OT: Tandy Silver

[Bill Campbell]

On Sat, Aug 21, 2004, John Esak wrote:
>> I first went to work in October 1980 at a regular Radio Shack retail store
>> in Parkington, Virgina that wasn't allowed to sell the Model II.  The
>> manager and his District Manager basically conspired to let me sell Model
>> IIs from this store against company policy (the store manager was an EMT
>> who worked the SCCA races at Summit Point Speedway, and knew me from my
>> racing there).  January 1st 1981, I was transferred to an ``X'' department
>> at 19th and K Streets in downtown D.C. which I was to take over when RS
>> opened a new computer center a block away at 18th and M Streets (I first
>> met John Esak when he was a marketing rep. at the 18th street store :-).
>
>Boy "Marketing Rep" is such an understatement. I was that, but also, the CSR
>(or tech guy) for the whole time I was there. We had a real CSR hired to
>support the huge sales I was making... I hit highest salesman for many
>different months... all on Mod 16's and Proile/Scripsit mostly.  But the CSR
>they hired could not spell "cat" let alone computer and I essentially did
>all his work until the day I left. I have NO idea if he stayed on after I
>left.... I don't see how, he couldn't even boot a system let alone help
>diagnose and fix anything.  As for the manager there, I do not even remember
>his name... 

Ron Cohen if I remember correctly.  He was the retail store manager at 19th
an K when I went there, then was the first manager of the M street store
when it opened.  Ron wanted to fire me in early 1981 because my sales
weren't sufficient.  A year later he probably would like to see me go
because my X department consistently beat his RSCC's sales.  Rob Chrissy
was managing the X at K street when I first went there, and Rob went to the
M street RSCC with Rob, and I became the manager of the X at K street.

>to the nightly (daily) transmission of data to Tandy central in FW, I hardly
>ever saw him again. He would amble in from time to time make believe how
>hard his job was, ask me how many computers I was projecting to sell and
>then he'd leave. I ran the store from top to bottom. The reason I left is a
>strange one. There was a guy named Truman... nicest guy in the world and a
>helluva good computer salesman, my best at the time (of about 4 or so).
>Anyway, On one Saturday, I gave him the nightly deposit to bring to the
>bank. He forgot to do it and when he came in Monday morning, he told me he
>forgot to make the deposit when he saw it in his trunk coming in that day. I
>told him to get on over to the bank right away and put it in. So he did. We
>forgot about it.  A week or so later, the FW people called and asked about
>it... and the store manager, whose name I forget (not too memorable of a
>fellow) just dumped it all on Truman, saying he had no idea why it
>happened... FW told them to fire Truman. They did. I called everyone I knew,
>including John Roach, (who by the way was the only sympathetic ear...) but
>by that time it was two weeks later and Truman, with wife and new baby, was
>forced to take another job, thinking RS would _never_ take him back. I gave
>my own resignation over this event. He was a nice guy, simple oversight...
>It's not like he went to Vegas and gambled with the $242 of cash... or did
>anything with the paper checks.  The bag just simply stayed in his car
>"forgotten" for the weekend.  Pity, that bureaucrats don't take the
>"personal" view about rules and regulations... yet it is usually "they" who
>scream the loudest when they are unfairly treated.

The RS Store Operating Manual consisted mostly of ways to get fired.  I
lost my best marketing rep from the Congressional Plaza RSCC when he put
about $0.35 in the cash drawer without writing a sales ticket because there
were several people waiting in line behind the corporate shopper who bought
a package of Q tips.

>I don't want to brag (much :-) but when I walked out of RS, they lost one
>hell of a good salesman... I was always either 1st, 2nd or 3rd in my
>district for the last 8 or 9 months that I was there. Funny, but I still, to
>this day, have strong relationships with many (MANY) people I sold computers
>to... including people at Fish & Feathers, CPT Telephone, LOC, lawyers,
>dentists, book stores, the Virginia Democratic Party (yeesh!), the then
>governor of VA, who I helped to elect (directly... and I mean it) with a
>filePro program written originally by George Rosenbergen but dramatically
>enhanced by me... and supported for months by me. We made the difference...
>in moving this guy from a Volvo dealership owner to Gov!....

Don Beyer Junior.  I interviewed at Don Beyer Volvo before going with Radio
Shack, and the only job they figured I was qualified for was Junior's.
Don's father sponsored a C sports racing car in SCCA racing, driven by a
Presbyterian minister who's name I forget (his driving was forgettable as
well :-).  My race car shop, Camco Racing Limited, did quite a bit of prep
work on their car.

My largest customers in the D.C. area included the World Bank, Intelsat,
and the USDA Graduate school.  I sold quite a few Model IIs for word
processing to authors in the area, the most famous being Kitty Kelly,
author of many unauthorized biographies, at least one of which was done on
the Model II.  I got invited to several interesting book parties including
the one for Lawrence Leamer's unauthorized biography of Ronald Reagan where
I met Art Buchwald, and more Democrats than you can shake a stick at.

...
>All in all the RS thing was a great place to be for the time... As Bill said
>they could have had the absolute lock on the small business computer
>industry... and seeing what that is today... this would have put Tandy just
>about side by side with Microsoft in market dominance... I can "name" the
>specific people who made the specific "wrong" choices, too... and believe me
>it boiled down to only a few really "short-sighted" people that Tandy hired
>at the time. They all moved on to ruin other companies, too. The one guy
>whose name escapes me at the minute actually made some of these unbelievably
>bad decisions right in front of me.... at meetings in FW as President of
>TCBUG, I had access to meetings with some top people at Tandy, and this one
>guy (in charge at the time) just really was about as "stupid" over Xenix and
>the Mod 16 as the Xerox copier-heads were over the much earlier Star... just
>unbelievable, Tandy can pin their utter loss and failure in this market
>directly on him... what a moron.  :-)

The names that come to mind are Rich Hollander, and Bernie Appel.

Bill
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