GameStop Employee Bribes Me So He Can Keep His Job: A Pathetic Pre-Order Story
I wouldn’t like to work for a company that gives me a quota of something, and if I don’t happen to meet that selling-quota for the month, they’d fire me. GameStop/EBGames seems to give their employees a certain quota of pre-orders, and if they don’t meet it, they lose their job. A GameStop employee recently explained everything to me.
“Listen man, I’ve seen you in here before.” He pulls me aside. I thought I had either won something, or was about to be scolded for playing the PlayStation 3 kiosk too long. (I’m still trying to convince myself to buy one.)
“Do you like Madden? How about Assassin’s Creed? BioShock? Perhaps Halo 3?” He gave me his whole lecture about how great it is to pre-order, the one everyone gets a million times when they visit their local GameStop or EBGames.
“No thanks, I’m not interested,” I told him. “I already have everything I need pre-ordered, and I seriously doubt that it will be that hard to find BioShock or Assasin’s Creed when they ship.” When I told him this, he knew I wasn’t just another one of those sappy occasional gamers interested in giving free money to a large corporation so they can gain free interest, and that he has to do a lot more to get me to pre-order something.
“I only need one more pre-order for this month. If I don’t get one, then I’ll lose my job. Seriously.” LOSE his job? Is this the mafia? This guy has to be in his 30s. Does he have a family? Is he going to not be able to feed his children and wife just because I don’t pre-order Halo?
“Listen, I’ll give you this awesome new Transformers poster, this CD of Square-Enix music, and, a $10 gift card that you could USE to pre-order whatever game you want.”
This shocked me, it really did. This guy is going out of the way, against the store’s policy I’m sure, to get me to pre-order a game. The poster sounded nice. The album may be interesting, and $10 doesn’t sound too bad at all. I looked at the guy and he looked back at me. He was desperate.
I walked over with him to the counter, waiting for people with video cameras and a Candid Camera gameshow host to pop out behind the Games for Windows kiosk. But no one did. He PAID for the giftcard, got me a poster from the back, and gave me the CD.
He grew a smile and said, “So, what game do you want to pre-order?”
I already had Halo 3 pre-ordered, so I decided to get BioShock. After he got my name and info, I walked out of the store puzzled, with a lot of free crap in my hands. I guess everyone won. He is still able to feed his family (or at least continue to feed himself ramen), and I got an awesome new Transformers poster.
Perhaps this isn’t actually that common. Or perhaps others have also been bribed just so an employee could meet his or her quota. I seriously doubt that, but I do know that it was the weirdest GameStop visit I have ever had.
July 17th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Sounds like a load of crap to me, but alas… if you got free crap, I say all parties win.
July 17th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
“If I don’t get one, then I’ll lose my job. Seriously.” = Getting a bonus for the month.
July 18th, 2007 at 8:37 am
yup i am best friends with my local gamestop manager and employees i know everyone there and this is true they need a certain amount of preorders to keep there job but then i get all the exclusive preorder merchendise when i do preorder things there
July 18th, 2007 at 11:43 am
Well, you just got punked. I manage a gamestop, and that’s bull. There is no quota, there is a percentage we have to meet. If it isn’t met, we just get a wag of the finger. I’ve only seen one person fired and that was because he’d been doing horribly for the better part of 6 months; a clear sign he just wasn’t trying. So congrats, you just got month old freebies that the staff had already picked through, and he got his preorder.
July 19th, 2007 at 12:38 am
No, I didn’t enjoy this post, so I won’t be subscribing to 1P Start. Thanks for the offer though
July 19th, 2007 at 11:16 am
This is exactly what I went through nearly everytime I went to a certain location close to the DFW area. And it was more than one person there. They wouldn’t stop at bribing either. They’d fix it so that my unused credit for games would become pre-orders that I didn’t ask for or even want. I’d tell them no and they’d STILL convert that credit to a pre-order. One of them crossed the line when they took home all of the pre-order goodies for a game (a MAJOR pre-order goodie, not a lame-o poster) to profit off of. The manager admitted to me in confidence that one employee had indeed done this. I was livid and action was taken. They finally cleaned up that store two months later, but that still does not rectify Gamestop’s flawed pre-order system.
September 4th, 2007 at 7:53 am
[...] 4th, 2007 http://www.1pstart.com: “I only need one more pre-order for this month. If I don’t get one, then I’ll lose my job. [...]
September 11th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
CJ you’re a moron. I worked at Gamestop for 2 months and left just as the whole “get pre-orders or lose your job” thing rolled out shortly after the christmas season of 06. This was indeed company policy and there was even a chart in the back of the store tracking how many pre-orders a person got a month. I was an assistant manager and my idiotic store manager told me in private that we had to fire two of our game advisors cause their pre-orders were low. I left the company shortly after that. so I believe this story and it’s very much true.
September 18th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
Sadly, this is very much true. I work at GameStop, and yes… we do have a quota.
Here’s how it goes:
G.A.’s - At least 10% of all transactions for the week must have a reserve or subscription.
S.G.A.’s - At least 15% of all transactions for the week must have a reserve or subscription.
A.M.’s and S.M.’s - At least 20% of all transactions for the week must have a reserve or subscription.
We don’t meet it, we loose our job. Isn’t it awesome?
November 16th, 2008 at 2:43 am
Dude that sounds rediculous! I work at a gamestop and everyone there is awesome…am I crazy? We’re always nice to the customers and we’re chill about the reserves… If a customer asks about a game coming out, yeah we ask if they want to pre-order it. Never have I bugged anyone about getting one..that’s pathetic. That’s the same with subscriptions; when customers are trading in a LOT of games, I’ll ask about the EDGE card, (which is our supposed horrible annoying ’scam’ we pull), because in a LOT of cases, they would end up getting more trade-in credit. BUT this is only if they DIDN’T want cash. Yeah Gamestop is a corporation, but so is Wal-Mart and Target, etc. I’m sorry the experiences you have had in your local Gamestop were bad ones.
Working at Gamestop isn’t my future, and I don’t know how long I plan on staying, but for now it’s WAY better than working in a greasepit, seriously.
I don’t know..maybe I am crazy, but I love my job (no the evil corporation hasn’t brainwashed me) and the cool people I meet there.
Oh and I guess other Gamestops need more employees like me because if someone is NOT giving good customer service, oh dude I take over, ’cause that’s not right.
November 19th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
I have been working at Gamestop for about a year now and i can tell you no one gets fired for not reaching their pre-order quota. In fact we were trying very hard to fire a person who had barely done any work at all.It took about 6 months to achieve this thanks to all the fun Gamestop regulations. My point is if we can’t get a guy who straight up didn’t show up to work 2 days in a row without calling, I’m pretty sure u can’t get fired for not reaching your pre-order quotas. It sounds like this guy just wanted to get a pre-order out of you and nothing more.