Circuit City Stories: Episode 1
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Hello, and welcome to a new segment I'm testing out called "Circuit City Stories". For those of you who are not aware, Circuit City was a US based electronics retailer that went out of business in March of 2009. I started there as a seasonal sales associate in the car stereo department in 2005 making $8.50 an hour. When they closed for good on 3/9/09 I was being paid nearly $40/hour to watch the liquidation company steal from our store.
These are my stories.
As I said I started on the sales floor, but I don't think two weeks had passed before I was comfortable telling my boss that I wanted to work as an installer, and I wanted to work full time. I had to ask a few more times, but I got there and looking back it was the most fun job I have ever had.
I worked with a bunch of cool dudes, and one guy who was just a twit. Always talking down to someone so on and so forth. Well call him "Jim".
Another character, well call "Dave" was an absolute wild man. Had a whole crew of car heads that made and sold DVDs of hooning cars, titties, crotch rockets what have you.
Jim and Dave got themselves into a prank war in the shop one day. I was working on a remote start, security, keyless entry on a green Supra and had the whole interior apart and all over the shop.
It started innocently enough. with a "ball tap". Jim was on the phone with an angry customer and Dave got him right as he was about to speak. Jim went nuts and threw his coffee on Dave. I get all pissed off because the coffee has splattered all over the interior bits and pieces of this guys car! Time passes, I figure its over.
Then I see Jim drilling tiny holes in the top of a sprite bottle. I say something to the effect of "look fuckhead, whatever you're doing with that...outside the shop" He does not listen. Dave comes over for a sip of his sprite (before I can warn him) and it pours all over his face and splatters some more of the car im working on.
Dave apologizes and wipes up the mess. Then he says "I'm ending this" I said "please do" and go back to work. I get out from under the dash to give my back and neck a break and it smells BAD.
All of the sudden, shouting, banging around annnnnnnd Jim/Dave burst through the door Dave in laughing manically as Jim lands one after the other of the sissiest blows I have ever seen. "IN MY FUCKIN TOOLBOX, IN MY F U C K I N G TOOLBOX" Jim keeps shouting. I take a look in the open bottom drawer of Jim's toolbox on my way out of the shop to get away from the smell...Yeah there was a big old Dave SHIT in there.
I wasn't supposed to be written up but was because during the meting with HR I could not stop laughing I was warned half a dozen times but couldn't stop I was crying I was laughing so hard.
The three of us were written up but that's it. Dave ditched the poop before HR saw and I wasn't diming out either person for any of that dumb stuff.
E46 M3 | 1502 Hotrod | 11th Gen Civic Si
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@tripper I worked at circuit city around the same time frame. I have some fun stories from that place. One of my underlings fielded a call from an old lady with a few week old pc that wouldn't turn on. After tons of trouble shooting he figured out her whole house power was out and she was calling from a landline (remember those?) Once he figured this out he didn't bother to explain computers take electricity but told her to box it up and return it because she was "too f*cking stupid to own a computer"
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Curator, Kia enthusiast, dad joke specialist
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@tripper
This is good - keep the stories coming. Good stuff
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SPOTD
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My only Circuit City story is short but meaningful: it brought me back to Apple.
I used a Mac for years growing up, but moved to Linux. 17 years ago or so I stopped by Circuit City because I was starting to price out components for a new Linux box I was going to build, and I was curious about their desktop prices.
While I was there I wanted to look up CPU specs and the rep I asked told me the only computer that was online was the iMac. I started searching online from that when it started to dawn on me that Apple had switched over to a UNIX platform, something I had been vaguely aware of but hadn’t thought about.
A couple of weeks later I walked into the Apple Store and bought myself a cheese grater. Been sticking with Apple hardware ever since.
On walkabout. Back soonish.
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@Tripper this sounds very on par with my experience working there. I had a friend who worked in the install department from 02 until they closed. The install bay was a crazy place almost always.
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I spent many many many hours in high school test-listening to both car and home speakers at Circuit City. So much better of a listening setup than Best Buy. I still have a pair of Infinity RS3 speakers I got from Circuit City in 1998.
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In any event, I don't think I've been in a Circuit City since circa 2003 (drove a college buddy there so he could buy a new cell phone).
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@texturedsoyprotein mannnnn, I remember those from when I was younger. So much fun to test out speakers and set up a headunit to scare the shit out of someone.
Our walmart had one as well. We used to prank our buddies but bluetooth hookup so it would blast PornHub when they would test it out. Ahhh highschool humor.
2014 Mini Paceman S
1995 Ford Probe GT -
@tripper I really liked circuit city. Bought a sony trinatron 27" TV and DVD player there back in the day. I was sad they went under.
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@rctothefuture Neither bluetooth nor pornhub existed when I was in high school.
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@texturedsoyprotein that's when you record HBO Real Sex onto a tape/cd and put it in the tester at Circuit City.
2014 Mini Paceman S
1995 Ford Probe GT -
@facw said in Circuit City Stories: Episode 1:
In any event, I don't think I've been in a Circuit City since circa 2003 (drove a college buddy there so he could buy a new cell phone).
I always liked the unique style of their older buildings with that plug. I worked at one which was just a typical storefront, but I still spot an old Circuit City every now and again because of that style building.
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@just-jeepin My only real memories of Circuit City were ca. late 80s, when we went as a family to buy a new TV, and the salesman tried to sell us on a "wood" RCA console TV that my Mom thought was ugly, so we went to Silo and bought a Trinitron. She gave them another shot around 1994, PC shopping, and got a hard sell on a Packard Bell, despite being mainly interested in a Mac, and the salesman tried to push her on how cool it was that the accent strip on the bottom of the beige box could be ordered in different colors, and how she could go off and do housework while waiting for it to boot up. We ended up with a Performa 630CD.
2022 Ioniq SE
1964 Corvair Monza -
@ranwhenparked said in Circuit City Stories: Episode 1:
...and how she could go off and do housework while waiting for it to boot up.
I got nothin'.
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@ranwhenparked said in Circuit City Stories: Episode 1:
@just-jeepin My only real memories of Circuit City were ca. late 80s, when we went as a family to buy a new TV, and the salesman tried to sell us on a "wood" RCA console TV that my Mom thought was ugly, so we went to Silo and bought a Trinitron.
Trinitron. That's a word I haven't heard in forever. I had a Sony Trinitron monitor to go with my first PC. That thing was amazing for the time.
Never discount the possibility that you might live through it.
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@tripper said in Circuit City Stories: Episode 1:
to watch the liquidation company steal from our store
All I can think of is the many liquidations I went to during that time only to realize they were a complete waste of time. So many VGA cables, 5% off, no box, light damage. There were no deals to be had there, though I did get a CompUSA vision statement to hang in my office...
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@chariotoflove @Tripper Just day before yesterday, I drove past a Sprouts store that used to be a Circuit City and I thought, That was a Circuit City once upon a time...
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@tripper First or second year I was teaching, the football team for the high school where I was working was featured on a local sports television show. They sat the squad on a little bleacher while they interviewed the coaches and one of the boys spotted himself on the monitor and began to prominently pick his nose. I laughed so hard I fell off the couch. The principal, an odious woman who used her principalship at my school for nothing other than a stepping stone, actually suspended the boy for one day, which I thought was a very small thing to do. The boy's actual offense? Ruining the video so that Debra Calvin could not claim the video as part of her résumé. Odious, shallow, self-serving climber of a woman who didn't give a s**t about kids.
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@bicyclebuck they were really good TVs, it was our main upstairs one for a good 10 years, and then the downstairs rec room TV for at least another 10. Sony got lucky, their patent on the technology expired just as flatscreens started hitting the market, so they never really had any clones to compete with and just had the best CRTs on the market for the last several decades of CRT relevance.
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Fun fact: CarMax was a spin-off of Circuit City. Also, growing up, Circuit City tended to have a better music CD selection than the local Best Buy.
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@rctothefuture It was so rare for there to be anything on that show, that you actually wanted to see.
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@tripper I loved Circuit City. They had sales people who knew their ass from a hole in the ground, and you could negotiate deals with them. I got a hell of a deal on my minidisc player.
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@shop-teacher said in Circuit City Stories: Episode 1:
@tripper I loved Circuit City. They had sales people who knew their ass from a hole in the ground, and you could negotiate deals with them. I got a hell of a deal on my minidisc player.
So glad you mentioned haggling! They did that all the time!
E46 M3 | 1502 Hotrod | 11th Gen Civic Si
