I still remember being in Best Buy and hearing the salespeople scamming less knowledgeable customers about how much computer they need or how important expensive cables are. I don't think there was ever a time when you could trust electronics store salespeople to sell you "the right stuff for you".
Small local camera stores didn't carry much and were expensive. They tended to recommend something that they had in stock. Was still a pretty regular customer though because mail order wasn't as developed and you couldn't easily showroom gear locally.
And Radio Shack was certainly convenient for cables etc. and had often knowledgable employees. But most of the actual stereo equipment and other gear they carried just wasn't very good.
But I don't really disagree especially for relatively commodity purchases. Yes, I actually looked up a spray nozzle for a hose on Wirecutter. But would I have been perfectly fine just walking into Home Depot and grabbing one? Probably.
That said. I'm probably better off researching thins like dishwashers rather than walking into a store (then or now) and picking one that catches my eye or that the salesperson recommends.
But you can certainly get into analysis-paralysis with any number of things from travel to cameras. And you're often better off just shutting the analysis down at some point.
The challenge I have now in most product categories is filtering out the sewage-offerings from the genuine values. I don't mind lots of choice if presented with an adequate McMaster-Carr type information-oriented UI (as opposed to the ad-friendly UI's we suffer through these days). I mind when most of the choices are dumpster fire quality, and I have no way to filter them out.
We had to go through all the certifications within something like six weeks of hire in order to be eligible for pay bumps and promotions. This even meant training on circuit components (at least knowing what they were, and how they were organized).
Any Radio Shack clerk that wasn't completely green went through this training, so we all knew our stuff.
One of the cool things about the job was getting to talk to "elder geeks" that would come in for components. One guy I helped had set up an old IBM 360 mainframe in his garage. The university he worked at didn't want it any more. He used it for messing around with assembly and as a space heater.
It was still a retail job, but it was better than most for a tech-head like me. I would've been flipping burgers or selling shoes (Payless was next door), so Radio Shack was a better stepping stone for me. It did nothing for getting me into a programming career, but it was a stop-gap to get there.
It was less about selling and more about people walking in knowing what they wanted or wanting to browse around and once in awhile someone with a problem that you had to piece together components to help. It was unlike other electronic stores I worked. You had to understand how invertors worked, rc cars and sell computers while trying to maintain an 80% names/address recorded.
You did sell. You entire got paid minimum wage or a % of what you earned for a two week period. 4% for name brand stuff 10% for store brand. My first two week period I sold computer after computer got highest sales in the district. For the next month or longer the minimum. Replacing the computer inventory took forever and I wasn't as good selling all of their other products. Great fun learning experience.
1. The only place around where you could go to buy a breadboard, or a transistor, or a resistor, or a headphone cable connector. Component selection unparalleled in the places where I lived. I don't want to exaggerate --- they had maybe ten kinds of transistors, not a hundred like Fry's, but I didn't live within 1000 km of a Fry's. And certainly not forty thousand like Digi-Key has today.
2. Salespeople who apparently didn't know anything but tried to get my phone number (!?) and, later, sell me cellphones. And cellphone plans. Jesus.
3. Stuff for makers getting gradually crowded out by worthless goods for mere consumers, stuff I could have bought at Best Buy or Sears if I wanted it. Things like TVs, VCRs, pagers, and Blackberries.
I still use a store-brand Radio Shack multimeter sometimes, and in the 01980s a lot of my early years of programming were on store-brand Radio Shack computers in my day care and elementary schools, both TRS-80 Model III and the CoCo.
I'd rather make software handle an unsigned long long as a year: I want our optimism to extend beyond the presumed heat death of our universe, and into, if not finding a multiverse, creating it.
[1] https://longnow.org/ideas/02013/12/31/long-now-years-five-di...
Same goes for the connectors. All the IEEE and ISO standards out there in the world and the damn USB plugs stick out half the time (nevermind the Chinese-made ones I had that were 1.5x the normal length). In other instances 3.5mm jacks don't stay in or something or other becomes loose. And trying to find reviews or info about this online, or filtering it out to some level on purchase sites like Amazon is...tiring.
Initially I dealt with this concern by benchmarking the advice I got on a topic I do know a lot about. I haven't worried about that in a while; at least in the Towson store, the quality of advice and discussion has been such that the next time they steer me wrong will be the first.
Remember RadioShack?