Big Bob's Beepers

Big Bob's Beepers is, as its name suggests, a pager emporium owned by Big Bob Pataki on Hey Arnold! The business seems to be largely his creation and is his main source of income. The fact that the Pataki household, throughout the series, seems fairly large and well-furnished, points out that the business is reasonably productive, due to the beeper's then-relatively high price. Bob is the sole manager and head of the business, with his wife Miriam and his associate Nick Vermicelli being the only two people who have had any sway in the store's management.
The store seems to be the one thing that Big Bob is passionate about, as he is constantly attempting to expand it, at the cost of areas that are important to the kids (such as in "Save the Tree") or even the residences of the people who live around him (Hey Arnold!: The Movie). He also seizes every possible opportunity to promote it ("Spelling Bee", "Runaway Float") and add more people to its clientele.
However, despite the relatively successful nature of the business, Bob doesn't seem to be as good of a businessperson as he thinks he is; his aggressive, expansionist, mercerany methods and client-unfriendly policies ("Big Bob's Crisis") really don't seem to help the business beyond its only known location and even seems to be holding it back (to a certain extent at least). When Miriam took over the business in "The Beeper Queen", she proved to be a considerably better businessperson than her husband; she was able to close important deals, form valuable alliances and come up with much better, more creative ways to promote the store and its products.
In Hey Arnold!: The Movie, a mall store called Big Bob's Super Beeper Emporium was to be this store's next incarnation as part of Future Tech Industries' plan to demolish the neighborhood and build a futuristic mall. However, when Big Bob learned that Scheck would instead have control of the store, the deal fell apart.
In Hey Arnold!: The Jungle Movie, the business doesn't appear to be doing that well, since with devices like cellphones becoming much more mainstream and affordable, pagers have become increasingly obsolete, but Big Bob stubbornly refuses to get with the times. It is also implied that Helga and her family are actually now living in the store, as indicated by their mailbox being outside the store. It is hinted that after the events of The Jungle Movie, Bob eventually started selling cellphones instead of (or at least in addition to) pagers.
Category:Locations
Category:Hey Arnold! locations