Former RadioShack CEO Became an Emergency Room Doctor, Now Fights COVID-19 (nationalpost.com) 42
RadioShack's former CEO tells Canada's National Post newspaper the surprising story of what happened after he left the company in 2004:
When it came, rather than being crestfallen, he felt liberated, and free to pursue an "itch" that he had always felt the need to scratch. So he applied to medical school at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario... "I don't miss being a CEO one bit," Levy says. "I enjoyed it immensely, when I was doing it. But do I enjoy what I am doing now? The answer is, immensely."
Brian Levy, MD, was talking about his unusual career path with a reporter, via a socially-distanced phone call, on an April afternoon after wrapping up an overnight shift in the Emergency Department at Brampton Civic Hospital, northwest of Toronto. Brampton Civic is among the busiest emergency departments in Canada. The former CEO initially fancied becoming a psychiatrist, given all his years managing people, but he realized early on in medical school that he was more of a generalist, not to mention a Type-A, adrenaline-junky.
"Emergency medicine is a perfect fit for my personality," he says.
The article notes Levy's department "is eerily quiet, preparing for an expected surge in COVID-19 cases" -- and that in his spare time he's still an electronics geek.
"I am just one of those people who was very fortunate, where things worked out, and where I could do not just do one thing I really enjoyed in life, but two."
Brian Levy, MD, was talking about his unusual career path with a reporter, via a socially-distanced phone call, on an April afternoon after wrapping up an overnight shift in the Emergency Department at Brampton Civic Hospital, northwest of Toronto. Brampton Civic is among the busiest emergency departments in Canada. The former CEO initially fancied becoming a psychiatrist, given all his years managing people, but he realized early on in medical school that he was more of a generalist, not to mention a Type-A, adrenaline-junky.
"Emergency medicine is a perfect fit for my personality," he says.
The article notes Levy's department "is eerily quiet, preparing for an expected surge in COVID-19 cases" -- and that in his spare time he's still an electronics geek.
"I am just one of those people who was very fortunate, where things worked out, and where I could do not just do one thing I really enjoyed in life, but two."
Unfortunately ... (Score:5, Funny)
Former RadioShack CEO Became an Emergency Room Doctor
He always starts his examinations by asking for your phone number and/or email address and if you'd like to be on their mailing list ...
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He has staff that does that.
Have you been to the Doctors in the past decade?
Duh (Score:2, Funny)
As opposed to what, using your phone to call the person standing next to you?
That is not what social distancing means. (Score:2)
It means they weren't just *physically distancing*, but assholes to each other too. :?
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It means they had their phone's matter transceivers turned off for the call. Many people forget to do that.
This is RadioShack CANADA. (Score:3, Informative)
Now known as "The Source by Circuit City" because this guy dropped the ball and lost the lease on the RadioShack name.
RadioShack Canada died on his watch, as they put 100% focus on selling cellphone packages for Rogers, and 0% focus on the core competencies of the RadioShack brand.
He can eat my shit and hair.
Re: This is RadioShack CANADA. (Score:2)
He's an ape with a hairy asshole. What's not to get?
Re:This is RadioShack CANADA. (Score:4, Informative)
You believe nonsense, they had to stop using the Radio Shack name because of court ruling.
Tandy made the Intertan spinoff back in 1986, that's what Canadian Radio Shack were operated under. Circuit City bought Intertan and Radio Shack Corp in U.S. sued them about name and court ruled in their favor.
They couldn't make money selling "the core competencies of Radio Shack (which at any rate disappeared over a decade before as unprofitable) so they sold consumer electronics.
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They didn't sell consumer electronic tho. They stocked them, but they didn't train staff to sell them, or sell them for prices that consumers would pay. They put their money 100% on cell phone re-seller shit. I was there, working on the front line. They could give a fuck about anything other than cell phones. Everyone was on commission, and the only thing that paid ok was closing cell contracts. When the iPod came out, they sold it at effectively zero margin, so there was no commission at all, on the most-h
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"they put 100% focus on selling cellphone packages for Rogers, and 0% focus on the core competencies of the RadioShack brand."
The core competencies of the rat shack brand were selling electronic components at high prices, and selling shitty Chinese electronics rebranded as "Realistic" at high prices. Neither of those things were viable business models any longer. Perhaps selling cellphones wasn't ever going to save them, but it's not clear that anything they reasonably could have done with their limited flo
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This worked well before the internet where electronics were hard For personal use to find other than RadioShack.
Now the push to cellphones was a bad move too many competitors in the market. If I were the CEO I would had turned RadioShack into a Maker Space selling parts and supplies without having to wait for shipping.
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But how would you make that competitive? People will pay more to get things quicker, but they won't usually pay 2-4 times more, and that's what it would have taken.
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There were always teenager coming in to brag about their gaming PCs because they knew the staff would understand, and had to listen.
If we'd had a makerspace, we could have just been like "talk to these other geeks."
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That's not addressing the chief problem at all. In fact, that wasn't even a problem, because getting people in the door is a chance to sell things to them, and if someone's not buying then you can always tell them you need to help another customer.
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Hey, they tried at the end to fix things. They made it clear they were listening to hobbyists and hackers and tried to carry kits again, along with arduinos and parts... Just not enough money in it. Now instead of $13.95 for 15 8-inch jumper wires for a breadboard, he's moved over to charging $80 for 800mg of ibuprofen.
I'm being slightly sarcastic, but they really did try, towards the last 2-3 years. It was just too late.
CANADA has drug price controls (Score:2)
CANADA has drug price controls
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Canadian healthcare also comes with ration and age controls.
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no, really, it doesn’t but don’t let faux news get in your way.
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This Canadian living in the Toronto region for the past 40 years calls BS. We don't have drug price controls. We have single payer (each province) systems that can stand up to Big Pharma. As for rationing and age controls, no problems getting timely cancer and bypass surgery. My son had numerous surgeries to deal with birth defects. I still own my home, have money in the bank, and collected a pension I can live on. Eat your hearts out suckers - you've got your "freedoms".
Do people like you really believe wh
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Did they really do that badly, though? The Source is still in business, they still have 400+ stores in Canada, and they're still presumably profitable. They're owned by Bell Canada at this point, though, and don't report their financials independently, they get lumped in under Bell Wireless, their cellphone division. Their prices are generally terrible, but when it comes to items that have manufacturer specified prices, like video games or gift cards or some consumer electronics, they're often convenient. I
Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hope he's a better doc than a CEO. He's already lost one patient under his care.
How much do I think this isn't meaningful news? (Score:2)
Immensely.
Hopefully, he is a good ER doc (Score:1)
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How does Karma work? (Score:2)
Not Slashdot karma - I mean, how many lives do you figure this guy has to save to balance out having presided over the decline and demise of Radio Shack?
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Who died when Radio Shack went under? Moreover this guy was CEO of Intertan (Radio Shack in Canada) and although I'm sure he played a part, Radio Shack had bigger problems than one CEO.
Is it bigotry to call him the Radio Shack doctor? (Score:2)
Labeling question somewhere between linguistics and political correctness run amok? What is "Radio Shack doctor"?
If you say "He is a doctor who used to work for Radio Shack", then that seems to me to be a completely reasonable and historical description of the facts. No bias.
However when you say "He is the doctor who used to work for Radio Shack", then something has changed. There is a strong implication that there is something special, even unique, about the fact that he is connected to Radio Shack. The im
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Eating wild animals is no worse than eating any other animal unless they are endangered, or have a chance to transmit illnesses to others. So the problem is the wet markets, where that's a virtual certainty.
Why bring Radio Shack into this conversation? Because otherwise why would we care about it here on slashdot?
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Don't know what sense of "the problem" you mean. There are always risks, and in some ways the risks of extreme monoculture are exceedingly high. Lack of genetic diversity means one virus or bacteria can "win" big.
However, you reminded me of an interesting crossover case from a few months back. The "authorities" in Japan (not quite sure who it was) wound up ordering the slaughter of large numbers of domestic pigs because diseased wild boars had gotten close to them, or among them. However, in that case I don
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Eating wild animals is no worse than eating any other animal
And the search for civilization continues...
Even if we limit legal hunting for the purposes of food only, and we must do this because all other hunting, such as trophy hunting or merely for sport or merely for the thrill of killing something, are clearly ethically unsupportable, then it leaves the only excuse to kill and eat animals as purely for survival. But this scenario is vanishingly rare. The Inuit, who live in an icy environment, come to mind. But those heartless sociopaths that reside in non-extre
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If "Chinese virus" is just shorthand coming from someone who is thinking "that is a coronavirus that initially infected people in China", then it's just a description of reality. But if the speaker is thinking something like "those filthy Chinese and their stinking, evil viruses", then the same term becomes a form of bigotry or even racism.
The problem with this is that it isn't just what you intend by calling it "the Chinese virus", but also what people infer when they hear it called "the Chinese virus." You're attaching the negative emotions around the virus to China/Chinese, whether it's your intent when using the term or not. We have a lot of prior human experience that proves this to be true, let alone already seeing it with the current situation.
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I don't think you are really understanding my point. It also applies to the people who hear or read "Chinese virus". They don't have to interpret it as negative stereotyping of China, though you are right that many people want to (and I think the Chinese leaders understand that, though I think they are mistaken that they can stop it and "reclaim" their brand).
I think you are actually talking about the use of "coded language", where people who want to support their racism (or bigotry) are deliberately using
Who would have thought (Score:2)
Something came out of RadioShack that doesn't suck, now.
Keep in mind (Score:2)
That the millions he gathered when he sold his Radio Shack stock before it's final decline is what likely enabled him to obtain his medical education.
The first thing he asks every patient...? (Score:1)