Yeah, in the past year I could tell my gamestop went downhill and looking at the GS subreddit, I can see lots of employees disgruntled with the awful corporate management. So many tech trade demands and stupid policies that they have to follow, and no matter how nice the customers are and how pleasant things end up being, they can still get written off for not selling enough random crap like pop figures or getting quotes.
There's a part in the article where they note how GS people are seen as easily replaceable on a whim to corporate, and I can absolutely confirm that's the truth at my store: For years, we had a good array of employees and managers who were some of the nicest people I've ever dealt with, and it made my local GS the to-go place for any physical items since 2005, even when I jumped on Amazon's train for a bit when they had those discounts, GS was still a good place for eShop cards and merch, even when corporate threw up a bunch of toys at the store and made it half-toy store, it was still enjoyable to go to due to the good service.
But last August? Something weird happened. All the long-time employees were not there anymore, either booted or left on their own accord. This new dude who was godawful at his job and looked like he barely took care of himself came there instead, and when I picked up a preorder for Collection of Mana he didn't even know where the preorder boxes were and wasn't really wanting to be there. Turns out this guy was the brand new store manager and most of the old staff quit, and thus my GS has been going in hardcore on the tech trade nonsense. Every freakin time I go in now, this store manager with no deodorant and a shaggy beard is in change and barely knows what he's doing, and constantly asks me if I know that I can trade in my phone or tablet.
Yes, I knew the last 50 times you told me. Yes, I know my pro card expired, I did that on purpose. Yes, I know that corporate sucks, but that doesn't excuse the time I bought 4 PS3 games from you and you didn't even put in the game discs in because you were staring into space. Yes, you really did mess up our local Sword and Shield midnight event by telling everyone in the town for weeks that you'd be open for the games at 11 PM, only to shut the store down at 9 PM and leave dozens of people out in the cold and scrambling to the next closest store. But god, no wonder most of the old crew at my store left. I see new, very nice employees come now and then, but they almost always get retired within months due to not being able to stand the manager for taking care of himself so poorly, or for being rotated out for new seasonals. It's just baffling how Gamestop barely cares anymore these days and on a corporate level I don't think they know what they're doing. They don't even let you price match for pete's sake. I know not all stores have declined in the same way as mine due to this tech trade policy, but dang... I can vouch for a lot of things in this article as a long time customer who befriended a lot of the managers.
