Man Works At GameStop 11 Years Tells All | 2007-2018 NIGHTMARE

hey I'm Cody or Camelot 3:31 and I am here today to tell you about my gamestop story I was hired in July of 2007 which started an 11-year journey of complete and utter AIDS filled Hill like the vast majority of the experiences that you have are gonna be negative you know whether it be your superior whether it be your customer base anything I mean it's it's quite terrible so when I started I worked 40 hours a week right off the bat which is something that was a little different back then than it is now so you'll hear stories about people working gamestop part-time and they're working three to nine hours a week which is the case now but when I started I worked 40 hours a week and I'll tell you why I worked 40 hours a week because I did everything my store manager told me to do without question and I mean like terrible tasks whether it be alphabetize the entire ps/2 wall which was like 30 feet long or you know cleaning the bathroom which is whole another story when it comes to the my old manager from back in those days but I would do it without you know question which means he wanted me there so that being the case I was there 40 hours a week going directly into holiday so my first holiday hit you know it's a it's a holiday in retail it's my first holiday you know in the job force really and it was absolutely god-awful as you can imagine working in just retail but working games not retail is pretty rough and I did not expect it to be as slammed as it was now one of the things I enjoyed the most was the midnight launches we did for like Halo 3 and you know the world Warcraft expansions and we would have huge launches for those games lines all the way down to the complex which is just you know half a mile away it was just awesome in the environment was always really fun and you know to be honest the business kind of took care of itself back in those days you know we had the edge card back in 2007 which gave you 10% off so it's the same thing as the powerful card is today but it wasn't you know they were they weren't so strict on the you know the selling of it because everything was kind of selling itself because you know video games were exploding that's when Call of Duty 4 was coming out and that's when you know halo 3 was you know hit and hard so at that time period everything was selling itself so it was a really enjoyable period 2007-2008 ish probably the best years there and I you know I love the people I worked with you know so if that's that's something I can take away from Gamestop is I really had a good relationship with all the people I worked with there was some I did not specifically in the later you know years there I you know it was a completely different but in the beginning it was like we were a family and that's rude that was really cool to me and I know it's not like that at very many game stops so it was a really isolated incident so I was moved up to an SGA in March of 2008 and I was ready for that position way before that but my manager told me that my district manager said I was too young for that which is completely illegal of course I didn't know that at the time and what would I would have done anything anyway but you know that was the case unfortunately so when I was in SGA and we started to transfer transitioning him from 2008 to 2009 you know 2009 this to the to that I don't remember exactly but 2009 and 2010 is when the powerup card really came to flourishing so right before the power of card really got rolling and we started that practice you started to see really strange practices being done now I want to reiterate how terrible my manager was back in those days he was a very bad person he would literally just put edge cards on people's transactions and just not I hope they wouldn't notice and if they did he would tell him the the store like if they try to return it he get mad or he blame it on somebody else and of course he ran the top numbers in our district every every week of course so naturally you know not to that extreme but naturally that was my environment I was learning in so you know I was riding to think of it you know I was doing the shady things as well and running very good numbers which helped me get you know my promotions over the years so I tribute it to that which is a very scary thought when you think about it now a good example of something shady that happens 99% of the time at Gamestop but every gamestop you go into I've worked with a lot of them and I've never not seen this happen right so let's say you're going into the store to buy Red Dead Redemption - okay now let's say it's on sale for $39.99 new now keep in mind this is new which the power of card has no effect on other than points I don't know an employee that wasn't pushing you know the circle of life that wouldn't say hey if you get this power card this will actually only be 39 and then you could pay the difference to the powerup card and you'll save five dollars off at the retail price you get what I'm saying so they were saying it was five dollars less than $59.99 but the game was already on sale for $39.99 so they were lying to them to get a powerup card and I saw that happen five times a day every day no matter what store I was in right so that's terrifying another good example of shady practices is reservations so I've seen people go into the reservation list and see that a customer had a game that he you know maybe didn't pick up or wasn't ringing out through the system that had was - had $60 on it so they would cancel that reserve either pocket the money from the refund or they would add ten reserves on to a transaction so their numbers for that day would be outrageous through the roof that happened every day no matter what gamestop you going to now these associates have to do this this is what the higher management pushes this is the environment they create you have to fall in line or you lose your job it's as simple as that I can name off shady practices for for days and days and days but you know I think you get the idea and I'm sure you've heard multiple stories from other sources of the shady practices they do so so ice moved up to an ASM and 2010 where I had to transfer to a store about an hour away and it was a new store that was opening up so that was a really exciting opportunity for me unfortunately it came to my attention that my manager had called the district manager and told him I was not ready to move up obviously because he wanted me to stay and do everything because that's how I was I did everything for him so he told the district manager that I was not ready to move up obviously he thought that if he got somebody else in there that wasn't me it's all the things that he was doing if you'd be gone so that's probably the thought process he was you know having at that point in time and obviously from that experience you could see how bad of a person my manager was now I'm gonna have another video a separate video on specifically him just talking about the crazy things that happen because it would be an hour long and I think you would really enjoy it so I'll do that as well but moving on so I called our district manager and was furious that my manager had called and I was like hey I'm ready for this you know I want to do this you know cuz at the time I was gung-ho I wanted to move up I wanted to do things you know I was excited I was driven um and he was all about it as well so I ended up transferring to that store I drove back and forth you know an hour which was pretty terrible but it was a really fun experience I enjoyed opening that store I enjoyed the people I met the very eccentric man I hired actually became the store manager a few years later another separate video Gaz insane I mean absolutely insane but another video video so 2012 came I transfer back to my home store where my home town was and I became the store manager so this is 2012 and this is when it started you know I was I was on top of the world right I was a store manager you know people that worked for me where my friends we had great midnight launches everything was going great and my store was ranking in the top 100 usually the top 10 in the entire country every single week which was huge because that never happened in our district the store had taken over never even ranked in the top 4,000 and I was ranking 97 for second third which was awesome me that's when I figured out that what she did the day before the week before the month before the year before never mattered we were on conference calls my district manager never even would acknowledge that I was second or third in the company he would acknowledge people that were like nine hundred and twelve hundred in the company and I would be sitting there in third he would never say anything which was insane to me you know you won't positive or free enforcement right yes that's a good way to manage it's a good way to leave so that was kind of the beginning of the end because I always strive to perform and we performed honest we didn't you know commit shady practices like I did when I was under my other manager you know we were honest we were just talked about games when we had fun doing it and people came in to see us and we had loyal dedicated customers so I mean they were violent they would fight for us you know they loved our game stop and that was a really cool experience so one time my regional came in and he said my store looked terrible because I was missing a few shelf talkers the top two rows for the most recent reset had two shelf talkers like on the top tier O's and I didn't have them I don't remember what happened if they got lost some shipment or if they you know got lost in general no idea so he drilled me for about an hour and my district manager was standing right beside him and looked so furious at me then right after the regional left he sent out a region-wide email saying that just because you ring good and you exceed profit and plan doesn't make you a good manager which was directed at me specifically and that that was just the officially the beginning of the end for me because they were pointing out a thing here there and completely ignoring how successful that our business was so this is around the time where the company started to switch to complete and utter negative reinforcement 100% across-the-board never a good job right it was always hey you guys are number one in all these categories but number four in this category and we got to fix that or else you need to find a new place to work which is actually something they actually said my regional and my district manager would have said on several occasions if you can't do this thing we're focusing on this week then you need to find somewhere else to work so it was always under a threat of being fired so this is around the time where the circle of life came in and I know everybody has heard about that it literally made us rip off every customer we had two artists a manager would actually just say hey you know just sell it to them sell it to them you know he was he basically was telling us a ripoff everybody we could which was a the name of the game anyway at this point and if he didn't make circles off for two weeks in a row and you were basically under the threat of termination they actually had a policy around it if you did not make circle of life for two weeks regardless of position if you were a store manager you didn't make circle after two weeks personally then you would be threatened to be terminated no first and final terminated so you can see why the selling environment is the way it right I mean you can it basically the circle of life pushed us to be that way and it still does today another thing that happened was the federal government required anybody making less than forty seven thousand dollars a year to be eligible for overtime and all of the store managers are on salary at this point so what does gamestop do they make all their store management hourly associates now here's the catch you have to work overtime to get your previous pay that you were getting salary so your child was sick or you had an emergency you had to leave you're not making your salary anymore right if you worked 40 hours you were actually making $80 less than your salary weekly which completely and utterly demotivated every store manager in the company and I can guarantee that we went to conference that year and the atmosphere was so negative everyone was so furious at the company and the company did not care every year around March April May never a consistent date it was just random store managers would get an annual bonus now our annual bonus was never high but every year it would get lower and the company would release a statement saying that they appreciated how hard we worked but ultimately the performance of the company falls on the shoulders of the store management so we were directly responsible and either wouldn't get our annual bonus or it would be a very small fraction of it there was actually one year where my bonus was $64 for the whole year GameStop power to the players the last couple of years I was there I never felt safe it always felt like I was on the verge of getting fired whether it be for your bathroom being not clean your circle of life not being up to scuff you're just having a bad week in sales not beating plan for the year you're not beating profit for the year and my DM would come in all the time and just tell me that I just needed to resign he'd look in the bathroom the bathroom be a little dirty and he'd be like you just probably should resign or we would be struggling him circle of life for the first week in two months we've made seven out of seven weeks in the eighth week we're struggling he come up to the story price she's just resigned buddy you're not you should not in it anymore she probably resign this is about March of 2018 one of my associates called HR and made up a bunch of crazy stories to my HR rep because I was always extremely professional with my team but those same people had gotten managers fired previously like the previous years just by calling HR and making up stuff so of course that's what happened so HR shows up and you know they interview me and I tell them of course no that's true whatever then they say that they're you know going to call somebody and see what they can figure out but you know they don't know for sure what's gonna happen to me and at that point I just you know handed my keys over and I was like look you know it's been a long time you know I'm just you know I'm done with this place you know and I walked out now is it 11 years gone wasted and other good news as soon as I left had another job lined up making it almost double what I made a Gamestop and it's so much easier so yeah it all worked out oh no if you're ever thinking about working at Gamestop you know we had we had people coming in you know younger kids and they're like man I want to work again so I want to talk about games I want to sell games you know there is there is some of that you know you get to talk about games yeah but it's not what you think you're going to get in there and you're gonna go in just one week's time you're gonna be eating threatened to be terminated if you're not ripping people off and making sure that they get that power of card just add it on to their transaction hopefully they won't notice especially if they don't speak English they don't speak English you put it on that transact that was what we in my district called the district tax we were we were we had a district name but we would say the district name tax and the tax was if you didn't speak English we put it on your transaction because what are you gonna do come in they never returned them so it was all money in their pocket which is fine I guess what can you do well anyways that's my gamestop story it was a long time if you're thinking about working there don't it is terrible I don't know why I worked there 11 years maybe I'm a masochist I don't know maybe I like to be tortured I mean I am into that kind of thing so you know that's probably why I stayed there so long because I just want to die anyway so it was like a slow death a slow burning death so hope you liked the video I'm gonna make a lot more from just specific gamestop stories that I've had and there are some crazy ones crazy ones I'll give you a hint oral sex in the back room okay drugs being sold out of the back room manage your having sex with prostitutes in the back room during store hours that's not even close to the worst things that happened so so stay tuned if you like this video hit a lock hit subscribe leave a comment tell me about your game stop stories and uh let's share it have fun alright thanks bye

Channel: CAMELOT331

Views: 1,007,649

Rating: 4.724791 out of 5

Keywords: gamestop story, gamestop rage, gamestop black friday 2018, gamestop horror stories, gamestop circle of life, gamestop rant, gamestop fallout 76, gamestop, vlog, story time, story time scary, camelot331, tiny1badger, gamestop trade in, why I left, why, how to, 11 years, gamestop 11 years, working at gamestop, gamestop closing down, diablo immortal, wow classic, diablo immortal announcement, diablo immortal reveal, gamestop stories, owo

Id: 2AkekOnVoMo

Length: 19min 41sec (1181 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 07 2018