Really a great pro life tip, this one
You cant prove i didnt own all of em: think the smrartest
Uhhhhh, that just means you’re a terrible businessman, who ran a long standing major chain into the ground.
yeah, but you can’t prove i DIDN’T do that
Well at least that qualifies you for a CEO job
I ran Circuit City. All of them.
My father actually ran a few when I was little years later we found a box of promotion razor blades in the garage with the circuit city logo on them, along with an apropos tagline “like nowhere else.”
“So tell me, is it a coincidence that all the companies you worked for went bankrupt?”
“I tried to save them but… they didn’t listen”
As someone who was a “store manager” at a franchise with only 2 employees (including myself) this is kinda real. I left in 2012 because even in my early 20s I could see the direction things were going because of corporate mismanagement.
Well hey, if it isn’t Mr. Manager of the banana stand
That’s why you have to keep it modest at ‘regional manager’, significant enough to be useful looking, insignificant enough so you can’t possibly be to blame for the downfall of the company.
Well I read the art of the deal, I’m as baffled as you.
Went shopping at Toys R Us and Sears back in December 2025/January 2026 respectively
doubt
I can literally send you dated receipts, although I’d need to remove all sensitive info first haha
I’s just foolin’.
Me: I was a regional manager of Toys R Us between 1995 and 2008.
Interviewer: It says here on your resume you were born in 1999, and you moved to Australia in 201x.
Me: ummmmm
Did you ever see Doogie Howser, M.D.? I’m like that, except for middle management, and a lot younger. Got my MBA when I was still living in my parents.
Refer them to the documentary boss baby if your early employment history is ever brought into question
“They made a lot of strange decisions before they shut down”
“Toys R Us invested heavily in both time and inter-dimensional travel. As a result I’ve lived a thousand lives in service of the giraffe.”
I like the cut of your jib. You’re hired!
Exactly, and you wonder why the failed… hiring a 18yo as a regional manger.
no wait, that doesn’t look good…
Didn’t expect to be jump scared by the abandoned Staten Island shoprite that was used as a set for the fallout TV show on here
Does toys r us not exist anymore?
So last year? That’s not too long ago and here I am being called old by others…
Drove by one this morning so they probably just pulled out of a region or something.
The name got bought, and somebody else reopened some. Mostly just a section within Macy’s, but there’s a handful of actual stores.
Except Canada, apparently. That’s the only original Toys R Us left.
I saw it in Canada so that makes sense.
Imagine this guy just woke up from a 30 year nap in a cryotube in a desert wasteland
Boy do I have some bad news for you
I’ve been to a toys r us in the last 30 years 🤔
Wonder when they closed then. I don’t actually spend that much time in the united states.
Nah, it’s fine. We have TikTok.
I haven’t seen one in SoCal in a decade or so
Just go to any Macy’s and you’ll find them
RadioShack is still around. Not sure how good it is.
Interestingly, it started as a mail order business in the 1920s, switched to retail stores in the 1960s, and then in 2017 it switched back to an online only / mail delivery business.
There’s still a handful of franchises which retained the naming rights post-bankruptcy too!
Toys R Us too! In Canada at least
2424 Hylan Blvd, Staten Island, NY 10306
The Social Security Administration certainly can.
But what employer is going to deal with verifying that
Used to be as easy as logging in and typing in the SSN. But that was several years ago, so idk about now.
Okay, fine, but besides them…
Or Sears
Five Sears still exist in
Braintree, MA Coral Gables, FL Concord, CA El Paso, TX Orlando, FL
Sears blew it so bad. They were essentially Amazon before Amazon, with that huge catalogue. All they had to do was put that catalogue online, and they could have easily been first to market.
Instead, they had a board of old coots with that old “I don’t even know how to turn ON a computer” attitude that was common in the 90s among old farts. They thought that was some kind of brag. I heard it in my old company, too. Those fucking arrogant losers sat in their boardroom congratulating themselves, as the Internet steadily ate their market share to nothing.
I mean the mismanagement didn’t help at all. Forcing different departments to compete with each other, some departments spinning up redundant support teams that were exclusive to their department, etc.
I don’t know about all that, but it sounds like another problem with the top management again.
It seems like they had an attitude that Sears has always existed, and will always exist. It can’t be killed.
Yes, it can.
With halfway decent management Sears was in a good position to continue holding a massive and controlling portion of the American household market, the problem is they had inept owners managing the company who managed to snatch bankruptcy from the jaws of success
It doesn’t help that it was owned by a hedge fund that made bank on Sears’ demise such as by saddling Sears with a ton of debt, 40% of which was owned by Sears’ parent company
Oh, I hadn’t realized that Sears was one of those companies that got broken up and sold off, like Toys R Us. That always sucks.
The difference is that Sears wasn’t offering anything that you couldn’t buy from anywhere else, and was struggling against competition in the best of times, while Toys R Us pretty much owned the market, and was doing well when they were murdered as a company. Sears kind of deserved their fate, Toys R Us did not.
Also, it’s amazing that Penny’s, Sears’ primary competition, is still around and doing pretty well, or surviving at least, mostly because they made the jump to online sales in time.
I just went to a JCPenney closing sale the other day while I’m living near a Sears that’s still open haha
I thought all the Sears stores were closed.
It wasn’t exactly the same. The guy who bought them was mostly interested in pillaging the real estate, which he sold to himself at a huge discount. He then decided to show off the superiority of his randian philosophy by enacting policies that very quickly destroyed what was left.
Yes I was most important manager at Circuit City which closed because the covid and I haven’t worked since. Job please.
Frys electronics is a good bet too they’re a more recent shutdown that might be more relevant than a blockbuster or toys r us
Yeah Frys folk were a super weird set though so that might not work as you think
Was Radio Shack as cool as Tandy stores in Europe?
What is a Tandy store?
It was heaven for teenage nerds. Transistors resistirs wires soldering irons weeeeh and all in a paper catalogue to read for hours
Pretty sure they must be related, considering yes radio shack sold that stuff as well, and they sold Tandy computers
Sounds like Radio Shack in the before times, that is until their primary focus became cell phones and dvd players.
And batteries. They really wanted to sell you those batteries.
That’s because the cost of those batteries was like <$2 and sold for like 14-18 dollars. It was nuts seeing the cost of some things when it came time to get the employee discount
RadioShack is a subsidiary of Tandy. It was not created by Tandy, but bought in the 60s.
Fun fact: Tandy started as a leather company waaay back.
And Tandy Leather still exists! It’s in better shape than Tandy Electronics (which is called RadioShack now, the bought ate the buyer).
There’s a lesson here. Technology comes and passes, other things stay.
