Last weekend Christina and I were at the mall a few towns over and decided to check in on the GameStop there. I went in hoping to find a good deal on some old games, and I came out with the humbling realization that even though I may not work for GameStop anymore, I am still just as vulnerable to the horrific experiences that so frequently manifest inside those hallowed walls.

We were picking up a copy of Alan Wake for the Xbox 360 (expect Christina’s impressions soon, since she’s the survival horror fanatic) and suddenly we became bystanders to one of the most astoundingly stupid conversations ever to be spoken north of Arkansas. I mean, this was the kind of stupid that hasn’t existed since man decided walking upright would impress the chicks more than dragging his knuckles on the ground.

Anyway, I’m being rung out by one employee and I hear someone ask the other employee at the other register about a camera for the PSP. He asks the other guy if he knew anything about it. He said he’d never heard of it either.

“I think it only came out in Japan,” I said, trying to be helpful.

The other customer looked at the employee, and I turned to look at him. I’m not a judgmental guy, but I knew just by looking at him that this guy was a product of the shallow end of the gene pool. He was skinny, but not like, NORMAL skinny. It was a ratlike skinny, the kind of skinny where his skeletal structure immediately inspired feelings of revulsion and distrust that shakes you to your very core. Yellow wispy hair was combed over his forehead (well, I shouldn’t say “combed.” I think the only thing he had in his medicine cabinet at home was his mom’s backup supply of Skoal), hanging over his eyes that seemed too small for his face. His cheeks were a topographical map of some alien landscape, an unending valley of countless scars and horrific mountain ranges of blemishes.

“Japan?” the kid asks the employee. “What the fuck is that?”

“Japan?” the employee repeats, unaware of what he was being asked.

“I’ve never heard of that shit.”

The employee looked at me, then at his cohort. “You’ve… never heard of the country of Japan?”

“Naw, man.”

“It’s a country in Asia. That’s where like, almost all video game stuff comes from.”

“Aw man, that sounds like some pretty fucked up shit, man. I dunno.”

He turned and left, and the two employees, Christina, myself and the guy who had been in line behind him all stood in stunned silence, turning to each other for some kind of assurance that yes, that did indeed just happen.

Once he was out of earshot, we all just laughed. Not like, a sitcom laugh. It was more of a nervous laugh, almost forced, hesitant. It was the kind of laugh that you laugh to keep yourself from crying. I’d say that I lost a little bit of faith in humanity, but I’m not sure that that guy could even be classified as human in the first place.

“I’m so glad I came in here today,” the other customer said finally, breaking the years of mind-melting silence.

“You know something,” I said, this very story forming itself in my head, “I think I am too.”

One of the things GameStop did to capitalize on holiday gift cards, Christmas money and returns was a day after Christmas “Buy 2 get 1 free” sale on all used games. Used game sales were pure profit for the company, so the day after Christmas was just as big, if not bigger, than Christmas Eve or Black Friday. It is on this unholy day that my story takes place.

(Note, this takes place at the BAD GameStop.)

I was doing my register monkeying, helping too many people and working too hard for the peanuts they paid me, when I got my least favorite customers. Believe me, considering the majority of the people who shopped at that store, that is saying A LOT. There were two brothers who came in frequently, probably between 15 and 16 years old. These kids were GROSS. Not gross like coughing a lot or anything, they just always looked horrendously filthy.

They were scrawny kids, faces coated with acne, and they both sported those little gross mustaches teenagers get when they’ve never shaved. You know the ones, thin hair, always really pale? Ew. They both had really thin, wispy blond hair that was probably about as greasy as the food from the McDonald’s across the mall. They always wore the same coats, big bulky coats that were probably hand-me-downs from their father, always unzipped, exposing stained NASCAR t-shirts underneath. When they got close enough, to you, they smelled. BAD. You’ve smelled bad breath, right? Imagine the smell if you lived inside the mouth of someone with bad breath. They had the mutant ability to turn oxygen sour. It was disgusting.

Anyway, they had some games to trade in, like they usually did. They had started after they had tried to turn our “7-day used game guarantee” into a free rental service (at GameStop, you can return a used game for any reason within seven days and get a full refund. Some people would bring a game back every seven days and get a new one, over and over, getting multiple games off of the same $10). Now every time they came in they had SOME kind of trade. They had traded in a few busted systems and stuff, and everything they traded in was gross.

Okay, I’m using the word gross too much. I need a better descriptive word… got it. Everything they traded in was REPULSIVE. Their game cases carried the same scent they did, even long after they had left, and they always felt gritty, like they were caked with a thin film of their house’s filth that wouldn’t wash off. They handed me a game, I don’t remember which one, and I almost vomited on the spot, absolutely no joke. There was some kind of grime on the case, a hardened mound of unidentifiable gunk, with hair trapped in it.

THE GAME HAD GRIME WITH HAIR TRAPPED IN IT, RIGHT ON THE FRONT COVER, AND THEY HANDED IT TO ME LIKE IT WAS NO BIG DEAL.

How do you even let your stuff get in that awful condition? How do you spill something on your video games, and just say “eff it, I’m not cleaning that”? How do you pick up that same game case and hand it to another human being without CLEANING THE SHIT OFF OF IT? Ugh. I am honestly sick to my stomach just writing about this. I wish I hadn’t just eaten.

Anyway, I refused the trade and gave them some BS reason about how we had too many copies of that game and we were told not to take in any more. They looked around a bit, noticed the “Buy 2 Get 1 Free” signs, and I could almost see that rusty, dim light bulb sputter to life above their greasy, flea-ridden heads.

They came back up to the counter with two ancient sports games and some newer game I can’t remember. Both sports games were 99 cents, the new game was $34.99. “We want that one to be the free one.”

I laughed. “You’re joking.”

They looked at me blankly. They didn’t know why I was laughing. They seriously thought that’s how the promotion worked.

“No,” I said. “Read the bottom of the signs. Pick three games, and the cheapest one is free. You can’t get two 99 cent games and get an expensive game free. The company would lose an enormous amount of money. You get that, right?”

They turned around without saying anything, and I knew they were upset their brilliant scheme hadn’t unfurled the way they’d hoped. They came back a few minutes later, this time with a copy of Max Payne 2 in their filthy paws. Fine. “Max Payne 2 is rated M for Mature for ages 17 and over. I need to see ID before I can sell this to you.”

“We don’t have ID.”

“Then you’ll need to pick out something else.” They left and came back a few minutes later with a third kid, who had his ID. They handed him their games and their money. The rules on a situation like that were always unclear, but I hated these kids and how they kept thinking they’d outsmart me. They were wasting my time and possibly giving me diseases as yet undiscovered by medical science, so I wasn’t about to let them win.

“Hey man, it’s their game and their money, I need to see THEIR ID.”

The third kid, who was cleaner and a little more well groomed, but not much, immediately started the tough guy routine. “Just ring up the damn game.”

“No. It’s against store policy. Sorry.”

“I don’t care, ring it up.”

King of All Cosmos help me, I was enjoying this.

“No. It’s against store policy and I’ll lose my job. Getting an attitude isn’t going to get me to ring you up, it’s going to get you thrown out of here.”

“Lose your job? You work at a GAMESTOP.”

I laughed. I rolled the dice, I made a gamble, I went for the completion on fourth down. “Yeah? Where do you work?”

He stammered a second. “I don’t have a job right now.”

SUCCESS.

“Uh huh. You guys can leave now. Or if you want, I can call security. Up to you.”

They left, and thankfully I got a new job before I ever had to see or smell them again. Also, with daily antibiotics, I’m able to keep the symptoms of whatever they gave me to a minimum, and lead a practically normal life!

Since you all liked my GameStop article, and I like all of you (especially you, handsome ;D), I’ve decided to share some of my more memorable experiences as a Senior Game Advisor for the Preowned Empire.

A big part of the job was explaining the ESRB ratings to parents. Despite how mainstream video games have become, there are still a lot of parents out there who are under the impression that all video games are for kids. Whenever a customer purchased a game that was rated Mature, we had to card them if they looked underage, or explain what the M rating meant if they had kids with them. A lot of parents were really grateful for the information, and some didn’t care.

I LOVED when a kid would try to slip one past his parents and try to tell them that an M rated game wasn’t bad, and then I’d tell them the truth and they’d make him pick out something else. I’m not really a jerk in real life, despite how I portray myself in my writing, but I did enjoy shutting those punks down. I had a parent ask me once about God of War because her 10 year old son wanted it. “I know it says it has nudity on the back,” his mom asked me, “but he says it’s only in one part of the game and you don’t even have to go there.” I had quite a laugh, and the kid left empty handed for lying to his mom. Score.

Anyway, this particular story begins on a Friday afternoon. It was starting to get busy, and it was me and the store’s assistant manager Jeff working the counter. An older man, probably in his late 60s, came to the counter with his grandson and his friend, who were both no older than 10 years old. He plopped the display box for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for the PlayStation 2 on the counter. “My grandson wants this for his birthday.”

“Sure,” I said, “But you should know that this game is rated M for Mature for ages 17 and up, because it contains blood, gore, intense violence, strong language, strong sexual content and drug use. This is basically a rated R video game.”

“Yeah, just ring it up,” he said, shoving a 20 at me.

I rang through the last shrinkwrapped copy we had. “As long as it’s still sealed, you can return the game within seven days. Once it’s open, though, we can’t take it back.”

He said nothing else as I handed him his receipt. They went on their way and the store was peaceful for about an hour before they came back in, and I got that unshakable feeling that I was going to be hating my life for the next half hour, even more so than I usually did when I was working there.

He drops the game on the counter. It’s open. “His mom doesn’t want him to have this. Give me my money back.”

“I’m sorry sir, but I can’t take this back. It’s open.”

“So?”

“So it’s not a new game anymore. We can’t sell this again. All I can do is exchange it for another copy of the same game.”

Before you cyber vigilantes start igniting your flaming catapults of hate mail, this is actually a standard return policy for software of any kind, mostly because it’s so easy to copy these days. GameStop’s “new” games weren’t always really new, this is true, but it was store policy and although the job sucked, I needed it for the time being.

“What do you think I am, some kinda knucklehead? Give me my money back.”

I had every intention of doing the return despite store policy, because I’m a nice guy, but I felt like teaching him a lesson for being so flip and inattentive when I tried to warn him not to buy it in the first place. The fact that his attitude was becoming increasingly hostile certainly wasn’t helping his cause.

“We’re not doing the return,” Jeff says from the other register nonchalantly. “Store policy. Sorry.”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m some kinda knucklehead! Give me my damn money back!” He slammed his fist on the counter. His grandson recoiled, and everyone in the store turned to watch. At this point, I leaned back against the counter, partly to show him that I wasn’t going to respond to him being a jerk, and partly because I knew the situation was about to go from bad to worse and I decided I’d rather watch it play out than be directly involved. Luckily for me, Jeff LOVED dealing with customers like that, and in a stunning display of non verbal communication, we immediately switched registers mid-transaction so he could get his hands dirty.

“Sir! There are other customers in the store and if you’re going to yell and scream you can either go outside or I can call mall security. It’s up to you.”

PLEASE let it be security, I thought.

His grandson and friend were crying, begging to go home. He ignored them.

“I’m not leaving until I get my damn money back! Call security!”

Jeff had already dialed before the customer had finished talking. I finished ringing his customer and I handed her her bag, and she just stepped off to the side so she could keep watching.

Mall security came in, and everyone knows mall security can’t really do anything. The guy kept screaming, kept demanding his money back, kept ignoring his crying grandson and basically acted like a dick. It was to the point where the other customers had already invested so much attention to the situation they were hanging around just to see how it would all turn out.

A few minutes later the cops arrived. I laughed out loud. The police had to come to GameStop because a cantankerous old man hadn’t listened to me and had gotten mad that we wouldn’t break store policy to correct his mistake. The funny thing is, I had EVERY INTENTION of giving him his money back, since the game was obviously not even played and using it as the store’s “gut” copy, but the situation escalated so quickly I was never in control long enough to even try to steer it the right direction. When the cops tried to explain to him that his grandson was crying and he was making a fool of himself, he started YELLING AT THE COPS about treating him “like a knucklehead.” Eventually, the old man, the children, and the copy of San Andreas were escorted from mall property, and we never saw them again.

When the store manager came back later that day, we all had to write statements to the police and all kinds of stupid garbage I could have done without. If I’m going to write a police report, I want it to be for something awesome, like I stopped an armed robbery and they need to know who to make the reward check out to.

To this day, the only police report I’ve ever been involved in was because a grumpy old man didn’t get his way and lost $20. Reading that sentence again, that’s probably a good thing.

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.