{"id":286,"date":"2006-12-13T22:26:00","date_gmt":"2006-12-13T22:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/?p=286"},"modified":"2006-12-13T22:26:00","modified_gmt":"2006-12-13T22:26:00","slug":"radio-shack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/?p=286","title":{"rendered":"Radio Shack"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Had to get a new Network Interface Card for a computer at Morseland. Here is the dialogue I had with Bob, a 50-60-year-old Radio Shack drone.<br \/><span style=\"font-family: monospace;\"><br \/><\/span>me: I need a network card.<span style=\"font-family: monospace;\"><br \/><\/span>bob: (holding up a PC-card [formerly PCMCIA] notebook wireless adapter) Here&#8217;s one.<span style=\"font-family: monospace;\"><br \/><\/span>me: Oh, sorry, not a wireless one.<span style=\"font-family: monospace;\"><br \/><\/span>bob: oh, okay &#8212; not a wireless one. let&#8217;s see&#8230;. (he holds up a USB wireless adapter) here&#8217;s one.<span style=\"font-family: monospace;\"><br \/><\/span>me: That&#8217;s a wireless card.<span style=\"font-family: monospace;\"><br \/><\/span>bob: Oh, right. Oh, (he holds up another USB wireless adapter) here&#8217;s one.<span style=\"font-family: monospace;\"><br \/><\/span>me: That&#8217;s also a wireless card.<span style=\"font-family: monospace;\"><br \/><\/span>bob: Oh, right. Let&#8217;s see. Joe? Do we have a network card that&#8217;s -not-<span style=\"font-family: monospace;\"> <\/span>wireless?<span style=\"font-family: monospace;\"><\/p>\n<p><\/span>Joe, the manager, or assistant manager, or whatever, is in his 40s and has the same strangely gruff voice and mannerisms as Bob does. He&#8217;s looking at a woman&#8217;s iMac. He has Bob come over to pull the iMac out of its box and hold it up so that the woman can point to something on the back of the machine. She is asking about &#8220;the plug<span style=\"font-family: monospace;\"> <\/span>that goes into this hole.&#8221; Joe says, &#8220;Oh that? That looks like ethernet.&#8221;<span style=\"font-family: monospace;\"> <\/span>Except he pronounces &#8216;ether&#8217; as &#8216;eth-er&#8217; instead of &#8216;ee-ther&#8217;. Like Beth. Or death. The woman says that the cable company is coming to install &#8220;a cable modem or something.&#8221; Joe assures her that the cable company will bring the proper cable for the eth-ernet.<span style=\"font-family: monospace;\"><\/p>\n<p><\/span>Finally, another dude goes into the back and gets their last remaining PCI non-wireless ethernet card. Bob says, &#8220;I don&#8217;t know how much it costs.&#8221; I say, &#8220;I&#8217;m guessing it&#8217;s going to be $20.&#8221; <span style=\"font-family: monospace;\"><br \/><\/span>Then their pin-pad dies as I swipe my credit card. It just goes all dark and Spanish. I tap it a couple times, but get no response. Bob<span style=\"font-family: monospace;\"> <\/span>looks at me like I&#8217;ve broken it. Finally he figures out how to &#8216;<i>wipe<\/i> the<span style=\"font-family: monospace;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia,serif;\"> <\/span><\/span>card&#8217; himself, all the while, Joe is there heckling him. When he finally succeeds, Joe says, &#8220;Nice job, Bob!&#8221; <span style=\"font-family: monospace;\"><\/p>\n<p><\/span>And I decided that Radio Shack is&#8230;well, unsurprisingly, a little outlet of hell and even though I promised Bob that I&#8217;d come back soon, I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;m going to visit again, if I can help it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Had to get a new Network Interface Card for a computer at Morseland. Here is the dialogue I had with Bob, a 50-60-year-old Radio Shack drone.me: I need a network card.bob: (holding up a PC-card [formerly PCMCIA] notebook wireless adapter) Here&#8217;s one.me: Oh, sorry, not a wireless one.bob: oh, okay &#8212; not a wireless one. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}