July 1995: Waldensoftware (Page 2)

Ultimately, I took the job because I couldn't think of anything better to do. That's a pretty bad reason to do something, I think it's the number reason kids take up huffing. I was directionless and probably would have said "yes" to just about anything.

The Waldensoftware store was a totally new climate. I was accustomed to busy location that averaged $1500-$2000 a day in sales. This location brought in $1000 on a good day. The mall itself was small and lacked any kind of a "destination" store (at the time). Sure, this gave us a lot of time to keep the shop clean and well ordered but mostly left us bored. Luckily we had 4 monitors along the ceiling of the store where we ran promo tapes or game demos to keep us sane. The promo tapes sent from vendors really did help sell games, unfortunately I lacked the foresight to save most of them.

The Waldensoftware chain was different than Electronics Boutique in a number of ways. The best comparison I can come up with is to the now defunct Egghead Software. Since it was originally managed by Borders there was a large selection of books. Elbo stores carried hint books and some of the "Dummies" line while Waldensoftware stocked a fairly thorough inventory. They also carried a wider selection of productivity software including OS/2. They were one of the hold-outs for Amiga software and even hardware. One of the first things Elbo did was slash prices on the Amiga inventory which went fast.

Some of the regular customers didn't take to this conversion well. They complained that we were changing from a software store to a video game store. It shouldn't have been too shocking, software stores like Egghead were closing down while game stores were thriving. If Waldensoftware was doing so great they wouldn't need Elbo to bail them out after all. We also had a few customers looking to special-order books which was something Walden did but Elbo didn't.

There was always some confusion about the difference between Waldensoftware and Waldenbooks. To the passer-by the stores were a little tricky to distinguish. We had some monitors in the front of the store playing game demos but the signage and color schemes were identical. I distinctly remember an incident where an elderly couple came to our counter with a stack of books from the neighboring Waldenbooks:

This was quite a reality-check.

Being a smaller store we relied heavily on regular customers. The reservation lists were shorter but filled with basically the same 10-20 names. Calling the reservations and following-up was a priority there instead of "do it if you get a chance". The store in Gurnee Mills had regular customers too of course, but we didn't know them well except for which systems they owned. At this Waldensoftware we spent a good deal of time chatting with the regulars.

I seriously believe two of our regular customers were mentally ill. Luckily, I largely interacted with them over the phone.

We had a gentleman call every day to check if CyberJudas for PC had been released yet. CyberJudas was an oft-delayed sequel to the niche game Shadow President. When I say he called every day I actually do mean seven days a week, usually around the same time. He always seemed irritated when it wasn't in and we didn't have a release date for it. It's not an exaggeration to say this went on for months. Mercifully for us the game finally came in. He apparently bought a copy but I didn't meet him until he came in to return it the next day. Apparently it didn't live up to the months of mental hype he built up.

We had another regular caller who was obsessed with sports games. He'd call whenever a new sports game was released and ask a barrage of questions about it. Things like "can you see the numbers on the uniforms", "is halfback pass a play you can choose", or "can you see what color the players' socks are". I originally thought it was a prank but received confirmation from someone who met him that it was not. I decided to experiment and see how long he'd stay on hold. Next time he called with an asinine question I said "hold on, let me check" and then timed how long before he hung up. The first time he went almost thirty minutes; subsequent trials lasted under five. He did come into the store a couple of times. Even after meeting him in person I wasn't sure if he was mentally handicapped or just, well, a complete loser. I'm heavily leaning towards the latter.