Behind the Scenes: What it's Like Working at GameStop
Ever wondered what it’s like to work at GameStop? One writer details his experience.
You’ve shopped at GameStop before – or if not, you’ve visited an EB Games, I’m sure. Close enough. The latter is, after all, owned by GameStop now.
My first “real” job was working for a local GameStop at my mall. Like many gamers, I assumed that working a job that involved video games – even if it was just selling them – would be fun, or at least more exciting than working a fast food job or some other minimum-wage-paying gig. Most ex-GameStop employees are pretty spiteful when it comes to recalling their days at the retailer. However, no matter what anyone tells you, the job isn’t necessarily worse than any other retail job. It does, at the very least, offer one big advantage other retail jobs can’t compete with: you’re surrounded by video games all day. And, occasionally, you get to play them on your break. That is, of course, unless your district manager finds out, in which case you’re in trouble.
During my time at GameStop – about a year-and-a-half – I worked part-time as a “Sales Associate,” although I had reoccurring opportunities to take on a managerial position, which I continuously passed up because at the time I was still in school and didn’t want to work that many hours. But while I was just “part-time,” I still ended up spending a lot of time at the store, and during the summer, I worked almost every day of the week.
The day-to-day responsibilities at GameStop aren’t surprising. My job was broken down into two sub-jobs. Sometimes I played clerk. And sometimes I played clean-up-the-store. The latter, no surprise, sucked . You may or may not know it, but GameStop employees are tasked with the job of alphabetizing the entire store’s selection of video games throughout the day. Of course, if you’ve ever been to a GameStop, you know that sections aren’t usually organized in this fashion, which is of course because it’s impossible to keep a store alphabetized when its customer base consists of window shoppers and kids who pick up a PlayStation 2 game, look at the pictures on the back of the box and when they are done, place it in the GameCube section, because by the time they’re done looking at the pretty pictures on the back of the box, they’ve walked half-way across the store. And everyone knows you never ever, no matter what, put things back where you found them.
Cleaning up the store also includes washing the store windows, which is the easiest job at the company, because GameStop, despite being cheap, at least springs for the good stuff: Windex. When it comes to vacuuming the store, which is done every night, it’s not so easy. The store vacuum cleaner, quite frankly, did not suck. It was incapable of sucking up anything – not even dust. And yet the entire year-and-a-half I worked at GameStop, the company refused to invest in a vacuum cleaner that actually worked.
Working the register was my preference over being out on the floor. Most of my co-workers preferred being on the floor, as it usually meant you walked around, tidying up the store, talking to customers and floating around until you were called upon to do something else – much less work than ringing. I, however, prefer to keep busy, and on busy days, the register is the place to be for people like me. You get to do fun stuff like ringing up customers, retrieving the games customers want to buy, answering questions, processing trade-ins (more on that in a moment) and, my favorite, selling subscriptions and reservations.
Indeed, if you’ve ever shopped at GameStop, you’ve encountered it: persistent clerks who incessantly ask if you want to reserve Halo 3 or sign up for a subscription to Game Informer. Both game pre-orders and Game Informer, if you didn’t know, bring in a huge pool of money each year for the video game retailer, so employees are – in actual fact – paid to ask customers to do these things. It is, as you’d learn if you worked at GameStop for just a day, the most important part of the job. At least according to your district manager, who in my case was a raging she-bitch from the ninth circle of Hell.
The reason I was able to keep my job at the store for so long was because from the very first day, I had a knack for talking people into buying either a subscription to Game Informer (along with the usually-useless 10%-off-used-games card) or pre-ordering an upcoming game or two they were looking forward to. However, as a gamer and someone who believes you should treat people the way you, yourself, want to be treated, I used a very honest approach in selling the two items.
If any customer asked if I was forced to sell both things, I would admit that it was true. More importantly, though, I often told un-expecting customers up front that it was part of my job to sell them on the idea of buying Game Informer and reserving games, and then I actually tried to help them. For example, pre-ordering a game meant we’d set aside a copy of your game when we got it, and if you signed up for Game Informer, you could use the membership card to save on buying used games – not to mention you’d be getting a subscription to a magazine that reviews the latest games and would help you in your game purchases.
I also did something my store manager frowned upon. When I dealt with a customer that honestly wouldn’t benefit from either pre-ordering something or signing up for the forsaken GameStop membership card, I’d tell them that. “Yeah, honestly, if you hate our store because we in fact don’t hold “reserved” games for customers, then I don’t think you should bother pre-ordering.”
Yeah, that’s a problem. Towards the end of my career with GameStop, as I became more and more exposed to the managing side of things, I learned that pre-ordering is a complete joke. Yes, if you pre-order something, when they get it in, they’ll set it aside. However, the company never refuses to take a customer’s money to reserve something – even if they know they won’t have enough of that product in stock to meet demand. See the Xbox 360 launch as proof of this.
The longer I worked at GameStop, the more I was reminded of the fact that it was, at the end of the day, just a corporation looking to make money. After explaining time and time again to disappointed customers that despite the fact that they reserved a game, we didn’t have a copy for them, I began to lose serious respect for the retailer. Plus, taking people’s trade-ins and giving them mere pennies for them quickly became embarrassing.
If you think it’s bad being a customer and dealing with GameStop, you should ask the countless ex-GameStop employees if things are any better on the other side of the fence; being employed by the company.
For a long time, I worked the part-time closing shift, which meant that my shift included staying an hour after the store closed its doors to clean. During that time, the manager on duty would close out the registers, count the money from the day and perform a number of other various manager duties required each night. Unfortunately for me, I always ended up scheduled to work with my store manager, who while usually a nice enough lady, was extremely slow at her job, was unhealthily obsessed with anything Disney and Johnny Depp, would never stop rambling about both of those things and could not finish all of her tasks before the hour was up. That meant I had to stay even later, until she was finished doing whatever the hell it was she had to have done before she could leave. Why did I have to stay? Because GameStop Corp. does not trust its store managers – during closing, there must always be at least two employees, so that someone can report any stolen property or illegal activity. Right.
Guess what? My good-old store manager – my boss – was kind enough to clock me out as soon as the clock hit the hour in which she and I were supposed to be out of there. That means, in other words, I wasn’t being paid for the extra, unexpected time I was spending at the store every night. One night, I caught my manager clocking me out, at which point I confronted her and found out she had in fact been clocking me out without telling me.
I ended up reporting this to my two other store managers, one of which was the assistant manager. They both appeared to be incredibly upset over the matter, and they told me they would notify the district manager, not to mention talk to the store manager herself, about the situation. I trusted they did this, as they both seemed like good people. About a week later, I learned that the store manager had been given a “first and final” warning, and that I would no longer have to work with her. She never apologized directly to me, as she was supposedly asked not to, but I was told by the assistant manager at my store that the store manager was extremely sorry. It’s part of my nature to look for the best in people, so I trusted this was true and forgave her. After all, I wouldn’t have to close with her anymore.
Months later, when the assistant manager was no longer working at the store, I began being scheduled to work and close with my store manager again. I accepted the shifts, initially, because I understood we were at the time understaffed, and there wasn’t any other immediate solution. However, I was continuously scheduled to work with her, and there didn’t seem to be any changes coming in the foreseeable future, so I opted to confront my store manager via a meeting with her and one other employee (who acted as a witness of the meeting). Guess what? She revealed to me that she was never met with by the no-longer-employed assistant manager (who went on to law school, by the way – he’ll fit right in) about my complaint and accusation. And she certainly never apologized.
During my conversation with her, she did apologize for her actions, though. And she agreed that she would no longer schedule me to close with her by myself, as frankly, I felt uncomfortable around her. Eventually, I ended up leaving the store shortly after the meeting – as the entire management collapsed and along with it, my co-workers left. The clincher for me was when the new store manager – who we’ll refer to as Satan incarnate – referred to one of the ex-managers, a good friend of mine, as a “faggot.” She was Satan, though, so that’s to be expected. Right? After leaving GameStop, I sent a certified letter to the company’s CEO, Daniel A. Dematteo, about some of the things I experienced working for his company. He received the letter, but never responded.
If you’re reading this write-up, thinking that working at GameStop is all bad and no good, I’m not surprised. So far, I’ve detailed mostly the bad parts about the job. However, there is some good: as far as working retail goes, I wouldn’t want to work at any other store. As a gamer, being surrounded by my most passionate hobby (actually, I lie – that’d be writing) made what would otherwise be just another retail job comparatively exciting. I love games, and selling them to people who also love them was, for me, enjoyable. What’s more, I lucked out, and most of my co-workers turned out to be very cool, fun people. And if you’ve ever worked in your life, you know that the people you work with can make or break a job for you. I spent most of my time at GameStop laughing at stupid jokes and talking about the industry with those co-workers (and friends). What’s more, I met my best friend working at GameStop, so I can’t say nothing good came of the experience.
I also got to see firsthand how many wonderful (and when I say wonderful, I mean awful) parents there are in this country. One man in particular comes to mind, who was incredibly angry with me because I refused to sell his son a copy of Manhunt without getting his father’s permission. I told the kid, who was around eight-years-old, that he had to have his father purchase the game for him, and that I could not and would not sell it directly to a minor. About 30 minutes later, his failure-of-a-father showed up and blasted me in front of a line of people for not selling Manhunt, perhaps the most gruesome game one can purchase, to his child, who ironically was not even old enough to purchase a Teen-rated game let alone a Mature-rated one. Apparently, I interrupted his waiting in line at the food court to get a fat-ass burger. Sorry, daddy. Next time I’ll just auction off your kid to anybody in the store willing to father him – because just about anybody would do a better job than you.
So, if you’re considering taking a job at your local GameStop – or whatever game store there is around you – now you know my story of what it was like working for the company. It had its ups and downs (it’s a retail job, think of it that way), but I wouldn’t say I regret my time with the company. I learned some valuable lessons, made some great friends and experienced what it’s like to have hundreds of zit-faced kids calling to find out if we received our Halo 2 shipment “early.”
Ah, good times.
Source:
Advanced Media Network ::: AMN - AdvancedMN.com - Video Games, Tech, News, Anime, Zelda, Halo 3, Grand Theft Auto, Mario, Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Linear Mode
