This is a continuation of the series I started about my time working at Radio Shack. Check out my profile for past posts on this subject.

If you have worked in any kind of retail business, you are probably very familiar with the amount of employee turnover that they can have. Radio Shack was no different. For the first six months or so things were pretty stable. After that, it was an endless stream of new faces.

I think the turn over we saw when I first started was due more to lack of knowledge. The employees would start and realize all of the product tests they had to take and just give up. In my later years at Radio Shack the turn over could probably be attributed to it just not being worth it.

What I mean when I say it wasn't worth it is, if you weren't willing to put in the time or effort to be a "good" sales person, you weren't going to make that much money. A portion of our salary at Radio Shack was commision after all. If you could set aside your integrity and dignity for half a day, you could be a great salesperson.

I tried it for a short time, I didn't really like the person I was. I remember there was a time when Radio Shack entered a partnership with Sprint. As part of the partnership we were able to sell Sprint PCS phones and Sprint long distance service on your landline.

I remember a specific weekend where our manager promised the district manager that we would sign 25 people up for Sprint long distance service. The district manager didn't believe we could do it and promised he would buy us all pizza if we did.

Looking back now, a pizza party was kind of a lame reward for the amount of work we had to put in. The other benefit was, for each person we signed up, we got a $5 SPIFF. (Please read the other posts in this series if you need an explanation of SPIFF's).

I went to work that weekend, trying to prove the district manager wrong and trying to impress my manager. I was talking to every customer about Sprint LD, I never lied to the customers, but later, part of me just felt dirty for talking them into something that they really didn't want or need.

Needless to say, we met our goal, we got the pizza party and I got a nice little bonus in my check from the 10 or so customers I had single handedly switched to Sprint LD.

I could never quite match the same gusto after that. I stayed working with Radio Shack because it was stable and familiar to me by then. I was in college and I was making enough to pay my tutition while I was living with my parents.

I will be honest, I was never a great salesperson, but after that weekend I think I became even less so. Radio Shack always had a focus on dollars per ticket and lines per ticket. They wanted you to maximize your sales, but I just had a hard time selling stuff to people they didn't come in for.

Stop back next week as I continue to reminisce about my time with Radio Shack. I still have to talk about some of the people I worked with, my first annual inventory, my first Christmas working retail, and all of the other crazy adventures I had at Radio Shack.

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