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Jim Watanabe looked around his new office. He couldn’t believe that he was the assistant director of information technology at Petrie’s Electronics, his favorite consumer electronics retail store. He always bought his new DVDs and video games for his Xbox 360 at Petrie’s. In fact, he had bought his Blu-ray player and his Xbox 360 at Petrie’s, along with his surround sound system and his 40" flat-screen HD LED TV. And now he worked there too. The employee discount was a nice perk1 of his new job, but he was also glad that his technical and people skills were finally recognized by the people at Petrie’s. He had worked for five years at Broadway Entertainment Company as a senior systems analyst, and it was clear that he was not going to be promoted there. He was really glad he had put his résumé up on Monster.com and that now he had a bigger salary and a great job with more responsibility at Petrie’s. Petrie’s Electronics had started as a single electronics store in 1984 in San Diego, California.
The store was started by Jacob Rosenstein in a strip mall. It was named after Rob Petrie, the TV writer played by Dick Van Dyke in the TV show named after himself. Rosenstein always liked that show. When he had grown the store to a chain of thirteen stores in the Southern California area, it was too much for Rosenstein to handle. He sold out in 1992, for a handsome profit, to the Matsutoya Corporation, a huge Japanese conglomerate that saw the chain of stores as a place to sell its many consumer electronics goods in the U.S. Matsutoya aggressively expanded the chain to 218 stores nationwide by the time they sold the chain in 2002, for a handsome profit, to Sam and Harry’s, a maker and seller of ice cream. Sam and Harry’s was looking for a way to diversify and invest the considerable cash they had made creating and selling ice cream, with flavors named after actors and actresses, like their best selling Lime Neeson and Jim Carrey-mel. Sam and Harry’s brought in professional... [continues]

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