Game Crazy rant after 3 years

R

rexflexall

CAGiversary!
Feedback
2 (100%)
I feel I finally have to let this out so I can let it go....

Sorry if this is inappropriate, but this story isn't from GS/EB. I used to work part-time at Game Crazy. It was a cool gig, got to work the late shift (5 PM to 9 PM) and it was NEVER busy. On average I only got 5-6 customers on a weeknight. I learned everything about the new games and consoles/accessories so I could give customers the best info to make an educated decision. I was super friendly and courteous. I cleaned the place up good every night. The GM commented that this has been the cleanest the store ever was. I was proud to keep that place tip top shape. I had very little traffic, but all my customers were great and I gave good service.

Come to find out one day several months later, I call for my schedule. The newly made store manager tells me I don't have to come in. I'm being let go because I haven't sold enough of the Game Crazy MVP club memberships. I admit, I didn't push it on people like it was the greatest thing since sliced bread but I still asked them and usually got a polite 'No thank you'. Better to sell them a game than not sell them anything at all, I say. I ask, "How many MVPs do I need to sell?". The newbie manager says "At least 7-8 a day." I wonder to myself and aloud as well, "How the hell do I sell 7-8 MVPs a day if all I get on an average day on my shift is 5-6 people?" Newbie manager tells me, "I don't know....you will have to figure that out. Either way we are letting you go." What am I supposed to do? Force people from the street to get in here? My Game Crazy was in the ghetto by the way, right next to the local Welfare office (no joke).

I tell him forget it and tell him that you're not firing me because I'm quitting effective immediately. Bad thing for the newbie manager was that he didn't realize I worked the 5 PM - 9 PM shift at least 4-5 times a week. We had only 4 employees at the time, 3 full-time people and 1 part-time person (me). One full-time person was a daytime manager, one full-time person was the night manager, and the other full-time person was a mid-day floater. Guess he didn't remember that the full-time floater was on vaca for 2 1/2 weeks. Or that he tried to fire me right before the Holiday Season! Because I quit, the newbie manager had to work all of my shifts in my place. Serves em' right!

Went back a few days later (the other manager was cool) to go turn in some stuff. Store was a mess and dusty, fingerprints on tvs and display cases, games out of place, dirty floors, nothing was in order like I kept it. I ask the cool manager what happened here and was quickly asked to come back because I kept the store straight and people were asking me where I was. I had to politely decline (my nights were now free to play my finally opened copy of Halo 2). Seems the newbie manager was unliked by my 5-6 usual customers because he told them he 'fired' me for being lazy...but also the traffic had picked up because of the Holidays! He was now getting 25-30 people a night. He wasn't getting any breaks either because he was the only one on the night shift until the other full-time person came back. Here's the kicker:

HE WASN'T GETTING 7-8 MVP MEMBERSHIPS A NIGHT EITHER!!!!

He was scheduled to have a conference with the DM because of his increase of customers but his decrease of MVP memberships (down from 1-2 to 0-1 because I used to get 1-2 consistently). Last I heard the newbie manager was going to work for EB or GS. Good luck to them. Now a days I don't shop at any of these places anymore, just being asked to join any of their membership card clubs drives me pissy. I now shop at BB, CC, or Wally's since my gf's mom works there and gets me a 10% discount whenever I buy games. :D


Thanks for reading....load off my chest!!!!!!!
 
[quote name='TFN']Okay.[/QUOTE]

You know, seriously, the story was good and as usual the CAG Dickhead patrol is always on the loose.

Good story OP.
 
Wait... so, this story happened three years ago?

Did this whole ordeal impact you so greatly that you needed to rant about it years after the fact to a bunch of gamer nerds? I mean, I'm sorry that boss was an asshole, but you've got a life to live--forget about his useless ass and move on.
 
I don't quite understand you OP ... from what you wrote, I don't understand why you would have a guilty conscience for being fired / having quit.


What is it you really did?
 
[quote name='Swift900']I don't quite understand you OP ... from what you wrote, I don't understand why you would have a guilty conscience for being fired / having quit.


What is it you really did?[/QUOTE]


he didn't even knock over their magazine racks.

shame shame

wait how can the day time manager re-hired you when the other manager fired you? If you have two managers wouldn't they need to agree to fire you or get approval from his dm before that happens?
 
Yeah, I know this could sound bad if I've held on to it for 3 years. I've moved on with my life but everytime I pass by that store (it's kinda on the way home) or I read a story about disgruntled employees/workers, it brings back some memories.

I know it's been 3 years but when I first joined CAG I didn't feel I could just let it out yet. It was just a rant about what happened to me 3 years ago. I told it because at that time it really affected me because I was kinda just out of college looking for my first job in IT (go figure...everyone at the time was trying to get a computer job so I kept getting screwed out of one because of lack of experience) and was working 3 part-time jobs (Burger King, AV equipment rental company, and Game Crazy) so I could be on my own. Losing that job meant losing money for rent/food/gas. But it did free up some time that I probably needed for myself.

Funny thing is right after leaving Game Crazy I interviewed for the state and was offered a job as a computer tech, making more money than I ever did working my 3 jobs combined. It was noted by the supervisor that I had a total lack of IT job experience, but was hired in the end because he admired my having 3 jobs and had a sense that I would be a motivated and hard-working employee. He knew I would earn my keep. Even funnier, my interview was at 4:30 PM and ran almost an hour. If I was scheduled to work that night at Game Crazy, I know I would probably have cancelled the interview thinking that I would have never been hired anyway. So even though it was a bad way to leave, it ended up being a really BIG blessing in disguise. If I never left I might have never interviewed for that state job and got it. :bouncy:
 
[quote name='Cmosfm']You know, seriously, the story was good and as usual the CAG Dickhead patrol is always on the loose.

Good story OP.[/quote]
It was a three year old story. I wasn't knocking him or anything, just saying ''Okay.'' because it was indeed an old story and the OP should have moved on with his life by now.

Eat shit.
 
ITDEFX.....the day manager wanted to re-hire me because he was the one that gave me the job in the first place.

The night manager tried to fire me without the day manager's agreement. But I ended up quitting instead, remember?

After quitting, I realized it was a much better situation for me instead of going back. :)
 
[quote name='Swift900']I don't quite understand you OP ... from what you wrote, I don't understand why you would have a guilty conscience for being fired / having quit.


What is it you really did?[/quote]


I don't have a guilty conscience for quitting. Honestly, the only thing I did wrong was not sell 7-8 MVP memberships a day. But....how are you supposed to sell 7-8 MVPs a day, when the numbers say I average only 5-6 people a day in the store? Even if I did sell MVP memberships to all these people, I would still be 1-2 MVPs short per day! And the night manager was no help either. So instead of having him fire me, I graciously quit. It was over the phone, so there was no in your face conversation about it either.
 
[quote name='rexflexall']ITDEFX.....the day manager wanted to re-hire me because he was the one that gave me the job in the first place.

The night manager tried to fire me without the day manager's agreement. But I ended up quitting instead, remember?

After quitting, I realized it was a much better situation for me instead of going back. :)[/QUOTE]


yea I remembered but who does have the final say about who can fire/hire you?

I am sure the day manager was pretty pissed at the night manager.

See when you have more than one manager in a small store, shit like this happens. Yea it always works out in the end.

As for making your quota...... That's just a bullshit excuse to get rid of employees. When I use to work in retail a few years ago (Target/Radio Shack), target tried to push us to get 4-5 people signed up on the target red card a day or else we would get written up..

Radio Shack didn't do that, until much later(like 2 months before I quit). I made my quota because a lot of people couldn't afford the phones they wanted(my store was in the ghetto as well). A lot of people were declined for credit approval and had to call a number for the reason...but I knew that they had bad credit in the first place. It didn't matter, as long as I got the apps and made 3 times my quota :) My manager was so proud of me :)
 
Its obvious you weren't appreciated. Stupid manager got what he deserved, and you're in a better place now.

Seems like a happy ending to me.
 
It's good you finally got that off your chest. Hopefully, you can move on from this. However, three years is quite a bit of time ago. Better now than later I guess.
 
Hmm.. well I don't know about corporate GC's, their numbers might be different, but at the GC I work at you need 5% MVP's to be paid out for them. It's best if you can do 1 MVP a shift, but as long as it doesn't drop below 3 a week you are usually ok.
Maybe your manager was confusing MVP's for pre-sales?
Either way I am not surprised. My job has been threatened several times for not pulling in numbers, but I'd much rather have happy return customers than push sales.
 
I disagree with these policies about your job depending on how many memberships you can sell. It makes the employee have to really convince the customer to sign up which is difficult and it gets the customer annoyed. I had to tell someone at Gamestop no 5 times before he stopped asking me to sign up for their discount card.
 
[quote name='squid']My job has been threatened several times for not pulling in numbers, but I'd much rather have happy return customers than push sales.[/quote]
I'm the same way. If the opportunity is there and it's a decent deal, i'll pitch it. I've had my managers do shady tactics to get their numbers. I've seen some people get warned over numbers, maybe they're less strict about it now, but I haven't seen someone get let go because of numbers in quite a while. It's up and down like anything else. I'll have some weeks where I have 1 renewal, I'll have days where i'll have five in one night (and last week was one of those, it was the damndest thing, four customers back to back with expiring MVPs that wanted to renew).

But like you said, I'd rather run a happy ship than harass my customers and some managers don't agree with that. I'll cut a deal for first time shoppers and they'll come back. If I wanted to push things on people, i'd work at GS. I know what I'd like in a game store and when i'm working, I try to make it like that. I'd like to think that some customers enjoy it, I've got some customers that only come in when i'm working, some have me on their friends list, etc. It's a really, really fun jobm but only when your boss is awesome. And that's pretty rare.

It's just that there's suge a HUGE miscommunication between higher ups and store managers (read: there is virtually no set standard. It seems like managers have free run to do what they want as long as numbers are high, which is why you read about some insanely shady things on this board from other CAG'ers, such as Slidecage having to pay for coupons that were intended to be free and managers having a case of rare games that can only be purchased by MVP members).
 
I doesn't get it, we're starting a flame war over a guys story? Seriously?

I mean, it's just one man's story, read it and move on. Why start an argument about it?

I swear some people's dicks grow like 5x on the internet.
 
Wow....my post got more reads and responses than I ever though would be possible. But come on folks, let's not start some flaming war here that will piss others off. The story was just my rant of what happened to me when I had a sweet part-time gig but because of one guy it went down the crapper. It was a long time ago, but I finally told it to everyone. It's all done, just realize that I am in a MUCH better place now. Now if I had lost that job and because of that I didn't have enough money for food and got kicked out into the streets, that would be a different story.



Thank you all for your reads and responses...........let's all just move on and have a HAPPY HOLIDAY!
 
Wow, i had an almost idnetical experience only it was working at the hollywood attached to the local gamecrazy. Was also about 3 years ago. They were pissed at me for not selling enough food/movie combos. That was actually the straw that broke the camel's back so to speak, i was sick of crappy dead end jobs and finally got motivated to enroll in a local college.

Later i found out the manager was an old friend of my mother's from high school, never seen someone apologize so fast....:lol:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
bread's done
Back
Top