I worked for GameStop from August
2009 to December 2010.
In that time, I worked from the position of Game Advisor (GA) to 3rd Key Manager (essentially does the same thing as an Assistant Manager [ASM] but with just enough less hours that they don’t have to offer you benefits). I worked in two different locations. The first location that I worked was a mall location, the second was a newer store located in a small strip mall.
In that time, I worked from the position of Game Advisor (GA) to 3rd Key Manager (essentially does the same thing as an Assistant Manager [ASM] but with just enough less hours that they don’t have to offer you benefits). I worked in two different locations. The first location that I worked was a mall location, the second was a newer store located in a small strip mall.
Two of my favorite stories are
about people stashing things inside the “fat” Playstation 2s.
One time, a boy and his mom brought in a PS2 to trade
towards a PS3. The mom had to be there
because the kid was under 18 and was too young to complete the
transaction. He was looking at games
while his mom brought the system up to me.
After explaining the amounts they would get and protocol for taking the
system (I had to hook it up and run a game disk in it) she agreed and I went to
work. After checking the system (which
worked fine) I went to check the expansion bay in the back of the system. Upon removing the door, a little baggie with
a green substance fell on the counter.
The mom and I both stared at it but she grabbed it before I said anything. She brought it over to the boy and asked him
what he knew about it. The boy instantly
(fearing death) blamed his friends that he had invited to his house a few days
prior. The mom just said, “Bullshit” and
grabbed him by the arm and dragged him out of the store. On her way out, she told us to keep the
system. I only worked at that location
for three more months (and there were two other locations in town) but I never saw
those people again.
The other occasion I referred to was when I was taking a PS2
for trade from a guy and his girlfriend was with him. I ran the test, it tested fine. I checked the expansion bay and there were
pictures of his girlfriend (it was clearly her) naked. She, unfortunately, was elsewhere in the
store when this happened. The guy
grabbed the pictures and asked me if there was any problem with the
system. I couldn’t help but laugh and
tell him ‘no’. We were in the business
of selling video game hardware and software, not exposing tools.
Of course we also had the occasional spider or roach
infestation in all varieties of consoles: 360s, PS3s, PS2s, even Wiis. However the most disgusting infestation I
dealt with was actually a copy of Assassin’s Creed for 360. I was taking a stack of used games for trade
and after a few months (or a year) you get pretty fast at processing
games. Snap the case open, eject the
disc, examine quickly, replace the disk, close the case, scan the barcode,
rinse and repeat. Assassin’s Creed was
the last one in the stack so I was expecting nothing, having had no problems
from the previous cases. When I opened
the case, several small roaches fell out and started to scurry around. The ASM next to me started whacking the
roaches with something or another while I quickly shut the case and tossed it
in the trash. The whole time this is
going on the guy that who owned these games just stared like nothing was going
on. After throwing the case in the
trash, I quickly tied-off the bag and brought it out back to the dumpster. When I got back in, I explained that we would
not take his games and that he could retrieve his copy of Assassin’s Creed from
the dumpster behind the store. When I
trade things in (this happens much less the older I get…) I always check every
piece prior to bringing them in the store.
I could not, for the life of me, understand how people could bring games
in to trade the way that they did.
There was another time where a kid brought in three or four
game cases which were clearly soaking wet and contained water inside the case. He actually believed that he could trade the
titles in like that. His excuse was,
“Well, I’ve played games before after just drying them off and they worked
fine.”
We also had people who would blame us for breaking the items
that they brought in for trade. A guy
walked in with his son and a box full of a PS3 and a few games. They wanted to trade the equipment for a
360. I went to test the system and, low
and behold, it had the YLOD. I explained
to him what that meant and he immediately started to lambaste me for “breaking
their system.” “How could you do that to
a kid man?!” There was literally two
seconds between my explanation and his outburst. I could tell that it was broken when they
came in and thought that they could pull something over on us.
Something that always strikes me as ridiculous is reading
forums and seeing a commenter talk about how much GameStop “screws people
over.” I’m going to tell you right now
that in my two years I saw many more people try to screw-over GameStop than times
that I thought someone was getting an unfair deal. Does GameStop offer you $25 for a game that
they will turn around and sell for $55?
Sure, but that’s business. If
people don’t like it, why don’t they speak with their money and stop
frequenting the place? Because people
love to complain, that’s why.
Then there are the people who believe that it is not
GameStop screwing them, it’s you the
employee. It’s especially true for the
younger customers and the older customers.
For example: a boy walked-in with a copy of Wii Sports one time and
wanted to trade it in. I told him that
it would trade in for $10. He asked if
he could just trade it for a copy of Modern Warfare 2 (the newest CoD at the
time). I explained to him that there
were many reasons why that was not going to happen, but he just couldn’t
understand why the Modern Warfare disk was worth more than his Wii Sports disk.
The older generation (for the most part) was the same
way. They would bring their grandson in
with a box of ancient PS2 sports titles and wonder why we wouldn’t take half of
them and we’d only give $2.50 for the other half. They didn’t understand supply and demand and
depreciation of titles. Then of course
came the yelling.
Although the older generation wasn’t always bad. When I was working for Best Buy in their
home theater department, I had an older lady (she said that she was 85) come in
with her husband. She was looking for a
big-screen TV (32”) so that she could play her favorite video game: Resident
Evil 5 on the PS3. My jaw dropped. I immediately told her husband that he had
better be careful with his wife because any number of people in that store
would gladly ask her out on a date.
On the subject of dating: when I worked at my first GameStop
location (just before transferring to the strip mall location) my Store Manager
was promoted to another store. The guy
they brought in was a total idiot. This
new manager also had a tendency to curse (harshly) in front of all manner of
customer no matter the age or gender. He
also played a male pixie at the local Renaissance Festival… but that’s another
story. This new manager, about his
second week at the store, took a liking to the Piercing Pagoda manager. She was a total troll (and I am typically a
rather non-judgmental person when it comes to physical appearance). She was huge, she was ugly, and she had a
thicker mustache than I had (at the time).
Well, they started leaving each other notes during the off hours. I’d come in to open in the morning and, after
opening the gate, I would see a folded piece of paper with his name written on
it. One time, my curiosity got the
better of me. I opened the note. I’m not an optometrist, but I am pretty sure
that this note was the reason behind my gradually worsening astigmatism. They picture scrawled on it was one of the
nastiest scrawled pictures I’ve ever seen.
Eventually, the employees of the store formed a coup
dedicated to riding ourselves of this newest pain in the arse. We started getting together when he wasn’t on
the clock or after hours to produce a list of “charges” to show our District
Manager with the hopes that action would be taken. The aforementioned picture was one of the
things provided to our DM.
When we presented our case the DM simply looked at us and
told us that if we ever pulled something like this again, he would fire all of
us. This guy was seriously willing to
fire 75% of the store to protect this terrible manager. Luckily, I moved a couple of weeks later and
I didn’t have to deal with him again. The
last I heard, he was no longer employed with GameStop, but he was still playing
a pixie at the Renaissance Festival.
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