15 Shady Ways GameStop Treats Their Employees That’ll Make You Glad You Don’t Work There
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GameStop is ridiculously corrupt. They way they treat their employees is SHAMEFUL…
You Are Reading :15 Shady Ways GameStop Treats Their Employees That’ll Make You Glad You Don’t Work There
For many a young gamer, working in a game store has to be a dream scenario. I know it would have been for me. To middle school me, spending my time surrounded by games, talking about games, and just being immersed in that world would have been incredible. However, for various reasons, that never came to pass, which, in retrospect, I’m kind of glad about. While working in Gamestop, like any retail job, has its upsides, there’s also a whole ton of downsides. From barely being able to afford to keep the lights on, to predatory management, there’s a lot of reasons why I’m glad I never ended up behind the counter.
While Gamestop manages a variety of companies that I’m personally glad exist, i.e. Game Informer and Kongregate, the store itself has a whole range of problems. Whether it’s the frankly ridiculous mark up that the company charges on used games, their notorious “Circle of Life” policy that keeps employees as uncomfortable as they possibly can be, or the upselling that both the employees and customers hate, there’s a lot to dislike about the store. That’s a shame because the staff is usually pretty good people, but corporate? Less so. Its days are probably numbered thanks to digital distribution, so we may essentially be watching a company in its death throes, but that’s not that great of an excuse for their shady behavior. Have you ever worked at a Gamestop? What did you think of it? Let us know in the comments!
15 The Worst Idea Of All Time
Anyone who’s worked in a sales job will be familiar with the horrific things that are quotas. Whether you’re selling refrigerators, cars, or video games, you’ll always be given a quota to hit. Keep failing, and you’ll get the chop. Usually, this isn’t a problem for the customers. However, at Gamestop, it can be. Thanks to their “Circle of Life” policy, more preference is given to selling used games and systems than new ones. Picture the scenario: you walk into a Gamestop knowing what you want to buy, like a brand new PS4, but instead, the store clerk encourages you to buy a used console instead. It’s not their fault in any way, they’ve got a quota to hit that needs to get fulfilled, but it adds unnecessary time and stress to your trip. A completely boneheaded move from corporate.
14 Corporate Fat Cats Tell Employees To Lie
Let’s get down to brass tacks for this entry. There’s a bigger problem with the Circle of Life than just the aggressive tactics, and that is that it encourages lying to meet your quota. Not every employee will do this, but every store is run differently, and some will allow it. It’s hard to blame them when push comes to shove too, since the penalty for not meeting your quota is getting written up. So if there’s a new copy of a game available for $30, but due to pricing strangeness, the used one is more expensive, there have been reports of employees saying all the new copies are sold out, so you’ll have to get the used one, despite there being new copies in the back. It may not have been corporate’s intention, but this policy effectively sponsors lying to keep your job.
13 This Should Be Illegal
So you’ve got you a full-time job. You should be able to afford food, bills, at least the essentials of life, right? Well, guess again. According to former employees, if you’re working for Gamestop, you’ll have to work another if you want to support your needs. One current assistant manager, who also said employees are scared for their jobs thanks to the Circle of Life policy, said they had to work their second job until they became Assistant Store Leader when finally they were earning enough to support their family. What do they have to put up with for this paltry paycheck? Well, monthly stress outs about hitting their targets and having to try to force products on customers, of course. A job for during high school? Yes. A job for an adult? No.
12 Head Office Is Dumber Than A High School Student
Among the numerous things you would expect from a multi-billion company with around 20,000 employees, one would surely be market research, wouldn’t it? Well, according to an employee on Glassdoor, that’s not the case.There’s little-to-no understanding of the markets they’re operating in. So if you’re in a tourist area, or a low-income area, you’re still expected to flog subscriptions and preorders, as though you were in a middle/high-income one, or one where a large amount of customers aren’t just passing through. This level of obtuseness often comes from market domination, something which Gamestop just can’t count on in this day of Steam and a hundred other web stores. As well as representing a staggering lack of awareness, this also means, yet again, clerks will be encouraged to sell things people don’t want or need.
11 No Work/Life Balance
As if all the things we’ve already mentioned weren’t bad enough, it gets worse for the long-suffering employees of Gamestop. If you’re lucky enough to get working hours (more on that later,) you will be expected to work a huge amount of hours for low pay, especially in Q4. Your work/life balance will not exist, instead, you’re going to be rushing around in a stressful environment for a pittance, to ensure that everyone gets their gifts for Christmas. Gamestop workers, I salute you.
The perks you get? Ah, some free games occasionally. You know, the sort of thing you could just buy with your own money and enjoy on your own time if you worked reasonable hours for reasonable pay.
10 You Will Die Here
Glassdoor is a superb place to find out what employees think about their managers, and they’re no less honest about Gamestop. According to another employee, the progression is extraordinarily slow. By which I mean, almost static. According to the employee, the pay, the benefits, and the promotion prospects don’t change, no matter how long you’ve worked there. According to this employee, they’ve worked there for 10 years, and are still getting paid $9.24 per hour. While it’s always possible that they’re just not good enough to get promoted if that’s the case, why are they still working there? You’d think that if they were that bad, they’d have been fired, but no, they’re still there, still working for bad pay and in the same exact position.
9 The Thirst For Blood
Another complaint that comes up from workers at Gamestop is to do with there being no sense of teamwork. Thanks to Gamestop’s extraordinarily high turnover: the result of a combination of having a mostly young workforce, it being a retail job, and the bad working conditions, there’s not many opportunities to build up a strong relationship with your other team members, something that’s essential for good customer service. It will strongly vary from store to store, with some able to keep people for longer (i.e. college students, or career workers), but several suffer from a lack of a strong teamwork ethic, keeping just about everyone (including customers) on their toes at all times. This is another thing that Gamestop isn’t alone in, but in a company that’s got quite such a lot wrong with its corporate side, it’s the icing on the cake.
8 Your Experience Means Absolutely Nothing
The Circle of Life program is so awful that it doesn’t even matter if you’ve been working for Gamestop for years. One former worker, who had been with the company for 12 years, and a manager for eight lost his job over the policy, due to not meeting their quota over the holidays. The reason they didn’t? Their employees were stressed, so they allowed them to take their sales, boosting their own score at the sacrifice of their own, keeping stress off their staff. They believed that their strong record and the store having a high score overall would let them keep their job, but their superiors saw it another way. They were fired afterwards because they were thought to not be “an effective leader by leading by example.”
7 Fired For Honesty
Working in retail is generally a pretty soul-sucking enterprise, and one that you’re not likely to pour your soul into. So if you find out that a few customers are sharing a rewards card, against company policy, you’re not all that likely to really care. Say you do though, and after it’s been going on for a while, you tell your manager, what would you expect? Probably some praise or at most, a slap on the wrist for letting them get away with it, right? Not so at Gamestop! One employee, who had a customer satisfaction rating of 93 percent, told their manager, and even paid off the extra points and savings they got, but what was the result? They got fired. For honesty. Great stuff.
6 The Stores Are Sometimes Pretty Much At War
You wouldn’t think that rival stores of the same company would have an adversarial relationship, really, would you? You’d expect there to be maybe some friendly competition, or a co-operative relationship, but apparently, that’s not the case! According to another employee, with everyone scared for their jobs thanks to the Circle of Life program, competition between stores to keep their scores high means that super shady stuff happens. For example, the employee says that their rival store will refuse to do high-value used returns at their store, and will also lie about the writer’s store, saying that they aren’t doing launch events, but that they are. Combine this with the lack of teamwork thanks to a high turnover, and you have maybe the furthest thing from a good corporate culture that you can. If employees of the same company can’t trust each other, what hope is there for that company?
5 Good Customer Service Isn’t Rewarded
Ah, the upsell, something anyone who’s ever been to a Gamestop is familiar with. You go in with a set idea of what you want to buy, you know how much it is, and that’s all you’re going to spend. So what happens when you get to the checkout? You get bombarded with offers to buy this junk, or that subscription, and it just annoys you and sours your experience. Well, the employees don’t like it either, but guess what: if they don’t do it, they could get written up. All this means is that employees and customers get their time wasted spending time and energy doing something they don’t want to do, and putting your customer experience in the ground. If you fail to upsell a bunch of garbage to customers, you’ll be for the chop. Great, huh? According to one employee, the message is sell this stuff, or lose your job.
4 Hours Don’t Get Any Better For Managers
The hours at Gamestop suck, pretty much. Even for managers, you get two weeks of paid vacation per year, and aside from that, the only time off that Gamestop gives you is a ticket to a conference. For some strange reason, they appear to be under the impression that a work conference is an enjoyable experience, or time off. Granted, you get to visit another city, but you could do that in your own time! All the other weeks of the year, if you want to keep getting your paycheques, you need to work 44 hours per week, and far more at certain times of the year, all to keep “enjoying” a bad work culture and terrible pay. Not the sort of thing I’d like to be doing, let me tell you.
3 They’ve Been Rated As One Of The Worst Employers In America
With so many problems in the system, it’s no small wonder that Gamestop was voted one of the worst places to work in the United States a few years ago. In 2012, the business news site 24/7 Wall Street came to the conclusion, using data from Glassdoor, that the company was a terrible place to work. Just 32 percent of workers approved of the CEO, with common complaints being the valuing of sales over customer care, something which was corroborated with a listing on Consumer Report’s naughty list. Now I just want to let this sink in for a minute. Out of all the companies in the United States, from smaller business to multinational corporations like Gamestop, they are one of the 10 worst. That’s…impressive in its own way.
2 Actually Getting Work Can Be Hard To Do
When you’re just starting out, and just want to get some work done, Gamestop isn’t even good at helping you with that. Call me old-fashioned, but if you’ve been hired, my expectation would be that they’d actually want me to…you know, work. However, getting hours can be an absolute nightmare, and quite literally. According to one poster on Indeed, their hours were cut to almost nil after a Black Friday, leading to them literally having to live in a homeless shelter. How crazy is that? That someone who is technically in work has to live in a homeless shelter, because the company won’t give them the hours they need. If you’re under 18, it’s even worse, because the amount of tasks that you are legally allowed to do is shorter.
1 They’re A Punitive Country That’s “[REDACTED] Run”
If all of this hasn’t put you off working at Gamestop yet, you’re a braver person than I, but also, I have one last review to tell you about. All of the problems that I’ve talked about so far from low pay, to long hours, to having to upsell, to the monthly stress attack that is the Circle of Life policy are terrible, but the cherry on top is that management do not care about the employees. They know that in the nation’s high schools, there are countless new potential employees, eager and inexperienced enough that they’ll put up with anything. This leads to the store being run with a “Nazi approach” according to the writer, who says that as soon as the management have a reason to fire you, whatever that may be, they will do so. Think long and hard before putting in an application there.
Solomon is a UK-based writer with a passion for gaming and pop culture. When not working, he enjoys stylized ultraviolence, a life of petty crime, and surrealistic and psychedelic experiences. Coincidentally, his favorite games are Hotline Miami and GTA V.
Link Source : https://www.thegamer.com/shady-ways-gamestop-treats-their-employees-thatll-make-you-glad-you-dont-work-there/