Now I know a lot of E-Stimmers still find amps, volts, etc. confusing. You really don't have to be an electrical engineer or physicist to do E-Stim; just be aware of the processes and play safely. But one would expect a nationwide electronics parts supply house like Radio Shack to know a little something about electricity. After all they do sell things like resistors, and fuses, and such. They should know some basic electronics, right? Ri-i-i-ight!

Some time ago I had to get some replacement fuses for my meter, so I went to my local Radio Shack. Now I had grown accustomed to the fact that I knew more about the characteristics of their components than the floor personnel, but this time they took the cake. I was looking for a 315 milli amp fuse (that's 315/1000 th of an amp), so this clerk looked through the component racks, grabbed a fuse package and asked "...is this it?" What he handed me was a package of 3.15 amp fuses (that's 10 times a higher fuse rating than I needed--it would have burned out my meter). Not only that, they were physically the wrong size from the sample I handed him. I looked at him incredulously and broke out laughing. Well, he got all bent out of joint, said "I hope you're not laughing at me!", and stormed off in a huff. I eventually found a proper substitute and went on my way more firmly convinced that Radio Shack employees know more about doing 'Pigeon Drop' cons to sell old people useless cell phone plans than they did about electronics.

However, being more of a scientist than I gave myself credit for, and thinking that I may have picked the 'Only Dullard of the Radio Shack Corporation', I later talked with another sales guy and asked him about the training in component electronics that Radio Shack employees get. He proudly told me how Radio Shack makes all its sales employees study 13 manuals on the products it sells -- including electronic components. With that I asked him if 315 milli amps was the same as 3.15 amps. He thought about that long and hard, ...hard and long, ...scribbling calculations on a scratch pad and finally declared, "...yes they are." I laughed out loud again, but this only served to confuse this poor gentleman further. (I guess that day wasn't his designated day to think.)

A recent Scientific American editorial decried the loss of basic electrical knowledge in stores that supposedly have 'experts' that can help people make proper selections in the often confusing world of consumer electronics, but I think my recent experience points to more that a void. I don't know the corporate structure of Radio Shack well enough to call them stupid, but I have known out-of-work electrical engineers who had applied to Radio Shack and had gotten turned down in favor of the idiots running the stores now.

Moral ?   

 Well, apart from guffaws from the members of this list, I guess you'd need to look at the snot-nosed kid at Radio Shack trying to sell you a computer in an entirely different light. What tells you when a Radio Shack salesperson doesn't know what he's talking about?

Ans: When he opens his mouth.

Unc' (still shaking his head)