Fried at Fry's

by Kevin Tippett

There's a high tech retail chain, known as Fry's Electronics, which stands out for many reasons. If you're not familiar with Fry's, it can best be described as "Plan 9 From Outer Space Meets 7-11". In other words, you'll find everything from cheesy isle displays of cheesy wares, to the technical equivalent of corndogs.

A friend once said of Fry's: "It's the only place where you're guaranteed to know more than the clerks". I'm not sure if that's true of all the clerks; quite possibly there are one or two in a back room, bound and gagged to prevent helpful assistance. I do know that a recent excursion was typical.

I was looking for a digital camera that I'd seen advertised in their garish Friday flyer (a four-page insert utilizing an array of colors that make the pants that golfers wear look sedate). When I walked in I couldn't recall the specific make, so I asked the nearest clerk if there were any flyers available.

"Uh, well, yeah. They're taped to, uh, those green podiums."

Wandering about, I found many a green podium, and most of them had stuff taped to them: expired rebate offers, yellowed, ancient and out-of-date store maps, and in one instance what looked like a recipe for some sort of food or explosive. But a flyer? Nope. I then searched for another sales clerk.

Fry's sales clerks are bred in an underground bunker in the Nevada desert. Fed on a strict diet of Twinkies, they're trained to identify shoppers who are merely browsing, and ask them "Can I help you find anything?" They also have the training to spot consumers that are in search of something specific, and dodge them at all costs. I managed to corner one of these wiley creatures, and asked where the modem counter was. "Uh, aisle 6 near the podium. It's over there." He pointed, I turned my head to see in the direction indicated, and when I turned back to say, "There aren't any isle markers," he had vanished. Gone -- not even a trace of burning ozone or a crop circle to mark his existence.

At the end of the shopping experience there is a long, winding pathway to the cashiers. This path takes you past yet more displays of stuff, until you get to a staging point. As a cashier becomes available he/she will beckon with a red wooden paddle with the word "Next" on it. Why haven't super markets haven't copied this concept?

In any event, having plunked down your money or plastic, there is one more hurdle before exiting this techno-gulag: the clerk with the highlighter. She/he lies in waiting just before the exit, and it is required that he look into your bag, and then mark your receipt with a highlighter. Presumably this identifies you as a legitimate consumer, and not some poor sap trying to boost a piece of merchandise. What I've noticed, however, is that they never really seem interested in matching up what is on the receipt with what is in the bag. It's more of a perfunctionary drill, possibly a task assigned to employees that have somehow offended middle-management. Or maybe it is just a mind-numbing task, necessary for the training of larval sales clerks.

Largely, when it comes to Fry's (and similar such endeavors) you either hate it or love it. Me, I love it. Sure, much of the merchandise is manufactured by disgruntled slave labor in oppressive countries, and yeah, it's as if the store is a manifestation of some half-asset retail god. But the stuff! I may venture in for something specific (like the aforementioned modem, advertised for $89, and worth maybe $25), but I'll walk out with a true mishmash of stuff. They have everything from PC and Mac parts and machines, to the latest line of poorly manufactured Star Wars "collectibles", to space food ("Eaten by real astronauts!") to snack foods and caffinated bottled water. On my last foray I didn't buy the modem, but I did walk out with a Tinkie-Winkie keychain.