There's no indication they would have shut down this year without the meme stock stuff, and 1.5 billion isn't even close to enough to cover a company of this size for years considering they haven't been making a net profit for several years now.
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Kotaku: Overworked GameStop employees walk out, tell gamers to shop elsewhere
- Thread starter Rosebud
- Start date
There's no indication they would have shut down this year without the meme stock stuff, and 1.5 billion isn't even close to enough to cover a company of this size for years considering they haven't been making a net profit for several years now.
These horrible practices by GameStop have been commonplace for well over a decade now and still nothing has changed. People really need to stop supporting them. I haven't stepped foot in one in years.
Their net loss for FY2021 was $381M and they've posted losses for 3 years in a row. The $1.67B they raised as a benefit of the meme-stocking buys them 4 years at that rate and they can go back to the well if they continue to be a meme-stock.
Not all labor unions have to be officially recognized. These employees got together as a union and agreed on a course of action and followed through. I respect it
For a company this size that 1.6 billion isn't going to be able to sustain them for years alone. And that's assuming that all goes directly into sustaining the company to begin with, the assuming their losses will continue to be the same and not worsen, and they'll still have to have some degree of sustaining revenue and the desire by those running the company to prop it up if they find it worth that continued investment.
Out of curiosity are there any good independent online game stores? I love physical media and don't want to support Gamestop or Amazon if I can avoid it but there aren't great local options.
This. I get that they will get some customers no matter what. People that don't know better. But I still see plenty of people that should know better that shop there. I don't understand why at all. It's been an absolutely shit company for so many years.
Of course $1.6B is not running their entire operations. They make $6B a year in sales and incur ~$6.4B a year in costs which is how we arrive at the $381M net loss figure. $1.6B helps them stay in business without incurring debt. If they had to incur debt and business worsened where they can't maintain the debt, that's when bankruptcy would come in and why $1.6B keeps them from going into bankruptcy. If business worsens and they continue to be a meme stock, they can issue even more new stock and take money from the meme investors willing to dump money into a dying business.
I'm actually surprised anyone bothered going to GameStop with other game stores nearby. I think the last time I had a positive experience at GameStop the GameCube was still getting new games.
I swear people out of the stores just have no purpose for being outside railing on membership programs and the like. Companies are too cheap to do anything that'd actually boost profits, and structurally you need district managers to keep track of things, but there's definitely not 40 legitimate hours of work a week for a district manager to do unless they're going to the stores and helping them do stuff in person.
100% I can see a need for the position BUT you need to do more than just look at reports and spreadsheets to figure out how all of your stores operate. Knowing your employees and your clientele is extremely important. No two stores are going to be the same.
Fuck GameStop.
Reminds me of getting fired from a GameCrazy (shitty regional chain that went under a decade ago).
I was never properly trained. My very first day on the job, my trainer (the only other employee working) decided to leave because she had a bad sunburn, so I was left on my own with no idea how to do anything other than a basic sale. I made tons of mistakes. All of my future shifts after that I was working solo. Then two months in I got fired because I wasn't proactively doing things like organizing the store or upselling to customers, things which of course I had also had zero instruction or guidance on.
It literally went:
1) you're hired
2) no feedback or training for 2 months
3) you're fired for not meeting expectations
Fuck 'em.
Reminds me of getting fired from a GameCrazy (shitty regional chain that went under a decade ago).
I was never properly trained. My very first day on the job, my trainer (the only other employee working) decided to leave because she had a bad sunburn, so I was left on my own with no idea how to do anything other than a basic sale. I made tons of mistakes. All of my future shifts after that I was working solo. Then two months in I got fired because I wasn't proactively doing things like organizing the store or upselling to customers, things which of course I had also had zero instruction or guidance on.
It literally went:
1) you're hired
2) no feedback or training for 2 months
3) you're fired for not meeting expectations
Fuck 'em.
The fact that you have people that are running stores in less than 1 year in the company tells me how desperate GameStop is to throw any bodies to run their stores lol
Feels bad for this dude.
Feels bad for this dude.
When I worked for EB in the early 00s, getting fired for not meeting quotas was always an ever-present threat that got thrown around, but they never actually did it.
Worked there from 05-10. Last 2 years were just 1 day a week thing since I had a full time job, but liked the people and was of course, games. At that time I think it was when the shift started to happen into REAL corp. shit. ALOT of us never offered the card. Never pushed gameinformer to meet quotas. And we never recommended used versions unless the customer asked for one. Left soon and then just heard stories about how bad it was and so on.
The little hole to put a paper clip in to eject a stuck disc didn't work?
Wasn't that because it was just a fine grade sander that sheered away the top layer of the disc to lessen whatever valley was created from the scratch?
My DM would show up at least once a month a half hour after open on a Sunday and then act hostile and shocked that we hadn't hit our Game Informer sub rate.
Thirty minutes after open on a Sunday. In a mall.
Former GameStop employee here.
A lot of bad feelings coming back reading this. Feel like I know exactly how they feel... But I will admit that at least I didn't have staffing issues or resource issues to properly train up new staff while I was there.
But yes, DM is never ever satisfied or congratulatory on your results, even if you passed the sales expectations given to your store. It was always "cool, now let's set the bar higher team!"
And mandated to do busywork at all times, zero downtime. And weekdays payroll would be cut short due to low foot traffic, so despite actually having a roster that could provide double coverage, I'd have to work alone and not get a lunch break and some of those days we'd actually get busy enough to be an absolute pain in the ass for just one assistant manager or manager being on shift (which means that that staff was also responsible for shipment intake and sending out shipments to warehouse or other stores, a task that's hard to juggle when you have a line of trade ins show up).
But yeah, in post-COVID-era of even more irritable customers and even lower staffing and higher risks with no substantial increases in pay... walking the fuck out is the goddamn move.
I mean, as a bonus, in my final full year with the company, I got robbed at my store twice. Once at gunpoint and the second time the person jumped the counter and physically assaulted me and my first-day-seasonal-trainee (suffice to say that was his first and final day with the company). Not exactly the company's fault but damn that made it feel humiliating to work in those conditions at that level of treatment and circumstance... It's why I left.
A lot of bad feelings coming back reading this. Feel like I know exactly how they feel... But I will admit that at least I didn't have staffing issues or resource issues to properly train up new staff while I was there.
But yes, DM is never ever satisfied or congratulatory on your results, even if you passed the sales expectations given to your store. It was always "cool, now let's set the bar higher team!"
And mandated to do busywork at all times, zero downtime. And weekdays payroll would be cut short due to low foot traffic, so despite actually having a roster that could provide double coverage, I'd have to work alone and not get a lunch break and some of those days we'd actually get busy enough to be an absolute pain in the ass for just one assistant manager or manager being on shift (which means that that staff was also responsible for shipment intake and sending out shipments to warehouse or other stores, a task that's hard to juggle when you have a line of trade ins show up).
But yeah, in post-COVID-era of even more irritable customers and even lower staffing and higher risks with no substantial increases in pay... walking the fuck out is the goddamn move.
I mean, as a bonus, in my final full year with the company, I got robbed at my store twice. Once at gunpoint and the second time the person jumped the counter and physically assaulted me and my first-day-seasonal-trainee (suffice to say that was his first and final day with the company). Not exactly the company's fault but damn that made it feel humiliating to work in those conditions at that level of treatment and circumstance... It's why I left.
One thing about the photos in the OP..... did they leave the store open and just leave without locking up? Amazing if they did.
This is the weird thing for me. If you go to the GameStop subreddit, it's filled with employees fawning over the chain. I at first thought it was a satire sub, but apparently it's not and there are employees who think it's the best thing in the world.
What? I see the opposite, for the most people are constantly shitting on Gamestop, straight up telling would-be employees to run for the hills, with only the occasional peep that tries to rationalize it as being not so bad.
Unless you live in California, because California, the state doesn't give a damn if you work 40 hours in a row. Overtime is calculated based on a weekly accrual of hours not daily. It doesn't matter if it's a midnight release or 2pm on a Saturday. In California however consecutive hours worked do count to OT. First 8 are regular time, next 4 are OT, and anything after that is double time.
Ah, I haven't checked in a while, but a few years ago it used to be very pro-Gamestop. It was super weird. Customers would post about their issues and complaints and then employees would dogpile them.
I was in San Diego at at the time, so yes. But that also exaplains my understandings of overtime being off since then too
Used games are still one of the bigger draws for me to go to GameStop, not all of them have a great price, but more often that not I can get niche titles for dirt cheap used there than any local store.
It's because the moment to moment stuff is actually great. I've never had as much fun at a job as I did at GameStop. I loved every minute of it and I'd do it all again, but the pay was keeping me from paying my bills lol
EDIT: To be clear, though, the company sucks ass. I loved my team, my regulars, and hosting midnight launches (are these even a thing anymore? We started doing less and less of them by the time I left), but dealing with shitheads and upper management that didn't care about us on top of the awful pay was ultimately what made me leave.
Good, Gamestop sucks. Hope the employees that walk off can get work elsewhere.
There are some retail chains that have/had a lot of employer support by the rank and file, Home Depot used to be one as well. Home Depot has fallen off a cliff in employee satisfaction the last 5+ years. Not just from the pandemic, either. Back in the 2000s there were like two groups of people who worked at Home Depot, young people working retail who I was friends with, and old people nearing retirement kinda cruising into it, and to a tee most of them loved working at Home Depot and had pride in the company. Had a clique of friends in high school/college who loved working at Home Depot, some friends decorated their graduation caps from high school with orange. But ... since then, Home Depot dramatically cut support, pay has fallen behind other relative retail work, benefits haven't increased much at all in comparison with other warehouse jobs (Amazon, legal marijuana, etc), and scaling way back in hiring so stores might have 10-20% of the employees they had 15 years ago... pissed off customers taking their frustration out on the skeleton crew of workers, no management, etc.
There are some retail chains that have/had a lot of employer support by the rank and file, Home Depot used to be one as well. Home Depot has fallen off a cliff in employee satisfaction the last 5+ years. Not just from the pandemic, either. Back in the 2000s there were like two groups of people who worked at Home Depot, young people working retail who I was friends with, and old people nearing retirement kinda cruising into it, and to a tee most of them loved working at Home Depot and had pride in the company. Had a clique of friends in high school/college who loved working at Home Depot, some friends decorated their graduation caps from high school with orange. But ... since then, Home Depot dramatically cut support, pay has fallen behind other relative retail work, benefits haven't increased much at all in comparison with other warehouse jobs (Amazon, legal marijuana, etc), and scaling way back in hiring so stores might have 10-20% of the employees they had 15 years ago... pissed off customers taking their frustration out on the skeleton crew of workers, no management, etc.
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A bit condescending but at this point you might be right. Given that everyone who reads this headline would rather make a snarky drive-by post about how Gamestop shouldn't exist and then pat themselves on the back as if that helped anything than actually attempting to use this to hold Gamestop's feet to the fire in regards to punishing shitty district managers. Gamestop would absolutely drop any employee that was damaging their brand if that's what the conversation that sparked from this had been about.
I guess it's easier to just post "lol company bad" and then act like the people who are hurt by these people walking out aren't just going to be other retail workers who now need to push themselves to make up the slack of another store being abandoned.
I enjoyed my time at Home Depot as much as one could enjoy retail work. I worked there around 2009/2010 during college. I imagine some of the community feeling is gone since they dropped the radios.
People have to do what's best for themselves and for their own health. You can't always consider "but what about X, or Y?" That's what these companies prey on. They will weaponize guilt without a second thought. Think about all the people who refuse to call in sick not because they don't really feel that sick, but because they feel guilty about it. That's the result of these corporations instilling the mindset in their employees that "the team" is more important than the individual. It's a giant pyramid scheme where only the ones at the top really benefit.
I quit my part time job at GameSpot over the whole Deus Ex Human Revolution PC version/OnLive debacle. Corporate sucked. Our store manager was great and didn't make us push shit on everyone. Our store did good dollar amounts so our DM basically just gave us a pass.
Even then, we couldn't avoid corporate pulling crap like the Human Revolution stuff.
Yes it always sucks for the employees who don't see any other option, but you have to be willfully blind to see that some corporations don't deserve to last. You can always say 'but what about the line staff'. No matter how undeserving and shitty the company is. No matter how much it mistreats its employees.
So, yeah. Fuck GameSpot. They're going to die soon enough either way. I hope the staff see the writing on the wall and get out now while the job market is still very healthy.
Even then, we couldn't avoid corporate pulling crap like the Human Revolution stuff.
Yes it always sucks for the employees who don't see any other option, but you have to be willfully blind to see that some corporations don't deserve to last. You can always say 'but what about the line staff'. No matter how undeserving and shitty the company is. No matter how much it mistreats its employees.
So, yeah. Fuck GameSpot. They're going to die soon enough either way. I hope the staff see the writing on the wall and get out now while the job market is still very healthy.
I worked at EB for a time. All they cared about we're pushing preorders, warranties and Edge cards. Ranked all employees in those categories, actual customer service be damned. I quit pretty quick.
Fantastic
GameStop is a cesspool in regards to upper management, and has been for a long ass time.
GameStop is a cesspool in regards to upper management, and has been for a long ass time.
To be fair, a LOT of customer complaints are bullshit anyway. (Not all, of course) I'd totally dogpile some of the complaints I got from soccer moms when we couldn't give a full refund or they wanted to use a "coupon" from some third party site that we would never honor. Things that were set by corporate and out of the control of a store worker anyway.
So much this. I had a lot of fun working with the team I had at my two-three stores I was moved around in. But Corporate bullshit would not have me go back.
I worked at gamestop for a few years. The beginning was a ton of fun, my friend was the manager, had a good time. When he moved away the new manager sucked. I ended up walking out of that job myself. I put my key on the table and said I don't need this job. It was the only job I ever quit like that.
