powers that be over at RadioShack lack experience with personal relationships. Did they not learn in junior high that it is not okay to breakup with someone over the telephone, let alone by sending them an email?

I can see it now, a few years from now people will sit down and slide into their comfy cubicles ready for a days work. When they tap on their mouse, their screensaver will display the windows backdrop and suddenly an Instant Message will appear with the face of Donald Trump saying, “You’re Fired”.

I think the days of RadioShack have passed. They should have followed Sam Walton’s Wal-Mart lead in the early days by morphing into a Fry’s or Best Buy type store but they blew it.

Trying to be a small store that offered something for everyone does not work. Coming from an Electronic Engineering background I used to find RadioShack very convenient as I could run in there to pick up common items like transistors and resistors but today finding a RadioShack that sells these things is very difficult and the folks who work there really have no clue about any of the products they sell.