Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's actually a mortgage company that does worse; They call it the 'People Promise', and it sounds like a bonus, but; 1. It's actually a loan. 2. If you leave or are terminated at any point for the period, you have to pay back the ENTIRE loan amount. 3. Because it's a loan, if you -do- survive employment through the term, guess what, you now have to pay tax on the 'forgiven loan'. 4. If you don't take it, you don'…
Why not name the company?
Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)
51–60 of 71 posts
Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)
#52I worked at a mall Radio Shack in ‘98-‘99. A Gateway store opened up at the other end of the mall. This being the times they were, Radio Shack had partnered with Compaq to sell P2 & (I think) P3 desktops, the beginning of its downfall of selling other companies’ stuff and losing out to places like Best Buy. We used to emphasize that you could buy a computer with us and go home with it today, whereas down the hall, yo…
Before I worked at TSS doing in-home PC repair, I did a short stint at Radio Shack and got the Compaq experience you described. I remember going to the introduction event for the Compaq roll-out into Radio Shack stores, I was sitting in a large hotel ballroom with like 100 other Radio Shack sales folks. The Compaq guy was asking questions from the audience and I was literally the only person there who could answer qu…
> I thhink he was way more broke than I realized. I grew up broke too, but I also had my eyes set on improving my situation. Was kind of a wake-up-moment that most people around me had minimal ambition about this.
I feel like I'm missing something, because it's not clear at all why that would be your takeaway. Why would "not trusting a temporary employee that I don't usually work with to allocate my home computer budget" somehow imply "broke and unwilling to do anything about it"? Without more detail, that seems like a kinda weird inference to make.
Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not name the company?
UWM, United Wholesale Mortgage. Their location near me (Detroit suburbs) has closed, but not after getting an awful reputation that's somehow worse than Quicken or Rocket Mortgage.
Well, they still have their Pontiac HQ.
I've never worked there, I've only had the pleasure of knowing some former employees that were way happier at RKT, and the observation that the most toxic manager I have ever worked under [0] apparently had a pretty good run there after he got booted from our org [1]. What was more striking was, I had a very short stint at an org that tried to 'Emulate' their management style and it was the fastest I ever left a job.
[0] - The kind of guy who's previous wives both left him so hard they didn't even try for custody, so he was having a 'thing' with a different department's manager while her husband was dying of cancer. The creepiest moment was when she brought her kid to the office and the [1] - He eventually got too bold and turned on his 'lieutenant' (who also for a time would dress just like him). Once that dev lead finished the HR 'Training' that they were subjected to, he stopped the behavior of preventing the dev groups from communicating with each other. That cross communication led to a bit of a quiet internal revolt across the whole Dev org.
Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)
#54As someone who is a student of advertising, I love this post. Just subscribed to this
Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)
#55What exactly was "bad" about these ads? They're eye catching, and it definitely interested me as a reader. Poor choice of title.
As an advertiser these are unusual but the clear strategy their marketing team took was to make their ads entertaining enough for people to want to read them.
Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)
#56“These are the worst ads I’ve ever seen.” “But you have seen them.”
Agreed. They are good ads if we're still discussing them. This is one of those critics that assumes the current times are the 'correct taste' and anything foreign to their taste is poorly done, even when it resulted in sales.
Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)
#57This brings back memories. In my city, there were no computers for sale in regular stores in the early 90s. My first computer was a second-hand ZX Spectrum. I still remember how excited I was when I finally got one.
Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)
#58Honestly it's better to have bad but fun ads than those sterile corporate design used nowadays.
Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)
#59> And you won’t get to brag that you own a computer from Iowa. South Dakota. Gateway was HQ’d in North Sioux City, SD. There is also a South Sioux City, NE, though to my knowledge no computer manufacturers have had a presence there. My dad worked at Gateway in the mid-late ‘90s and early ‘00s. Employee perks were pretty decent for the time; for example, he could borrow a laptop to play with and learn on at home — we…
You're right! That was a not entirely clear enough reference to Gateway 2000's first ad, in 1987, which famously used the headline "Computers from Iowa?" https://buttondown.com/suchbadtechads/archive/gateway-2000-p...
Ah, right. Good callout!
Re: Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Usually signing bonuses are "pay back all or a pro-rated percentage if you leave before [date]"
Sure, but that's just lending you a computer at that point, unless they expect you to cover the depreciation cost or something when returning it.
I would guess you would owe some agreed value of the PC at the time you received it.