• Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
  • We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.

Slipknot666

Banned
Dec 1, 2017
1,716
I have been watching these dude's videos about his experience working at GameStop and holy shit! That looks like a miserable place to work for.

 

Meg Cherry

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,279
Seattle, WA
It's all the underpaid labor & horrible customers of the retail industry, combined with the "You're lucky to be working here" attitude of the games industry.
 

PlanetSmasher

The Abominable Showman
Member
Oct 25, 2017
115,737
As much as GameStop sucks (and indeed it does suck), it wasn't the worst place I've ever worked.

I worked for Comcast for three days and had to physically restrain myself from deliberately driving off the highway at full speed the morning of the fourth day because that job made me so miserable part of my brain legitimately considered death a superior alternative.
 

rare

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,421
User Warned: Drive-By Posting
I don't have to watch to know it's just clickbait, same old muh gamestop bad I'm sure.
 

WillRobBanks

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
419
I worked there from 16-19 (am 32 now). No regrets, but it really grates on you. I quit when they kept calling me in to manage unexpected shifts while I was in college.


I was amazing at shilling reserves and subs, so that pressure wasn't the worst. (Consistently 35% - 60% daily, with integrity). Pay was awful and working with the public in general is awful.

I had to call over 100 people to tell them they weren't getting a reserved Xbox 360 for Christmas because we took 120 reservations and got 20 units... fun times...
 

Deleted member 13015

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
2,266
There's a lot of videos of Gamestop ex-employees that tell their stories, and if you look hard enough you'll find a couple that are positive.

I remember watching one of a woman who worked under an easy going manager, where they were allowed to work as a team instead of competing with each other *on who gets to sell more stuff/magazine subscriptions.

The negative videos have affected me though; I would be seriously cautious as to work for Gamestop.
 

Curler

Member
Oct 26, 2017
15,605
As much as GameStop sucks (and indeed it does suck), it wasn't the worst place I've ever worked.

Likewise. I had some awful experiences at GS, but I worked at worse retail environments (with both bad local management AND awful corporate practices). It stinks trying to get through college and being limited to night-only work, but keeping the job as a safety net, financially (since you don't know when you will actually land your job you worked on a degree for).
 

PlanetSmasher

The Abominable Showman
Member
Oct 25, 2017
115,737
Likewise. I had some awful experiences at GS, but I worked at worse retail environments (with both bad local management AND awful corporate practices). It stinks trying to get through college and being limited to night-only work, but keeping the job as a safety net, financially (since you don't know when you will actually land your job you worked on a degree for).

Yeah. My first day of GameStop was Black Friday the year Wii Fit came out. What a mess and a half that was. Even so, once the Wii Fit fervor calmed down my store was a relatively sane place to work and I was always good at naturally getting people to reserve things without any particular pressure so I was never at any risk of being disciplined.
 

TitanicFall

Member
Nov 12, 2017
8,274
I just did it for a few semesters while in college. Honestly it was not much different than any other retail job I worked. I was much more miserable working at a cable tv call center. Your environment is mostly shaped by the people around you. You can have terrible bosses and coworkers, and you can have great ones.
 

KodaRuss

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,858
Texas
Their corporate office is down the street from me. Their parking lot is constantly full even during weird times of the week, Saturdays, after 6pm on week nights.

However, the manager at the store that I go to seems like he is always in a good mood. I have talked to him a few times here and there. I go in there maybe once every couple months or so.
 

Gxgear

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
1,160
Vancouver
Stopped watching this guy's videos after repeatedly insisting that he did things the ethical way while boasting top numbers in the nation. Like it's fine to admit that everyone, including yourself, did what they had to do to stay employed, but to claim that you were above it all loses credibility.
 

Deleted member 11413

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
22,961
Working all retail sucks. Not to detract from the specific ways working for Gamestop sucks, but there are very few retail jobs that aren't hell.
 

Curler

Member
Oct 26, 2017
15,605
Yeah. My first day of GameStop was Black Friday the year Wii Fit came out. What a mess and a half that was. Even so, once the Wii Fit fervor calmed down my store was a relatively sane place to work and I was always good at naturally getting people to reserve things without any particular pressure so I was never at any risk of being disciplined.

Wow what an awful time to stick people on their first shift! (Normally you train BEFORE the holiday shopping season starts...)
 

TheFurizzlyBear

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
3,454
Its retail and YMMV depending on the people you work with/for. I spent 8 years there at 6 different stores, I'd give some of those years as high as a 10 out of 10 and some as low as a 3.
 

data west

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,013
It's not living

Because you don't make enough for it to be living. And they're willing to pay you any more than they have to because they think 'anyone would want this job!'. I worked there for 6 years. I've worked at my current job for two years. Same level of education requirements. I make more than double what I made there and have been promoted twice. And it's easier work and there's no one getting pissed at me all the time.
 

Deleted member 1441

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
135
I guess I'll be the rare few that worked there a few years and didn't have as terrible of a experience. I mean, yeah its a retail and dealing with some shitty customers come with the work, but overall I enjoyed the people I worked with, got to talk about video games all day and it was fairly easy work imo. Thinking back now that I'm out of College and working full-time, sometimes I miss those easy work days.
 

PlanetSmasher

The Abominable Showman
Member
Oct 25, 2017
115,737
Wow what an awful time to stick people on their first shift! (Normally you train BEFORE the holiday shopping season starts...)

It was hilarious. They put me outside of the store and used me as a greeter for 75% of my shift. EVERYONE wanted to know if we had Wii Fit in stock (we didn't), and the regional manager actually came down to yell at me before I explained that customers were not going to come into our store and buy something else if we didn't have the flavor-of-the-month "it" product they came to the store specifically to buy.

The fact I wasn't fired then and there was impressive enough. Then right before I quit a year and a half later the same regional manager asked me if I would be willing to film customer service training videos because my customer ratings were so high. Ridiculous.
 

Xando

Member
Oct 28, 2017
27,321
Welcome to retail.

After working in retail for a year i don't think there's a worse industry/job one can have.
 
Oct 27, 2017
561
I worked for EB/Gamestop for 12 years, no idea how I did it. I spent four of that as a third key/ASM/wandering acting manager whenever they'd fire someone. I liked the people I worked with, for the most part, but their practices are scummy and the way they treated employees was borderline illegal. The best thing that happened to me was the district manager made me so mad I went back to school to finish my degree. I'll shed no tears when that place finally goes out.

All that being said, it wasn't my worst job. I also did call center customer service for a bit.
 

Gay Bowser

Member
Oct 30, 2017
17,708
When I worked at GameStop, our store was understaffed, but we were absolutely not allowed to ever work overtime. So whichever key holder was closing on Saturday night was required to go in and delete people's hours worked before submitting the schedule to payroll.

So, yeah.

I've had other bad retail jobs, but none quite like GameStop.
 

Gxgear

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
1,160
Vancouver
When I worked at GameStop, our store was understaffed, but we were absolutely not allowed to ever work overtime. So whichever key holder was closing on Saturday night was required to go in and delete people's hours worked before submitting the schedule to payroll.

So, yeah.

I've had other bad retail jobs, but none quite like GameStop.
And people were just okay with the fact that they won't get paid for extra hours they've already put in? Sounds illegal.
 
Oct 25, 2017
11,039
Any job where I have to deal with the general public sucks ass. I'm not interested in peoples bullshit or their moods or whatever the fuck.
 

Hardvlade

The Fallen
Oct 27, 2017
2,444
I worked for GameStop as a seasonal employee (1 to 2 days a week) and honestly it was super chill. It was a while back so there wasn't a lot of pressure about numbers.

Midnight launches were fun experiences for the most part as well. Only thing I disliked about that job, was the PS3 wall. My store was inside a high traffic mall, so tourists would move the cases around, organizing it was hell.

Retail sucks, no matter where ya go, but GameStop wasn't bad back then (2012 era)
 

giancarlo123x

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
25,385
I gave the video 5 minutes, this sounds like most retail jobs but okay. Seems unfortunate he was targeted.
 

Curler

Member
Oct 26, 2017
15,605
Wouldn't be surprised if that wasn't even communicated to the employees in question at all.

Due to Gamestop's corporate practices (especially pressuring district managers to hit their numbers) there's toooooons of legal shady stuff that goes on. Cut hours, make more money is the name of the retail game, but man some of those district managers can but cutthroat and do ANYTHING to make their numbers (or at least, pretend). That's why all the young people that work at GS get bogged down trying to make their "goals".
 

Renteka-Bond

Chicken Chaser
Member
Dec 28, 2017
4,272
Clearwater, Florida
When I was younger (around 15-16) and really wanted a job (grew up relatively poor), I was really hyped and excited to get an interview at a local gamestop. I ended up not getting the job and I was really bummed about it back then. Now, though, I kinda like to look at it as the Manager/other employees looking out for me, as I had a pretty naive outlook on what the job would actually entail and I like to think they were protecting me from that reality (I was pretty close, overall, with the staff there).
 

Deleted member 36578

Dec 21, 2017
26,561
GameStop is the only job I've ever had where I literally quit and straight up walked out not looking back.

When I first start working there things were awesome back in 2003. My friend was the manager, everyone who worked there was cool and I made a lot of new friends. We didn't have any pressure to sell extra shit because for whatever reason we were successful and the customers respected us. We'd tell it like it was, if a game sucked we didn't push it. We didn't need to do anything shady at all and it was a happy environment.

Then my friend moved away and it was like the band broke up. I was a key holder, never wanted to be an assistant manager or higher so I had a lot less pressure than others. The new manager sucked. Two of my other coworker friends got fired because their numbers weren't good enough. Now it all felt like a retail job. I moved to a couple other stores, faked numbers, lied and acted shady as shit because that's what the company wanted. Then one morning some prick assistant manager got mad at me for checking the computer to read internal emails prior to clocking in. Got into an argument with him over it, and said I don't need this. Put my key on the desk, walked out the door and never contacted that company again.
 

Darkmaigle

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,522
I did ten years there, lessons learned have gotten me where I am now and I built a life for myself and my family off of checks and health insurance from that company.

Pretty crappy job tho in retrospect. Only one ever worse than that was call center for UPS. Absolutely miserable experience.
 

Zombine

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,231
Worked there from 19-21. Met some amazing friends but holy fuck was it bad having to hit those sub quotas. Can only imagine how fucked it is in 2019.