I, like many other video game enthusiasts, was at one point employed by GameStop. This is my story.

I started working for EB Games in the spring of ’06, I think it was. I was working part time at a grocery store in the Sacramento area, and I wanted another fun job to help me earn some extra money and it seemed like a good idea. I had just moved into a house with my two best friends and I didn’t have a lot of extra money to play with, so I could work there and then use the money to buy games, plus I’d get a discount on them. I was friends with the manager, since I was a frequent customer at the comic store he ran previously, and I got hired working on my days off from the grocery store.

It was pretty cool at first. I liked being surrounded by games all day and getting paid to talk about them. I got to be pretty good friends with my co-workers, and things were good. Eventually my manager wound up getting fired because there were apparently some pretty shady dealings going on, but I’m not going to go into that. We got a new manager, and she was not only the best boss I’ve ever had, but she’s also one of the coolest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing.

Our store ran great. I could never understand the horror stories people posted online about shopping at GameStop; our store was not like the ones people talked about. We were honest with our customers, gave them personal recommendations, and we were all really into games. My manager was the coolest. She really took care of us, and she even gave us permission to black out the “L” in “Play Beyond” on the PlayStation 3 display boxes. Our midnight launches were amazing. She always invited the wives, mothers and girlfriends who didn’t want to be there into the store for coffee and cocoa while everyone else had to wait outside.

When I was getting ready to move to Boston, my manager even threw a surprise party for me at her house and invited the whole crew. It was great, because the grocery store I had worked at for five and a half years hadn’t given me so much as a card. I miss those guys.

When I transferred to a GameStop out here in the Boston area, I imagined that things would be pretty much the same. I was wrong.

I was transferred into the GameStop horror story. The place was always an absolute mess. No one did any work, and blamed everyone else for it. Our district manager was most definitely not a cool guy. The douche would preorder a game at our store, buy it somewhere else, cancel his reserve with us and then give us crap when our preorder numbers were low.

The connection with the customers was non-existent. At my Sacramento store, when people preordered a game, we actually held it for them. We’d print out their receipt, tape it to the case, and put it away in the cabinet. At the Boston store, we were told to sell to everyone, regardless of preorder, and if we ran out and a preorder customer was to come in, we’d have to call another store and try to get a copy from them.

The people working there weren’t into games. We had three “CALL OF DUTY IS THE BEST GAME EVER” guys, one “I’m a girl who plays games, teehee, don’t hit on me you silly boys”, a manager who knew jack shit about video games aside from what the marketing emails told her, and me. A customer was asking me my opinion on a game, and when my assistant manager realized I wasn’t recommending Call of Duty, he yelled “Don’t listen to this clown, he catches all the Pokeymons.”

Speaking of opinions, we were instructed to NEVER tell a customer a game was bad. If we told them not to buy it, they’d just go buy it somewhere else. I refused to follow this policy, which caused quite a few issues.

The pay was abysmal. I was the Senior Game Advisor, which meant I was one step below Assistant Manager. I made less than $10 an hour and had to pay for my own health insurance. I got an entry level job at a natural foods supermarket later on that STARTED me at more than an Assistant Manager makes at GameStop.

Also, all the stuff you hear about how they treat new games is absolutely true. We were forced to “gut” new games (open them, take out the game and store it behind the counter and put the case out on the floor to be mangled by grubby-pawed kids), and you can bet that when you bought that “new” game it wasn’t new. Oh, and the stickers. The stickers were the WORST. I CRINGED every time I had to put them on the cases. As if putting them on the outside of the case wasn’t enough, we had to start putting “spine tags” on the actual paper insert so the games could be scanned while bookended on the shelf. They never came off cleanly.

They disrespected the games themselves, they disrespected the customers, and they disrespected the employees.

I tried to stay on good terms with the store after I left, but it was impossible. The store was a mess, and not just when it came to store cleanliness. It was high school drama and bullshit like you would not believe.

To this day I miss the crew at my old GameStop. I used to go in on my free time and just hang out. It was just such a great environment, for the employees and the customers. Here, though… ugh. I can’t even go in there anymore without feeling dirty. It takes me about 20 minutes longer to drive to Toys R Us to buy my games, but I like it better. Plus TRU was where I bought games when I was a kid, so yay nostalgia.

Working at GameStop is like a badge of honor for gamers. It’s like saying you survived a natural disaster. It’s like everyone went to the same shitty high school and now we can all share stories and laugh about it, because it’s been a while and the pain isn’t so fresh.

If you have a GameStop near you that’s like my first store, please, by all means, support it. The people working there really care about games and want to help you. If your store is like the other 99% that aren’t, though, you deserve better. Shop elsewhere.