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[rhythmicswindle]

As a guy who actually submitted an application to try to work at Gamestop but never got hired (never got contacted again despite completing three urine tests, I guess someone drank them on the way to processing or whatever), I wanna know if there was a sort of rotation of firing or letting go certain employees to hire new people for the next sales season or however that goes.

Was it for a sales associate position, or management?

 

[firehawk12]

Do people play the gutted games?

 

[26thletter]

Did you ever work any midnight launches? If so, were they fun, or were they hectic and stressful? Or both?

Midnight launches were fun, especially for games you were excited for. We would normally go drinking before midnight launches (and inventories)

We had another guy who was dumb enough to break the street date on Smash Brothers and play it in our store. We were also pretty sure that he was stealing from us.

I would "break" street dates for select customers. By breaking street dates, I would sell them the game right before close on the day before if they had the pre-order paid off in full.

most of the girls sucked at the job.

Our females didn't know anything about games, but the customers would walk right past us to talk to them. They always had the highest reserves/cards. I even had to step in and kick a few "stalkers" out of the store.

Do the regular associates have numbers that they have to hit on a weekly basis? It seems like I get bombarded by pre-order offers every time I walk in the door.

They do, but how strict they are followed depends on a store to store basis. I had flagship stores that would base the schedule on performance, better numbers = more hours. I also had stores in low income areas that got most of their sales off of < $20 pre-own games. I never expected them to pull great reserve numbers. Despite the rumors, in my 10 years of working there, I never saw anyone get fired for low numbers. Only stealing and doing dumb shit (I once had a guy selling drugs out of the store)

 

[ShinoguTakeruKoeru]

Was it for a sales associate position, or management?

It was only for sales associate, not management.

 

[26thletter]

Another great part was the applications that were turned in. Written in pencil, with tons of words spelled wrong, using their mom as a reference. Good times.

 

[Gully State]

What's the deal with managers' conferences? Do you guys really get free games/systems..etc?

 

[Wario64]

Another great part was the applications that were turned in. Written in pencil, with tons of words spelled wrong, using their mom as a reference. Good times.

Did they list their gamerpoint score and number of times prestiged as well?

 

[Neuromancer]

Have you ever had sex in the store, or did you know of anyone who did?

(Can't believe no one asked this already, COME ON)

 

[Speevy]

Does calling retail jobs "not real jobs" make you feel better about yourself, or is it that you just hate Gamestop?

 

[26thletter]

What's the deal with managers' conferences? Do you guys really get free games/systems..etc?

Along time ago we did. Lot's of free games now. Its been years since anyone has given a system (well at least since 2008).

Does calling retail jobs "not real jobs" make you feel better about yourself, or is it that you just hate Gamestop?

I think this comes from the fact that a lot of people start working there as a part-timer while they are in school. They are making minimum wage, or very close to it. Managers make decent money, DM and up make good money. A DM makes > than 70,000

Have you ever had sex in the store, or did you know of anyone who did?

Haha, I never had camera's in my store, so I can't speak for any of the employees that I had.

Did they list their gamerpoint score and number of times prestiged as well?

Never seen that, but I've had an entire list of the games they've finished. WoW knowledge was a reoccurring theme as well

 

[freenudemacusers]

Have you ever had sex in the store, or did you know of anyone who did?

(Can't believe no one asked this already, COME ON)

I came in here to ask the same thing. What about breakroom hj's?

 

[26thletter]

I came in here to ask the same thing. What about breakroom hj's?

You're aren't given enough hours for break room hijinks.

In most stores, there is single coverage pretty much most of the time. Holidays are different, sometimes closing is different. Home Office pretty much gives you the lowest hours you can operate on at all times.



We would have movie nights every other week in our stores. We would order a pizza, get some beer and watch the shittiest movie we could. In the Name of the King, the Story of Ricky, etc. We also had VF5 tournaments all the time

In most stores,

 

[ChiefKief]

You should AMA over on Reddit.

 

[soxinthebox]

Reading female workers, this was at a video store, but still of interest.

Well I'm working with another employee one night and some his friends come in. Well two of them immediately go and start hooking up in the back of the store (not the backroom mind you). This one friend of his is still in the front and talking to us. She's a blond, in one of those high school tennis team outfits. She always went to Agnes Irwin which if you know the Philly Suburb area produced some of the hottest girls on the planet (or it just seemed that way to me and others in High School). Well she's like it must be so fun to work in a video store (which to an extent it was). She asks if she can come behind the register. Of course that is cool with us. She then asks can she ring people up. We're like fine and for about 30-45 minutes she runs the register and we just act like we're training a new person to the customers. She becomes one of the most cheerful and pleasant people we ever had working there and she's very bouncy. Guys (and adult guys) really loved talking to her. I think some must have been upset later on that she wasn't a real employee. lol

I really should have tried hitting on her, but I think I realized I sucked at it. So I decided to not even bother to try and to just have a nice conversation (which I did). She may also had not been single.

 

[CountAntonius]

Oh yeah? I worked at Gamecrazy. Opening shifts I remember going to the bank and making deposits of under 50$ almost daily. I would literally have 3 transactions a shift on most days.

 

[NotMyUsername]

Have you ever had sex in the store, or did you know of anyone who did?

(Can't believe no one asked this already, COME ON)

At one of the Hollywood Video stores I worked at I was subbing in for their assistant manager (I had transferred up as an assistant but no stores needed a full-time assistant so I was bopped around). Against corporate policy one of the employees and myself started dating and when the manager realized it soon after she pulled me aside to tell me where we could do whatever we wanted after hours and the camera wouldn't be able to spot us. I thanked her and did not take her up on that offer but thanked her for the suggestions. Our break room also had two couches that I was told almost immediately upon starting to never sit on because they had been used for such a purpose by any number of current and past employees. Apparently that store was a sex jungle.

Oh yeah? I worked at Gamecrazy. Opening shifts I remember going to the bank and making deposits of under 50$ almost daily. I would literally have 3 transactions a shift on most days.

None of the Game Crazy's attached to my Hollywood Videos I worked at ever did that poorly but I also jumped ship a year or two before they all went under so perhaps it was closer to that time? They may not have had huge days all the time but that seems dreadfully slow for any store.

 

[Tylahedras]

Interesting thread, I can't believe they search you when you leave the store... even on breaks and lunches? Yikes.

You've already stated that managers hate working there, what about DMs? And how bought into the corporate culture are these people? Do they actually believe the crap they say or are they just doing what they have to do to keep their jobs?

Most places I worked where people didn't like their jobs they were pretty bought in. It's kind of like an abusive relationship where you justify everything your spouse does until your not together anymore.

 

[ridethepiggy]

It's over. My days for working at GameStop are at an end. I've now got a real job making actual money.

As a fellow ex-EB/Gamestop employee of many years, I wanted to stop in and say congrats.
Don't forget about those sad kids working what they considered their dream jobs.

Best customer experience?
Worst customer experience?

Those are the moments I remember.

 

[CountAntonius]

None of the Game Crazy's attached to my Hollywood Videos I worked at ever did that poorly but I also jumped ship a year or two before they all went under so perhaps it was closer to that time? They may not have had huge days all the time but that seems dreadfully slow for any store.

It was a few years before the collapse and in a horrible area. that store was just a ghost town. Weekends they did ok holidays they did fine but the average day was always almost under 200$ and once or twice a week under a hundred.

 

[Arsenic]

I was there for about 2 years and is probably the best/worst job i ever had. I have so many stories i could probably write a book or create a sitcom. Here's a few highlights.

good:
-We were the flagship store. therefore had AMAZING events. Guitar hero, WWE, Call of duty, baseball, GTA4 ect. Really great times. Met a lot of cool B list celebs and had awesome convos with game devs.
- First dibs on pretty much everything. Shirts, pre order bonuses, buying a used system that's basically a day old. Same goes for new games.ect
-discounts and borrowing games. In our store we were only able to borrow used games.
-Might sound lame but met a lot of woman. You be very surprised by the amount of good looking woman who play games. I'm still close with a lot of them.
-fellow employees and cool costumers, made some GREAT friends. the amount of regulars we had was huge. Last time i went to the store we randomly bumped into a old regular of ours. He said how much the store sucked after we were gone and how he never goes there anymore.
- some other benefits. video games are huge. I use to eat at subway a lot and he would give me discounts all the time. Of course he wanted something in return but never really asked. times this by 100. i felt like a cop just getting stuff handed to him. I would always decline of course. well most of the times.

bad:
-most of the girls sucked at the job. i totally understand you might not play video games but atleast learn something instead of asking us! Also they got to do pretty much what ever they wanted because how beautiful they are. classic example, our ac was broken during a hot summer. A girl walked in and said "umm no ac? im working at another store instead, bye" (we had a smaller store across the street in a mall).And of course our older male managers let them with no problem.
-the whole preorder and GI bullshit. At the time i was there our store was never really hard on us for it. Since we were a flagship store we would get the numbers without really trying. but i must gotten my ass chewed by our DM million times for not doing it the way he wanted.
-foreign customers suck.
-fuck you to everybody who complained about our "new games" being opened. Don't like it? then go to the other 100 million stores you can buy it at. I honestly never understood why people bitched about it. I can't speak for every store but myself or any other person i worked with never forced that sale. We actually hated it to be honest.
-listening to "eye of tiger" 8 hours a day because of the bock band setup.
-stickering cases for used games. EVERYONE hates them but yet gamestop still does it. It's ugly as fuck and to me as a customer makes it less attractive to buy.
- i was there during the Wii, Wii fit, and battletoads prank call craze."you got wii?" *cringe*

I can go on and on but honestly it was one of the best times i ever had. If i would work there now? Probably not. Their pay is pure shit. However if you're young like around 17-20 i say go for it. If you really love the business you can move up pretty fast. I've had a lot of friends who've gotten their own stores within a few years.

This sounds like the store on 34th street in Manhattan?

 

[caligula13]

question: one guy at gamestop told me "child of eden" is published by microsoft and it is not coming out for PS3.

was he lying or is he just badly informed?

 

[x Power Pad Death Stomp x]

What's the deal with managers' conferences? Do you guys really get free games/systems..etc?

It was the only good part of the year, depending on the other managers in your district, it's a blast. A free trip to Vegas is a free trip to Vegas.

Having a job that sucks horribly 361 days out of the year isn't worth the 4 fun days in Vegas....and yes, you get free games. Microsoft always gave the most, followed by Nintendo and then Sony. Other vendors recently have been giving free stuff, LA Noire was the last game I got free before I got fired.

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

I've worked at both a Hollywood Video and a Best Buy and this is a somewhat common occurrence, even more so around the holiday season when gifts are purchased. The bad part are the people that will argue and call you a liar instead of understanding their mistake when you attempt to help them.

I hate this. People have no idea what they want and they still argue with you.

 

[eastmen]

Some notes

A gamestop manager will make between 35 and 45 thousand a year depending on his store performance and his time in the company. Some Managers like my friend have hit almost 50k after bonuses. This is of course an extremely busy mall store that does more money and reserves than the next 10 stores in the district combined.


The best story was from 2000 to 2003 when I worked at gamestop. Monkey Island was coming out and the sent inflatable monkeys and bannana trees to the store. Our female manager was in love with the thing but while they were away at confrence one of the employees took pictures of it in the toliet and slitting its throat . THe thing was fine but she was upset so her and her BF a 6'7 red hair and freckled black man (that I was still friends with until the split up and he almost killed himself and went halfway across the country) decided to have a meeting with the staff. Her BF was a manager of a gamestop a 5 minutes up the road and both staffs swithed between the stores while the Managers were at confrence. So they have this meeting threatining to fire us if no one told them who did that to the monkey. A saturday night meeting in which we stayed till midnight (closing was 10) listening to two adults curse out out and threaten our jobs.

Now these two Managers were nuts. I mentioned the guy but the girl was about 5'5 and she was about 280lbs and just disgusting. You'd go to the wendys in the mall and get dinner and come back to eat it in the backroom and she'd call you out to the floor so she could use the bathroom and after she was done you'd go in the backroom to find half your food missing. She would scarf it down just to save money on her own food (or cause she was fat) the whole talk of the mall however was about her and the other manager having sex in the backroom. She was extremely loud and people could hear her a few stores over. They would sometimes go in the back during work hours and people in the store would hear them and run their children out. It was hilarious

Another time I had come into work on Thursday the day I was schedualed and worked with the ASM and my friend who has the same first name on me. The shift went well and we got everything we needed done. Friday night I had a date with a girl i was into at the time ,first date was taking her out to a nice resturant in the area and everything. I'm in the middle of the date and my manager calls and starts cursing me out for not showing up for work and that if i didn't come in I was fired , i told her i wasn't schedualed and that I was on a date. She told me that I was fired and not to bother coming in. Lucky for me I would print my schedual out to take home every week so I faxed it to the RM and he told me to go back to work on my next shift day. I couldn't go to the DM because her and my manager were close friends .

Towards the end of my run the company had just purchased funcoland and I was sent with the Male manager to biggest funcoland in the area about 20minutes away to help with that store , I didn't care cause the Manager was my friend and would allways make the Girl manager give me the max raise i could get (25cents) and at the time getting $9 an hour (more than some ASMs ) to work in a place that was just starting to get game informer was pretty good , when it was slow we'd switch off watching the floor for another person to be able to go for a walk or get food. But we went up there and a few months later the two broke up. It was really bad . One day the guy came in while customers were in the store and punched one of the tvs that the used systems were running on and screaming and then he broke a draw by slaming it. Now this was scary as he is a big guy and really built so alot of customers just left.

I finaly got fired a two months after him. See I was the only one at the store who knew anything. He had hired a brain dead girl to be the ASM and fired the other 3rd key so they brought people in to work with me and once they were up to speed the fired me. As I said she was friends with the DM and the DM had another employee at another store say i read his personal file and told people the information in there (which i never did) I got fired for GM and can never work a gamestop again. Not that I really care.

I have so many stories from those few short years its not even funny .


The thing is I made a ton of friends in the system and a ton of them still work there and through them I made even more friends. So I still know everything that happens.

The Female manager got knocked up by another Manager and they had a shotgun wedding until the guy ran off to join the army. They split and she married another gamestop guy who was a DM really gross looking slob the actual guy that fired me . They are together now but he got fired from gamestop and then fired from a sony style store. I think they broke up after having another child.

So karma... yea watch out for it .

 

[Persona7]

Oh yeah? I worked at Gamecrazy. Opening shifts I remember going to the bank and making deposits of under 50$ almost daily. I would literally have 3 transactions a shift on most days.

What city?

 

[CountAntonius]

What city?

Norwalk California.

 

[eastmen]

I don't really know if it's legal or not. One thing for sure is that GameStop was pretty strict that you weren't suppose to take home any strategy guides that were "pennied out" (aka thrown away).



My managers were pretty good about not hiring people who didn't know anything about games. I worked in a high traffic store and so we pretty much had our pick of the litter.

We had a few really bad apples though. We had one guy who literally called in almost every other day. And I know the definition of literally.

We had another guy who was dumb enough to break the street date on Smash Brothers and play it in our store. We were also pretty sure that he was stealing from us.

Lol back in the day they would penny them out and we'd say we threw them out but i'd take them to the barnes and noble up the road from us and sell them for $1 or $2 a guide. I'd take 50 or so each time and we'd use it for pizza day . Every wed the pizza place in the mall would have $5 pizzas so we would get one for the 2 or 3 employees working that day and enjoy a free meal. Every wed we would switch out who worked so everyone would get at least a free meal on gamestop

Dealing with the demands of corporate and our district manager.

When I left the store, these were our sales goals.

Preorders - 18%
(# Preorders / # Transactions )

GI Subscriptions - 15%
(# Subscriptions sold / # Qualifying Transactions [where PowerUp card was not already used])

Scratch Protection - 10%
(# GPGs sold / # Transactions)

Suffice it to say, very few people met these goals. I do not know if these are corporate numbers or if these were numbers set by our DM. These numbers are pretty much double what they were when I first started.

There was also the fact that at our store, we were never done with anything. I worked at a high volume store. We had tons of sales, tons of trades, tons of shipment. And yet we were never given enough hours to get everything done. Managers were routinely given only 80-100 hours to work with on scheduling. That's 40 for ASMs, 20-40 for SGAs, and whatever table scraps were left for GAs. And apart from usual duties like ringing up customers and processing trades, you've got stuff like shipment, system counts, price changes, perpetual counts (inventory checks on common items), RSB's (outbound shipment to other stores), Title-On-Hand counts (scan every box on the shelf for a certain section), sending off sales numbers at 12, 3, 6, and closing, etc etc etc.

Our store was in a perpetual state of undone.

They did this because of bonuses . The DM would get bonuses if their districts got x% of subs and reserves and all the other fun stuff. Then there is pay roll bonuses and other stuff.

The Manager of the store would also get these bonuses.

 

[distantmantra]

question: one guy at gamestop told me "child of eden" is published by microsoft and it is not coming out for PS3.

was he lying or is he just badly informed?

Ignorant and badly informed. Child of Eden comes out for the PS3 next month.

 

[jost]

I still work at Gamestop and I live to tell the tale.

 

[Killing_Joke]

This sounds like the store on 34th street in Manhattan?

correct! ever been or worked there?

 

[26thletter]

You've already stated that managers hate working there, what about DMs?

Being a DM is a lot less work than being a store manager, with double the pay.

At times it can be a little more stressful, but its a lot less hours. You basically do a bunch of conference calls and drive around visiting your stores. Now, I'm sure this can be a much tougher job if you have a group a bad managers, but I never had that experience. (I was an Area Manager, basically a DM in waiting)


Our DM was super lazy, he never visited our store or really did much of anything.


Fun facts.

-Around the time I left, one of the aspects of bonuses was turnover. Basically if you wanted more money, you didn't fire anyone. Ever. This lasted for close to 2 years.

-Jaime Kennedy MC'd a portion of a vendor show. It was on par with his Activision stunt. He made fun of the managers being fat nerds that made no money and then made fun of the CEOs suit. classy.

-On average, between 3-5 managers lose their jobs while in Vegas at the vendor show.

-There is a sheet of paper to determine how much you are paid if you are assistant store manager and below. Its crazy. If you have a college degree, are bi-lingual, and have 5+ years of retail experience, you were supposed to get like 0.75 over minimum wage (I can't remember the exact amount, but it was stupid) if you were a part-timer

 

[Square Triangle]

Interesting thread, I can't believe they search you when you leave the store... even on breaks and lunches? Yikes.

You've already stated that managers hate working there, what about DMs? And how bought into the corporate culture are these people? Do they actually believe the crap they say or are they just doing what they have to do to keep their jobs?

Most places I worked where people didn't like their jobs they were pretty bought in. It's kind of like an abusive relationship where you justify everything your spouse does until your not together anymore.

Pocket checks are done at almost every single retailer, it's nothing new.

It depends on the person, you have your guys that are there just for the paycheck and those that really enoy working there and want to move up.


DMs are under a lot of stress as well and that's why SMs work a lot. The ol' shit runs downhill applies here. If the district is doing terrible for week or month the RM steps in to talk to the DM and from there the SMs needs to step their game up so to speak.

Another example of, this is no different than any other retailer.

 

[BLagiver]

Have you or anyone you knew just take all the pre order dlc codes/bonuses home and sell them on ebay instead of giving them to the customers like you were supposed to?

 

[cajunator]

Are people really so broke that they peddle games that came out last month for 10 bucks?

 

[Square Triangle]

Are people really so broke that they peddle games that came out last month for 10 bucks?

Generally the people that trade in for cash are looking to get drug money. At least when nearly every cash trade customer smells like weed you get that idea lol.

 

[26thletter]

Generally the people that trade in for cash are looking to get drug money. At least when nearly every cash trade customer smells like weed you get that idea lol.

QFT

People would also steal things from other stores (wal-mart, target, etc) and bring in a huge stack of games (like 10 or more). You can add "refurbish" fees to make them worth less money, so we would have contest to see how low we could get the value and still have them take the cash. It was always the same customers, bringing in "M&M's racing" and shit like that, then getting $2 for 15 games, haha

 

[ConradCervantes]

Thing I hated most about driving reserves and subs is we'd often have contests within the district for who'd get the most reserves on, say, inFAMOUS. The winning store would receive a copy of the game, and of course the manager would claim it, not the guy who got the most reserves on said game in his store.

Gutting games blew just because of the principle, but almost no one cared. You'd get the occasional nerd who'd whirl around and stomp out of the store in indignant rage, but that was a rarity.

DMs love nothing more to create busy work for their stores. Our numbers could be fantastic, customer experience through the roof, and they'd still make us do dumb shit like move used 360 to another side of the store, then of course there was the whole used DS case debacle. We had to throw all the cases for the used DS games away for no reason. I told my old boss I refused to throw ours away because I was a collector, and other collectors would likely shop elsewhere. So we kept our cases, and soon other stores in my district caught on to what we were doing and started keeping theirs as well. Not long ago Gamestop reversed their stance on the issue, so I like to think I had a small part to play in that. One of my few good memories.

 

[The Elite]

It's over. My days for working at GameStop are at an end. I've now got a real job making actual money.

I thought about doing some sort of mega "confessions" post, but it'd be hard for me to touch new ground. It's been done before. Instead, I've decide to open myself up for questions. Pretty much anything. If you've got questions about their employee checkout policy, I can answer that. If you're got questions about what managers really do on a day to day basis, I can answer that. If you want to know what I think about the future for the company, I'll try and speculate.

I intend to be neither a harsh critic nor an apologist. I'll be answering questions as honestly and openly as possible.

What did they pay you in before?

 

[Mikor]

Lol, GAF = Reddit (Ask Me Anything is a Reddit.com thing, for those of you who may not be already aware).

I too was a Gamestop employee for a long time, 5 years. Went from a seasonal temp to a Store Manager in that time. Not exactly a shining beacon of American retail, that's for sure.

 

[Lombax]

my question is a simple one. How can gamestop charge retail price for a gutted copy of a game? If I buy a game and open it, then it is worth trade-in value. However if gamestop opens the same game they still charge full price.

I worked for EB games during college and it was a far different company / environment than what Gamestop is today [we did crazy stuff like allowing customers to return games]. I have fond memories of working in the Watertown, MA store because a lot of the folks from Looking Glass, and Papyrus would come in often just to shoot the shit.

 

[The Elite]

One of the few times I'm actually working alone and by myself, I'm helping this lady out on the sales floor. This guy walks into the store and starts banging on the counter. HARD. Almost like he's going to break it. Fairly large guy. Certainly works out. Might have been juicing.

"HELLO? DOES ANYBODY WORK HERE? CAN I GET SOME FUCKING SERVICE?"

The guy is obviously pissed out of his fucking mind, so of course I have to abandon this lady to help him.

"MY MOM CAME IN HERE THE OTHER DAY TO RETURN THIS FUCKING THING THAT DOESN'T WORK. I DON'T HAVE THE RECEIPT BUT YOU BETTER FUCKING GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK. THIS FUCKING GUY WOULDN'T RETURN IT. SHE'S A SCHIZOPHRENIC. NOBODY FUCKING DISREPECTS MY MOM. MAN IF HE WAS AT THE BAR I'D FUCKING POUND HIM. FUCK."

He throws an opened Playstation Eye onto the counter. This guy is so unbelievably rude that I can't even believe what is happened. I had never had to deal with anybody this rude in my entire life.

But I'm a retail employee. I have to take it and do what I can.

Problem is, our POS system (I love the double meaning) was really strict about returns. I had to put something in my system, so I had to ask questions about when he bought it and such so that I could go through our journal and find a viable transaction to do the return with. And of course everything he was telling me was wrong. So I'm trying to do what I can, and the whole time I'm doing this he keeps going off. At some point he starts to be extremely threatening.

"FUCK MAN YOU NEED TO FUCKING DO THIS FOR ME OR I'M GONNA BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF YOU. WHERES THE CAMERAS HUH? WHERE ARE THE FUCKING CAMERA BLIND SPOTS?"

I'm still so completely dumbfounded about all of this that I couldn't even do the logical thing and kick him out of the store. At some point I'm expecting him to turn around and say he "got me" or something.

"Sir, if you could just... " Didn't even finish the sentence.

"WHAT TURN DOWN THE LANGAUGE? FUCK YOU"

It wasn't about your language, jackass. You were threaning me with assault.

"Look, I'm trying to do what I can here. I can't just open the register and throw some money at you. I could lose my job. I'm doing everything I can so if you could just give me a second I'll do the return. There's no reason for you to get angry at me when I've done nothing to you."

Finally, after what seems like 10 minutes, I find a transaction where a Playstation Eye was sold. Whatever. I don't even care if it's his transaction. I throw it all into the computer and I give him his money. He's out the door.

Fuck. I still can't believe how rude this guy was.

Great story. When I worked at Blockbuster I had a guy threaten to punch me because he waited too long in line. Kicked him right out but he stole my stapler in the process.

I was also robbed by a guy wearing a Green Goblin mask and making Goblin noises.

 

[The Lamonster]

How do employees feel about returns regarding retailer exclusive DLC - for example, I preordered MK for the Scorpion outfit, then returned it a couple days later. I made up some lie about how my girlfriend surprised me with the collector's edition because I want to stay friendly with these guys at my local store.

Would they really have cared if I told them the truth?

 

[badgenome]

Since I have to assume that you committed suicide at least four and a half years ago, the obvious question is: how are you communicating with us from beyond the grave?

 

[daviyoung]

Does Knights of the Old Republic have a singleplayer campaign? One of your colleagues told me it had after I said it was online, then he told me to pre-order it.

I don't believe him.

 

[ScionOfTheRisingSun]

Here is a question that has been on my mind. How come whenever I come to pickup my pre-order, which is almost always a niche release, Gamestop never has the damn pre-order bonus to go along.

They hand me the game and when I ask about the bonus they shrug, "hasn't come in yet". Then for weeks I have to pester them until they finally get them in and give them to me. Drives me round the bend it does.

Also, who is the chief of chiefs over there, Mephistopheles, Luciferous or Beelzebub?

 

[Seraphinianus]

awaiting confirmation on whether this AMA is legit. Unlike that woman who was supposedly born with two vaginas, but wouldn't post pics.

 

[shintoki]

Here is a question that has been on my mind. How come whenever I come to pickup my pre-order, which is almost always a niche release, Gamestop never has the damn pre-order bonus to go along.

They hand me the game and when I ask about the bonus they shrug, "hasn't come in yet". Then for weeks I have to pester them until they finally get them in and give them to me. Drives me round the bend it does.

They come in(Sometimes a few days late). I know the one of the ones by me, likes to pocket that shit. He also sells the advertising goods he gets in.

 

[Mikor]

They come in(Sometimes a few days late). I know the one of the ones by me, likes to pocket that shit. He also sells the advertising goods he gets in.

Yep, most Gamestops get a very limited quantity of pre-order incentives (typically not enough to fulfill their preorder allotment, but Gamestop also factors in for that on occasion and assumes not all customers will pick up their pre-orders) and typically the management pockets them or gives them to staff/friends/etc.

 

[26thletter]

How can gamestop charge retail price for a gutted copy of a game?

This was always funny to me. Do you think that anyone at the store level makes these calls? Is it shitty? yes. Is charging $2 less for the used copy shitty? yes. But people buy them, so the home office keeps doing it. These types of decisions are made way above the store level.

Here is a question that has been on my mind. How come whenever I come to pickup my pre-order, which is almost always a niche release, Gamestop never has the damn pre-order bonus to go along.

They hand me the game and when I ask about the bonus they shrug, "hasn't come in yet". Then for weeks I have to pester them until they finally get them in and give them to me. Drives me round the bend it does.

A lot of times these things come in months in advance with no indication of what they are for. Randomly a box of random shit comes in. A month later you hear it's for some random game. I tried to make sure my stores did well with this stuff, but sometimes one store will get 20 reserve items and the one down the road won't get any. Pre-buy items aren't on inventory, so they're hard to keep up with.

I think how long you've worked there also adds into this. When I first started working there all of that shit was awesome, by the end it was like "oh boy, another piece of plastic/poster/art book, no thanks".

 

[Square Triangle]

How do employees feel about returns regarding retailer exclusive DLC - for example, I preordered MK for the Scorpion outfit, then returned it a couple days later. I made up some lie about how my girlfriend surprised me with the collector's edition because I want to stay friendly with these guys at my local store.

Would they really have cared if I told them the truth?

No one gives a shit. It's just a costume.