PART 1: A PROFILE OF GADGETS FIX AND ITS OWNER, BARRY HIRST
Wow. Where to start.
Gadgets Fix is run as the personality cult of the 'owner,' Barry Hirst. Barry is the de-facto owner of the shop, and he is always there, 7 days a week, to control everything very tightly. Barry is infamous in the business world, from Huddersfield to Manchester. Even my local chippie owner already knew of him, and spat in disgust while saying his name.
I say 'de-facto' owner, because he isn't really supposed to own the company. He is banned from holding directorship or a position of authority. He had gone bankrupt too many times. Yet, nothing has changed, and he's still there. Public records show he has registered the same shop at least 11 times. He uses these registrations as sort of 'false identities,' to avoid court orders from all the customers who sue him and win, avoid paying bills, avoid the insolvency service knowing what assets he has, etc.
I say he runs it as a personality cult. On the surface, there are his company facebook videos of him talking, his voice on a loudspeaker outside the shop, photos with footballers, etc. Seems innocent enough, but when you delve deeper, it becomes more sinister.
He has a severe form of Narcissitic Personality Disorder. In Barry's mind, he is king. He has no emotional understanding of whats outside of himself. Other people are just pawns to him. In his mind, he is always right, and the world is his enemy. He sees his daily life as a power play for supremacy over those he meets. Everything he does is a passive aggressive means to this end. If something isn't going his way, or if he just isnt the centre of attention, he sees it as a challenge.
He will reflexively rise to this challenge, lying or manipulating the 'threat' into submission. He will go to the ends of the earth to do this, even if it hurts himself in the process. Its crazy really. On a slow day, he will cause problems out of nothing, just to have something to 'win.' He will deliberately do everything the hardest way possible, to feel he is on a 'journey' of winning. His life is a neverending series of 'firefighting' measures against all the problems he creates on a rolling basis. He is, a true madman.
You may wonder how the shop even exists if he's really this mad.
Well, he is not unintelligent. Illiterate, yes. But not unintelligent. As a long-term NPD sufferer, he is very good at compensating for it. His shop is his world, where he feels in control. The shop stays open because he hires people more competent than himself, and gets them to do the work. Not just the shop work, but his own managerial work, and even his own personal life work, like filling in forms he cant understand, or re-rwiting letters he was unable to articulate.
So the shop, and his life, carry on... but not in any financially solvent state. His mismanagement is evidenced everywhere. For one, he has about double the needed staff. Half the staff are employed to fulfil his personal emotional needs. Like I said, he is very emotionally needy, and needs to be the centre of attention. He overstaffs, and likes to keep them busy with utterly pointless tasks that he invents as the day goes on. He makes staff mend situations he has broken, adhere to policies he makes up on the spot (to solve things only he could cause a problem with in the first place,) pick up rubbish he's dropped on the floor, sends them out on pointless errands to get his shopping, or his lunch, go to the bank 3 times a day for accounts that shouldn't be empty anyway, etc, etc.
He does literally no meaningful work himself.
He spends his own time self glorifying, getting things wrong, and maintaining a paranoid obsessive level of control within the shop. He lies to glorify himself. In October he designed business cards which stated he had shops in Moortown, Alwoodley, Headingley, and Horsforth. Its a lie. None of those shops exist, or have ever existed, or will exist in any foreseeable future. He gives the cards out though.
His need for control is so great that he hides audio recording devices all around the shop. He doesn't tell new staff about these. He secretly records every word, monitoring conversations for anything negative about him personally. He has the devices linked up to his laptop. He goes to the toilet with it, and even listens from home. If he's out of the shop, his paranoia goes into overdrive. He will phone once every five minutes when he can, and insist on having a constantly open Playbook link, Skype link, camera link, email, text, and audio recording, all at the same time, and try remotely co-ordinating everything. Like who goes for lunch when. Its bizarre.
Get this... he even has staff members followed around Leeds by other staff members... And sends staff between shops to spy and report back. He encourages infighting. But he stays supreme. There are no disciplinary proceedings. Just secret monitoring and firings. read more
