Voting Station

Charles Lazarus

Please vote to return to collections.

Entrepreneur

The Resume

    (October 4, 1923-March 22, 2018)
    Born in Washington, District of Columbia
    Founder of Toys R Us (1957)
    Opened the Children's Bargain Town (1945)
    Opened the Children's Supermart (1948)
    Served as CEO of Toys R Us (until 1994) and chairman

Why he might be annoying:

    His second wife divorced him on her deathbed.
    He made the decision for his company to have the distinctive 'backwards R' - making it one in a long line of corporate franchises with unnecessary punctuation.
    Actually, the naming choice was also a tongue-in-cheek play on his distinctive last name ('R Us' - 'Lazurus' ... get it?)
    He engaged in a five-year legal battle with his stepchildren after he challenged his late wife's post-nuptial clause that the kids be awarded $20 million (a judge ruled in his favor in 2000).

Why he might not be annoying:

    He was a cryptographer in the U.S. Army during World War II.
    He started out selling children's furniture and cribs in his father's bike store.
    He astutely switched to selling children's toys after concluding it had a wider and more expansive market.
    He appeared with President George H.W. Bush at the opening of the first Toys R Us in Japan.
    His ousting as CEO signaled the company's slow decline (although it likely would have happened anyway given the advent of the digital age).
    He died just one day before Toys R Us began liquidation sales of its stores.
    He came off as kindly and as getting a genuine satisfaction out of selling toys, calling it 'a happy business.'
    When asked about the key to success in the toy market, he said 'You've got to be kind of a kid ... You have to have imagination. You have to think like a child' (in the same interview he even recommended getting on the ground and playing with the toys to experience it from a child's perspective).

Credit: BoyWiththeGreenHair


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 4 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 11 Votes: 81.82% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 4 Votes: 75.00% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 4 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 3 Votes: 33.33% Annoying