Random Upsetting Behind-The-Scenes Secrets Of GameStop (22 items)

• (#1) They Treat Women Like A Commodity

  From GS_Ex_employee:

  "Women get better performance numbers. Simple as that. I hired based on what I thought a good employee was; sure enough I had a great mix of all races, ages, and both genders.

  Of the two females I had, one was a true gamer and a bit socially awkward. The other, a really hard worker when it came to task-work but not the most knowledgeable. Not saying the gamer was less attractive than the other, but the other knew how to use it to produce numbers.

  Management constantly wanted me to move the gamer out."
• (#2) Even The Customers Are Rude To Female Employees

  From GameStopGirl:

  "Customers definitely treat the male and female employees differently. Lots of people did not want to speak to female employees, either because they were nervous or because they felt like as girls, we wouldn't assist them as well as a male employee. I also usually had to push good games a lot harder to convince people they were actually good."
• (#3) They Don't Care About Gamers, They Care About Numbers

  From GS_Ex_employee:

  "You could be the most knowledgeable, charismatic, prompt employee... but if your numbers weren't up to snuff, you would be encouraged to set goals and cut hours until you quit or got better. Early on management sincerely wanted people to succeed. The new management would try and convince me otherwise."
• (#4) Management Is Living Below The Poverty Line

  From GS_Ex_employee:

  "I started at 28K-a-year. I was located in the southeast. It was at 33K when I quit.

  (I worked) Anywhere between the required 44 to 60 a week. You try not to do the math and see where you are hourly; it will only hurt your soul."
• (#5) They Force The Staff To Push Pre-orders

  From gamestop_ama:

  "Reserves were the death of me! The expectation went from 15% to 20% to 30% to some obscene unattainable percentage that Jesus himself couldn't reach."
• (#6) If You Don't Get Pre-Orders, You Don't Get Hours

  From gamestop_ama: 

  "I did witness some employees being dishonest about pre-orders in order to secure one. We had to be extremely pushy to get them (contrary to what district managers and other higher-ups who have never worked in the store thought) because, if we didn't, your hours got cut."
• (#7) They Treat Their Employees Like Cattle

  From gamestop_ama:

  "Everyone thinks it's like the Discovery Zone of jobs where all you do is talk about and play games all day, but in reality it's just another retail job.

  If you (as a 16-year-old) were hired, you would be a Game Advisor. A GA is a dime a dozen; if you aren't meeting expectations, you could be let go and ten minutes later have someone else fill your spot.

  Your job as a GA is ringing people up and getting reservations on new games and signing people up for Power Up cards. Oh, and alphabetizing the walls. Please, God, make sure you know how to read."
• (#8) You've Got Two Opportunities A Year To Get Hired

  From gamestop_ama:

  "The best times to drop off your application are in September for holiday hiring, or in about May for the summer. Due to the fact that the company gives us no payroll to work with, there is not really too much of a chance of being hired any other time in the year."
• (#9) They Suck The Will To Live From It's Employees

  From formated4tv: 

  "The longer you're there, the more I think the general public just annoys the f*ck out of you and breaks you as a human being.

  There were two groups of regulars: some that were really nice and would reserve five-to-six games at a time (young rich kids, one eventually got hired so he would buy more stuff from work), and some people stunk like sh*t and wouldn't shut the f*ck up about WoW or some other ridiculous game.

  One guy would come in daily and tell me about his sweet boots in Oblivion or some other nonsense piece of clothing on his character."
• (#10) Here's How To Get Freebies

  From formated4tv:

  "Need a free strategy guide, or want a leftover toy that GameStop sells (Halo clothes, figures, stockings, etc)? Ask the person working if they have any guides or promo stuff 'pennied out.' If they're not jerks, they'll let you know and give you the stuff.

  Guides (when a game get unpopular) get priced at .01, at which point we throw them away (or give them to people when they ask for them).

  The rule always was 'You can't just offer someone the free stuff, but if they ask you about it, and it's free, you can give it to them.'

  I made a lot of little kids happy with a lot of Pokemon sh*t that way."
• (#11) They Store Product In The Bathroom

  From formated4tv:

  "Most stores have extremely small back rooms, so we make room wherever possible to store games and systems, with the most common place being the restroom (which is the size of a small standup shower). There was a video once of a store's toilet flooding, and ruining a stack of consoles (on YouTube). This is 100% accurate of how things are stored."
• (#12) The Employees Keep All The Cool Stuff

  From formated4tv:

  "You know when you see online that there's a sweet promo item for reserving a game? Yeah, the employees will take every one as soon as they come in on shipments. Our inventory system lets us know when the promo items are in the mail, so someone watches for them and just grabs them all."
• (#13) You Don't Get Paid By Cash Or Check

  From formated4tv:

  "The way GameStop pays you (if you don't have a checking account for direct deposit), is they put your check on this debit card that you get from them. The card has all of these rules, such as: you can only withdraw a certain amount off of it, it costs a certain amount to do a withdrawal (to take out your paycheck), and there are only certain banks you can go to to take money out off of it.

  Imagine getting paid $215 for two weeks, then finding out that with this 'debit card' you got paid with, that you can only take $200 out of your paycheck, with the $15 being stuck since it's an off amount. Then, when you go to take your $200 out, you get charged $2 for trying to get your money."
• (#14) Store Managers Have To Work A Lot For Very Little

  From gamestopperthrowaway:

  "As a manager I made 15-an-hour, but they cap you at 40 hours and you don't get overtime. Oh, and you still have to work 45 hours weeks. You have to work six days during Xmas and you have to work around 52 hours as well. All for less than 40K-a-year.

  When I was manager I was working 55-60 hour weeks because my store was one of the tiniest I had ever seen (less than 1000 sq ft) and the year I was there did over $2 million in sales. So, I was actually making closer to $11/12 an hour when you actually computed it out."
• (#15) Employees Literally Don't Have Time To Pee

  From WingsnLV:

  "There are many days that I am the only person on duty and can't use the bathroom for eight hours."
• (#16) Even The Employees Hate Those F*cking Stickers

  From WingsnLV:

  "Those stickers are the bane of my existence. I buy games from work all the time and usually spend ten minutes removing the sticker junk with Goo Gone. Many stores sticker the spines to make their inventory counts easier. I don't do it at my store, but still get transfers from other stores that do."
• (#17) The Staff Know How To Work The System

  From WingsnLV:

  "The key to trades is to exploit the promotions. Keep an eye out for '50% extra' sales. Some games just don't sell well and you don't get a lot for them. Nobody wants to buy Kinect Adventures - that's why you got a nickel for it."
• (#18) Some Of The Employees Are Shady

  From gamestopinsider:

  "I once had to fire an employee for stealing...from customers. He processed a trade-in and then swapped the card that had the credit on it for a blank card and kept it for himself. If the idiot didn't use that card on a transaction where he used his employee discount, we may never have caught him."
• (#19) Some Of The Customers Are Crazy

  From gamestopinsider:

  "I had a guy freak out because someone quoted him the wrong price for his Nintendo 64 over the phone (yes, when we still sold these..probably around 2004). He was told $25 over the phone, when it was actually $20. This dude flipped out over the five bucks and proceeded to tear up the store.

  He ripped off shelves and started throwing games around and left the store and said he was going to his car to get a baseball bat. We smartly locked the door behind him when he left and called the cops. Of course because the customer is 'always right,' we later gave him the $25, but he wasn't allowed to ever come back."
• (#20) They're Ripping You Off

  From gamestopinsider:

  "Gamestop definitely is [ripping people off]. Most people don't care, it seems to me. I understand the trade-in values suck, but people still trade stuff in all the time.

  Warranties [are] pretty much useless. If you time it right, you can get pretty fair values for your trades."
• (#21) Managers Get Special Swag

  From Mynameisnotchris: 

  "All of my walls back at my apartment were plastered with free posters after marketing gave us new ones. I had countless standees of the best quality with nowhere to put them. Games were sometimes given to managers, especially at conference time, and I probably accrued a few thousand dollars worth of merchandise over my time there. It was a great perk."
• (#22) They'll Buy Anything

  From Mynameisnotchris:

  "Thousands of games every day are traded in (because we don't refuse games based on whether we resell them well) that never get resold. It's a waste for everyone involved, and the company loses more than it gains from it."

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