Zero Originality - A GameStop Employee's take on things.

[fantasticdan]

Video was removed due to terms of something crap. Youtube is gay.

What in youtubes ToS could that video have broken?

And I'm just curious, do you guys still have non-gamestop game stores in your area? Aside from places like walmart, target, bestbuy etc. all we have out here are gamestops, and there's a shit ton of them. One of the weird things is, after they bought out EB, none that I know of closed down. So there are quite a few plazas/malls that have both an EB and a gamestop in them still, which I can't see how it makes any sense business wise. Is the illusion of choice really that valuable?

[Correction]

What in youtubes ToS could that video have broken?

And I'm just curious, do you guys still have non-gamestop game stores in your area? Aside from places like walmart, target, bestbuy etc. all we have out here are gamestops, and there's a shit ton of them. One of the weird things is, after they bought out EB, none that I know of closed down. So there are quite a few plazas/malls that have both an EB and a gamestop in them still, which I can't see how it makes any sense business wise. Is the illusion of choice really that valuable?

YouTube doesn't check any claim of TOS violation for a particular video. It could have been anything from the use of copyrighted music to the Bioshock IP he uses in his copy/paste animation. The YouTube crackdown hammer is often indiscriminate and inaccurate. Best hope is that he reposts it.

As for non-gamestop stores, there's a gamecrazy near where I live, although the overwhelming majority of my video game shopping is done over the internet or via the import shop on the westside.

[xerodok]

Halo for a while was 54.99 used at Gamestop and at target it was like 39.99. Idk if the price has changed. I hate working at GameStop the pay is crap the work is tedious and my managers are stupid, I could run the store better than they can. They keep insisting promoting morons and hiring them. I'm rather irked by this.

I was promised a promotion a while ago and have yet to see it and I have good numbers on reserves and subscriptions at my store but seriously I agree with 85% of this video...Another thing don't mean to be prejudice or racist or w/e you would like to call it but in my district there are a lot of dikes working there. One of my managers was one and mai god is she stupid. Then the District manager is one too. I mean I don't care or nothing just find it weird lol...My district manager is nice but can be a bitch sometimes

rant rant rant rant

If you're having such issues at your particular GameStop, why don't you quit? I've never treated any of my GAs like that, ever. Everyone in my region is close and good friends with each other, and we rarely have customer service or employee issues.

Thank you Tekki and whomever else in this thread has defended working at GameStop from stupid newfags who don't understand concepts older than retail itself.

[Isiolia]

And I'm just curious, do you guys still have non-gamestop game stores in your area? Aside from places like walmart, target, bestbuy etc. all we have out here are gamestops, and there's a shit ton of them. One of the weird things is, after they bought out EB, none that I know of closed down. So there are quite a few plazas/malls that have both an EB and a gamestop in them still, which I can't see how it makes any sense business wise. Is the illusion of choice really that valuable?

Not really. I'm sure there's a Gamecrazy somewhere in the surrounding area, but there are two Gamestops here alone. When I worked at the one in the mall, it was still Software Etc, which became "EB competitive" and subsequently dropped a lot of prices when the EB opened in the mall. Now though, there's a Gamestop in the mall and a Gamestop a few lights away next to the Barnes and Noble (parent company, yadda yadda). The prior EB location is a clothes store.

Personally, I do most planned game shopping via Amazon, or sometimes Best Buy. Rarely even go into Gamestop anymore, since I walked out disappointed too many times. There's frankly little point, since I'm not interested in buying current products used, and that's what takes up a lot of the floor space.

I used to work there, now it's almost a last resort. You'd think that the company would care about that sort of customer retention (or lack thereof), but as long as they can make money selling Madden preorders they're probably happy.

[Fahren]

If you're having such issues at your particular GameStop, why don't you quit? I've never treated any of my GAs like that, ever. Everyone in my region is close and good friends with each other, and we rarely have customer service or employee issues.

Thank you Tekki and whomever else in this thread has defended working at GameStop from stupid newfags who don't understand concepts older than retail itself.

It's a little thing called money kind of you know important...and I'm in the midst of looking for another job. Besides you can say what ever you want about how GameStop is the next messiah, truth is it's still crap. Funny thing is even as a store manager you still get paid crap barely enough to cover living expenses here where I live. I got a raise a couple months back a whole 15 cents.....funny though that same month tax went up to 10.05% or something of the sort where I live so yeah, if that's not evil (and clever) I don't know what is not to mention our discounts suck we don't get discounts on systems and we always have to wear collard shirts because "customer wont know who works there without them" according to corporate.

I also absolutely hate that they treat us like common criminals with "pocket check" says a lot about a company that doesn't even trust their employees. Funny thing is, you can easily be in cahoots with your manager/asm/sga/lga/ga to steal shit...

[Elesirdur]

Yeah, the pocked/bag check thing was a real load of horseshit, but I understand corporate's reasons behind it. Same thing with the game borrowing. To my knowledge the program wasn't shut down because of issues regarding game pirating, it was more that there were employees who weren't returning games either on time, or at all, and their crappy managers weren't disciplining them or terminating them for it. Therefore, some bad employees and managers ruined a program for everyone - and by everyone I really mean it because EB Canada hardly had any problems with the system, but the directive to stop the game loan program came from EB USA because of the major problems they had in their own national stores.

[Kyo]

When I managed my store I never treated any of my employee's that way, im sorry you had to be treated in such a manor. You should contact someone about what happened at least, get that homo fired. The GA's do make shitty pay, but when ur hired you acknowlegde how much your going to be making, there is no need complaining about it, you took the job and understood the pay, thats ur own fault. When I left Gamestop i was making 39k a year, I more than was able to live comfortably and I started as a seasonal employee.

I still shop at my gamestop because I have friends who work there, that worked for me, i buy a great deal of my games at CC because I get 10% off new games and accessories with their gamers club.

Honestly if you are looking for a job that pays well gamestop isnt the place and you know that when u get hired, basicaly most GA's are there to get the discount and think its teh greatest thing to work at a game store.

[xerodok]

It's a little thing called money kind of you know important...and I'm in the midst of looking for another job. Besides you can say what ever you want about how GameStop is the next messiah, truth is it's still crap. Funny thing is even as a store manager you still get paid crap barely enough to cover living expenses here where I live. I got a raise a couple months back a whole 15 cents.....funny though that same month tax went up to 10.05% or something of the sort where I live so yeah, if that's not evil (and clever) I don't know what is not to mention our discounts suck we don't get discounts on systems and we always have to wear collard shirts because "customer wont know who works there without them" according to corporate.

I also absolutely hate that they treat us like common criminals with "pocket check" says a lot about a company that doesn't even trust their employees. Funny thing is, you can easily be in cahoots with your manager/asm/sga/lga/ga to steal shit...

15 cents? You either scored poorly on your review or got hired into the company half way into one of the quarters,if that's all you got for your raise.
Also, your raise is stacked on top of what the minimum wage is raised. In Michigan at least, so in Chicago it may be different. (I got almost a 2 dollar raise when I got promoted/raises)

About the pocket checks, it's not the company that doesn't trust you, it's an in-store thing. If you trust your co-workers, there's no point to religiously do it. At my store, we don't even do it, and haven't for years.

So, before you start ranting about GameStop (like I said before), notice that it's really only you & the shitty districts that have issues.

[Izzy]

I can't understand half the shit this guy says...

[izembo]

15 cent raise has to be an LGA at most, or else you got a really crappy review

[xerodok]

15 cent raise has to be an LGA at most, or else you got a really crappy review

Thank you, lol.

[Fahren]

I actually got a great review fyi. I'm the "main" GA there. I'm there as much as SGA ASM or Store manager...

[izembo]

then yea, for a GA that's a pretty good raise. i don't see why thats considered crap, that's the entry level bottom rung job. most don't even get 10cents

[Moridam]

Sometimes I our store gets shipments from another store and my god the games look like someone cut them with a razor blade. How could they trade in games like that? I mean were they all on crack at the time and said "shit lets send it to another store so we don't get blamed" or something?

Haha, this used to happen all the time whenever we did the quarterly regional stock balances. It wasn't bad early on when I worked there, but once we started getting pressured to take everything in no matter what the condition, RSB's turned into a bit of a joke. Why in the hell would we send off all of our good copies of a given title and keep the mangled-to-hell discs in-store to sell to customers? That rationale was pretty much universal, as in any incoming RSB shipment from any store, maybe 5-10% of that inventory would be sellable.

Eventually, we just decided to defect an entire round of those shipments after checking them in. I think the end result of that little experiment was, instead of giving us a little leeway in turning away shitty useless trade-ins, they started threatening to write people up for sending said shitty useless titles during any kind of interstore transfer.

Good times!

[xerodok]

I actually got a great review fyi. I'm the "main" GA there. I'm there as much as SGA ASM or Store manager...

There's no such thing as a main GA, lol, You might get a lot slightly more hours than your other co-workers, but that's it.

After my first performance review as a GA (2 years ago) I got a 21 cent raise. Then when minimum wage went up a couple weeks after, my raise stacked on top of the minimum wage increase.

So I was making almost 8 bucks after my first year with the company, which isn't bad at all.

[Kyo]

There is a Lead GA postion at the store here, he's a key holder. Along with Sm, ASm, SGA Obv, so they have 4 key holders.

[Alina]

I like my local GameStop, just because the people that work there (including the store manager) are very cool. They all actually play video games, and know what they are talking about. I don't buy used games, and I buy all of my older titles on eBay.

I don't mind pre-ordering, just because I love the bonus stuff that comes with it, even though I know they are created just to bump up the amount of pre-orders. If giving up $5 a bit early gets me something moderately cool, then I don't see what the problem is.

[Fahren]

There's no such thing as a main GA, lol, You might get a lot slightly more hours than your other co-workers, but that's it.
.

I put "main" because I'm the only one that gets hours. theres 2-3 other GAs but they never work only I do because I'm the best one. I don't mean to brag or anything I'm seriously the only one that gets hours

[Eticket]

I'll buy new games there occasionally on first day or CE type stuff. I have a Gamestop and a Walmart nearby in the same lot. When Mario Kart Wii came out, we headed to Walmart at midnight only to be told they weren't selling individual copies of the game. They had it available if you bought it in a bundle with a Wii. There were about 5 of us there and every one of us just walked over and bought it at the Gamestop across the lot.

I'll buy used games there occasionally if they're older and cheaper but for the most part I go there a lot less than I used to. I've never bought a system from them and I never plan to.

Coincidentally, the only time I traded any games in was when I bought my PS2 copy of FFXI at an EB 4 years ago. They had some bonus value promotion going on and the guy didn't know any better so he gave me full value for a bunch of '01 and '02 EA Sports games and a couple PS2 launch titles (remember Summoner?). I got about $50 out of a stack that would have gotten me $10 otherwise.

I actually like Game Informer though. They have some decent information from time to time.

[Melena]

There's no such thing as a main GA, lol, You might get a lot slightly more hours than your other co-workers, but that's it.

After my first performance review as a GA (2 years ago) I got a 21 cent raise. Then when minimum wage went up a couple weeks after, my raise stacked on top of the minimum wage increase.

So I was making almost 8 bucks after my first year with the company, which isn't bad at all.

If you think almost 8 bucks an hour after your first year with a company is not bad, you have horrible horrible standards to pay. Here's a bunch of places that start you near or at that point depending on what position your hired for.

Target, Frys, In 'n Out Burger, Sears, JC Penny's, Macy's, Nordstrom's, etc. and i'm not counting commision positions with them.