The Horrible Awful Unpleasant Truth

Well, my friends, the time has come for me to admit a terrible secret. It's a dark and shocking thing that I've kept locked up in a closet with the bones of Jimmy Hoffa and the Lindbergh baby. It is a secret source of shame for me, and I suspect shame also for those who hold my confidence and sully their own good name by keeping that secret for me. Heck, it may make some of you ashamed to have ever been mildly amused by my absurdities. It is a bond which I'm now both willing to present and explain while I unshackle myself from its tainted stain. It is, and has been, my secret profession. Apparently, I'm stalling. So, yeah, well here goes.

For the past ten months...

I've been a store manager for EB Games.

I have a lot to say about EB, and the increasing disquiet I've harbored toward retail even while I perpetrated its various offenses. But, what I don't want to do is eject mindless bile onto the name of EB in some kind of therapeutic emotional vomit just for the sake of coloring myself superior. I want to be objective about my experience. I want people to understand why EB treats its customers as it does and the uncomfortable position those too often surly counter-jockeys are placed in when transacting your purchases. I want to talk about the palpable conflict between customer and employee, the changing face of the retail gaming outlet, and the realities of the point-of-purchase, and I want to do that all with an even keel. While I'm certainly exhausted and demoralized from my stint behind that yellow counter at the mall, I realize it's not really EB's fault. More than anything the problem lies with me and some pesky principles that I just couldn't reconcile.

That's right; I'm giving EB the "˜It's not you, it's me' treatment.

Anyway, like I said, there's a lot of hopefully smart things I want to say about retail sales, the gaming industry, and EB itself. Some of it will be good, and some of it will not. But, I recently realized that before I could sit down and write that article that I've been aching to pen for six or seven months now, a smartly worded, well-conceived, dare-I-say somewhat researched piece, I had to get a few tangents and smart-assed comments off my chest. Also, I felt like I had to come clean and earn back some credibility before being laughed straight off the planet.

The first thing you should understand is why I picked this job, and the answer is an extraordinarily simple one: it was offered to me. EB was a means to an end. It's an end that I've since reached, and so the whole endeavor should be considered a successful venture from at least a few perspectives. Elysia wanted to come home to be with our son and start her business, but we couldn't afford to lose the income entirely, the healthcare, and the steady paycheck for the purposes of buying a house, much less groceries, fossil fuels, and those small packages of Jello pudding I do so enjoy. I had spent an unsuccessful summer looking for employment with few prospects and no returns. Elysia was supportive, but increasingly discouraged at the slow progress, and it began to occur to me that a Bachelor's degree in English Literature does not translate well into gainful employment. I have no right to say that such an epiphany was a shock, but knowing a sledgehammer to the knees is going to hurt ahead of time doesn't make the experience itself any less painful.
I'm trying to recall precisely how I felt when I walked into EB with my over-qualified resume, and I remember it being a bit like a proud march to the wall where the firing squad will cheerfully riddle your flesh with high-velocity pieces of metal. I remember a feeling of defeat with an absolute certainty regarding the trivial matter of actually being offered a job. I left my resume with the manager of the district base store. I was told later that the district manager glanced at my resume and rushed out to arrange an interview, but I had walked out just moments before.
There was a message on the machine when I got home. Two weeks later I had a store. On September 1st of 2004 I posted my thoughts about ending my stint as a stay-at-home dad. The second sentence of that piece, “Today is a hard day for me� was woefully understated. And then, I began the long process of hiding my employer from as many people as possible.

For the first few months as I busied myself with projects and constant distraction I could pretend pretty nicely that things were great. I told myself that I was putting together a store and a staff that I would want to shop at, clean, smartly-run, friendly, knowledgeable, and efficient. I tried not to drown too much under the weight of corporate fire-drills, and ranking management. I had taken over a dud of a store, so any progress was both notable and appreciated. I really did quite well, and by November had put together a nicely successful Halo 2 launch (waxed the Gamestop upstairs, thank you very much) and was gearing up for Christmas.

Then a series of events moved me (upgrade?) to the district base store; a higher volume location in a much more upscale mall. This new store presented a series of new projects all begging to be tackled just as winter birthed the Christmas season. Hours began to pile on top of hours that were already perched precariously on its own hefty stack of hours. Dollars rolled as we shoved anything and everything out the door, and yet the location floundered in well-founded mediocrity. This new Gameplay Guarantee that had corporate buzzing was building steam behind the scenes, and it was becoming clear that my boss wanted it to be what our district was known for. I heard myself saying things about reserves, and preowned games, and warranties, and guarantees that stirred a self-loathing that had been gathering strength in quiet for some time. It was like some fundamental part of my psyche had fallen into a terrible coma on the first day of my job, and now that part of me was fluttering its eyelids and twitching its fingers trying to wake up so it could punch this new me right in the face.

But I was good at my job when I let loose, shoved a ball gag in my conscience's yap-trap and just did it. Mine was a PC store and I regularly found myself in the top hundred of the two-thousand plus stores on reserves for major PC titles. With Guild Wars for example, I moved nearly 100 units on the first day against a month goal of eighteen. And I pushed for a Gameplay Guarantee on every one of those suckers; think about that for a moment; a guarantee on a disc for a MMO. Some (rightly) scoffed at the idea of protecting a disc they would likely use exactly once, but not nearly as many as you might think. After all, Gameplay Guarantees were our district's specialty.

By last month my store was attaching a Gameplay Guarantee on 21% of all items sold. Bear in mind that those guarantees are only attached to actual games sold, so that 21% is relatively low when you factor in the accessories, hintbooks, magazines, and systems. On actual software sold, that attach rate is likely closer to 35%. We were managing to talk people into attaching a one to three dollar upcharge on one out of every three games sold in my store. And, baby, we made them like it.

Now, for the horrible truth. Out of the hundreds (if not thousands) of Gameplay Guarantees I've sold, I've processed exactly four replacements. And, I assure you, it's not because I avoided honoring the program. If every single one of those people who bought that guarantee had returned with issues, then I would have honored every single one. But, the truth remains that only four people came to me having bought a Gameplay Guarantee and requesting an exchange beyond our standard fourteen day return policy. It's all about the profit in retail, and this program was a gold mine. I'll talk more about the specifics of the GPG, and how it factors into a store's bottom line, and how that factor's into a manager's yearly bonus, and about the almighty spiff in the article to come. For now, just know that it's to an employees advantage to get you to buy a Gameplay Guarantee.

But as I sold each one, and pushed reservations, and hawked free magazines, and pressured people into buying preplayed items, and gave crappy value for traded games, I felt worse and worse about myself. And the reason I felt like that is that I'm on record as being solidly against that kind of retail behavior. When push came to shove I was entirely willing to shove aside my bluster about reservations and pushy salespeople. It was a fact that increasingly gnawed at me as sixty-hour/seven-day work weeks through Christmas slogged ever forward. The store was skyrocketing from a rank in the low seventies to the high twenties and I was driving home through dark cold nights feeling appropriately cold and dark.

Certis was certain I was prepared to leave the site. I would go weeks without posting here in the forums (some of you may have noticed my absence through much of winter) much less the front page. My time was absorbed by the store which, despite constant effort seemed in a constant chaos, and my enthusiasm for gaming had ebbed to a dramatic low tide. I kept telling myself, and my family, and Certis that once Christmas was over my spirits would return. They did not.

And so, I lasted these past six months in a passionate kind of hidden self-loathing, increasingly burned out with this job and hating every time I pressured some kid to slap another three bucks on his already overpriced game because we all know he's going to scratch it and don't come crying back to me if it's after our strict two week return window.

And on top of all that, there's you damn people! You! With your inability to keep a receipt, and your constant problems, and your incompetence at installing software, and not knowing what kind of video card you have, and buying Gamecube games when you don't even freakin' have one, and being far too big for that poor fifteen dollar dance pad, and your prattling on about the disappointing boss battle in Generic Anime RPG Five, and your constant misinformed "facts" about how the Xbox 360 will cost seven hundred dollars and float on magnetic suspensors, and your kids that you turn loose on my interactive machines for an hour while you shop at JC Penny, and your “can I throw this half full McDonalds cup away in your trashcan� which you'll probably just leave on a shelf to spill all over Paper Mario anyway! Let me tell you, you people are no picnic. And, oh yes, when you pissed me off, when you were rude or condescending, you're damn straight that I threw every annoying sales pitch at you, gave you the lower value for your crappy scraped up trades, and followed the return policy to the letter just to stick it back to you. Oh, you better believe I did. Remember that time you asked in a huff to speak to the store manager, and I sneered back at you and said you're looking at him. Yeah, I loved it every bit as much as you think I did. Maybe more.
But, that's all symptomatic, isn't it? I realized as the days drifted by that it wasn't that there were more and more jerks coming into the store. It's that I saw more and more perfectly benign people as undesirable. I could have blamed the constant pressure from my bosses, the atmosphere of the corporate dictums, my employees, or just the clientele of the store, but it wasn't true. The truth was I wasn't proud of my job, or what it asked me to do, and it was making me angry at whatever I could get mad at. I knew, even before I had formed it into a solid idea in my head that I had to get out.

Last week, finally, when it really began to sink in that I was leaving, and the pressure began to relax, I started to look at the customers like I hadn't since those first weeks. And I've spent the intervening hours selling them what they needed instead of what I wanted them to buy. I've all but stopped shoving guarantees and presells and used (because that's what it ought to be called) games down people's throats, and it's been easier. Not good, or pleasant, but at least less shameful. It would be nice to say that treating the customer with that kind of service has increased our numbers, but it has not. My personal numbers have never been lower, and everybody pretty much pretends not to notice that I've all but checked out.

Which brings me to this, my last week with EB, and finally my admission to all of you. I told myself I was hiding my employment because I didn't want there to be some perceived conflict of interest. That was, and I ask your forgiveness in advance for the language but it's necessary in this case, bullsh*t. It was all about pride, and my lack thereof. I hope my coming article that I'll now be better prepared to write about the practices of EB will prove insightful, but more than that I also have a strange hope that it absolves me some. Like I said, I have a lot I want to say about the topic, and now that I've gotten some of this personal stuff off my chest I think I'm ready to tell you some rather interesting things.

- Elysium

Comments

I'd assumed you were working in a games shop.

So your morals folded. It happens. There are worse places for it to happen in, too. Each useless guarantee people bought - they didn't have to - meant a more secure job and more food in your kid's mouth. That's what it's all about.

That's it Elysium, I'm putting you on my heroes list.
A great narrative and whats more it sounds like it was actually in retrospect an important experience. Been there, done that, on to greater things!

Wow, that's quite the bomb drop Elysium!

I can sympathize with your situation. After busting my ass going to school, and spending several years as a professional I found myself without job. Laid off. For a YEAR. It was very tough, and at first I was a bit stubborn about accepting anything "less" than what I was destined for.

I eventually started working at those "get paid the same day you work" places, and after 8 hours on a blistering roof melting in the sun, I had a cheque for $42 - before the taxes came off. It was depressing, but man - you gotta do what you gotta do. I then had a short stint as a flower delivery boy - again, in the blistering heat. I had rashes and callouses in the most uncomfortable places and I worked my ass off for a paycheque that barely covered the gas and insurance alone on my vehicle.

I eventually got 'back on the horse - working those sh*te jobs actually gave me a little bit of a kick i needed to be more aggressive in looking for work. And it worked

And yes, at one point I hung my head and walked into EB Games looking for a job too. I handed my professional resume to the pierced 18 year old behind the counter and then proceeded to nonchalantly look at games. I never got a call back.

Pigpen wrote:
That's right, the little genius had the brilliant idea of breaking the plastic casing and tossing the loose disk into the PSP. Then you argue with the parents for another half hour about how they cant return it because the 7 day defective policy does not cover stupidity.

For the record...this is not hit on the little guy - my son, in complete innocence and excitement at my new psp, did the exact same thing to my first disc - I put it back in the case, applied super glow, and moved on...so lets not hit the poor little bugger - I feel for him...and his parents

And I wish we had known about your job Elysium - couldn't we have worked some EB Employee GWJ group discount for us

Well, I didn't know you before - but welcome back!!!

The thing that bothered me the most is that I hated the parents... They were these (no offense to anyone) jewish french folks who complained about EVERYTHING and came in like once a week to return the crap they bought last week. Also... is your kid about 13...

dsmart wrote:
Certis wrote:

Well I'm glad that's out and done with, I want my pre-EB Elysium back! It used to be he would show some spirit when I verbally abused him, these past few months he would just agree with whatever I called him and cry. It shamed us both.

Yeah, I bet you liked him better when he was an unemployed stay-at-home dad with a Bachelor's degree in literature.

Excellent.

Oh, Elysium. You have our unconditional support. You know even if you raped priests, we'd still give you a reacharound.

So I was right, you were collecting bull semen all this time. Decked out in your EB straightjacket, latex gloves, and rubber boots in a valiant attempt to avoid getting anything on you.

But it's over now, let the healing begin!

Great article. I'm looking forward to some deep insights into the retail game pushing biz.

The good thing about doing sales and retail hell early in life, is that you are now armed for confronting all b.s. that might happen for the rest of your life, with anything to do with sales and retail. Confronting total strangers? No problem. Saying, "No," in the most believable ways? Dude you are there.

I think going through my own retail/sales hell allowed me to save alot of money when I bought my truck. And I can't say enough about the ability and willingness to confront/call out sales people on stuff. Knowing exactly what you can get from a manager to deal with your problem. It all goes in the book of "crap I will never put up with again, and now I am better off for the foreseeable future."

"know thyself" has to be the sh*ttiest thing to actually experience, to goto some darkest place and come out that better human being. I do wonder why we put ourselves through such horrible things, knowing we come out the other side much better. Isn't there a less...torturous way to get it done? Sometimes not.

Don't regret. Don't look back. Look around and enjoy what you got. It's all good.

dsmart wrote:

Yeah, I bet you liked him better when he was an unemployed stay-at-home dad with a Bachelor's degree in literature.

Hey, it takes some people six months to take a shot at something, improve store performance dramatically, and decide it's not for them and move on.

Sometimes it take six years to take a shot at something, do a half-assed job and turn out half-baked product, and still not figure out that it's time to move on.

Everyone walks their own path.

So anywho, glad you're out if it caused you so much pain Elysium.

Everyone should have to do some retail work at some point in their life. It'd make better people. I did it for 9 years straight at one point, and while I was well over the edge of hating everyone that walked in, and had a plastic smile you could hang on a wall, I learned a helluva lot of ways to get great service from stores now. Sympathize with that poor shmuk behind the counter and the world is your shelled mollusk (red tide not included).

Nature abhors a vacuum. If you add anything extra and special to your job it will become expected as normal duties in short order.

This is especially exacerbated in retail. Customers will sniff out the one that actually knows stuff or has a constructive opinion and then assume you know everything about every product. They will expect you to know 100% when its a miracle you have knowledge of 25% compared to others 3%. Even once you say you dont know, they will still ask you questions as if you do know and expect answers.

I remember recommending Crusaders of the Dark Savant to a father who wanted to play a game with his son. I had no idea his son was 8. It was a $8 budget title at that point. He couldnt figure out how to get passed the gate and into the first city. The hint guide was out of print. He was so incensed that he wanted to return it. He complained to the assistant manager who promptly gave out my home number to the father so that he could call and complain!

Did I mention the part where I had to beg to get 8-12 hours a week? Did I mention the required slacks and dress shirt and tie dress code? Did I mention they paid me $5 an hour?

chrisg wrote:
Reaper81 wrote:
Yeah, I bet you liked him better when he was an unemployed stay-at-home dad with a Bachelor's degree in literature.

/golfclap

I second that notion. spill your venom elsewhere.

...well its obvious that stupid idiots are in the minority around here. Thanks for wearing your colors. You look nice in Red. It brings out your eyes and accents your Brown nose.

SlyFrog wrote:
dsmart wrote:

Yeah, I bet you liked him better when he was an unemployed stay-at-home dad with a Bachelor's degree in literature.

Hey, it takes some people six months to take a shot at something, improve store performance dramatically, and decide it's not for them and move on.

Sometimes it take six years to take a shot at something, do a half-assed job and turn out half-baked product, and still not figure out that it's time to move on.

Everyone walks their own path.

So anywho, glad you're out if it caused you so much pain Elysium.

Wait a f*cking minute!! Is this the part where this becomes Derek Smart thing whereby wankers start throwing out jabs and when I reciprocate the thread gets locked?

Quite obviously, you and your girlfriend here, rather than stick to the topic and post something worthy of being read, you want to direct your attention to me.

It is always easy enough to post sh*t about someone else, while hiding behind the cloak of anonymity and living pitifull mediocre lives. Failed product or not, I bet I'm the only millionaire around here and have something to show for my troubles. So what have you done lately?

Ely - Don't be ashamed. You know this, deep down, but maybe it'll help hearing it externally... when you have a little one, there are so many things that are more important than your pride it's unreal. As an idealist, this is hard for you, but you can take pride in the fact that you did something you were not proud of in order to take care of your family.

You do the job that's in front of you.

Good for you for doing what needed doing.

Besides, when he's an ungrateful teenager, you can give him a withering look and tell him how you swallowed your pride and worked at EBgoddamnGames so he could have diapers and food as a baby, so he can damn well be in by 10 and he can damn well call if he's going to be 1 minute late.

Responsibility > Ideals

No more flames please. I believe we're here to discuss Ely's emergence FROM asshattery, not the other way around.

slambie wrote:

So I was right, you were collecting bull semen all this time. Decked out in your EB straightjacket, latex gloves, and rubber boots in a valiant attempt to avoid getting anything on you. ;-)

This is slightly off-topic, but my favorite mexican restaurant was next door to giant cattle semen holding tanks. There's nothing like sitting out on the patio, drinking a creamy margherita, and thinking, "Damn that's a lot of cow cum"

Now how's THAT for asshattery!

Wow, Elysium...posting that must have been totally cathartic. The ends justify the means, as they say - you helped your family accomplish its goals, and now all of us at the site get the benefit of your newly obtained insight and wisdom. I'm definitely looking forward to hearing more about your experience in retail hell.

By the way Elysium, as you lost a bit of your interest in games during that time period, please don't tell me that the sweet, sweet, employee discount wasn't heavily used. Because that would be wrong.

I applaud you for standing by your principles. The higher in management you are, the more difficult this becomes.

you did well my friend... nobody could have asked for more. You did not have your morals fold, instead you reached deep down and did what you had to do for the benefit of the people that are way more important.

I salute you for doing what you had to do. And for taking the effort to make a change when the opportunity arose.

Guys, let's not do the whole tennis match of Derek vs the world, and I mean everyone. Deep breaths, and move on to talking about me! This is my spotlight and I'll gut any man from groin to grin who steals it from me.

Thanks for the general kind response and understanding. I did take what little pride I could from the fact that I was doing what needed to be done for wife and son, and if I had it all to do over again, I'd likely do the same thing. I didn't like my job, but I did it to the best of my ability and with some results. But, now that I'm coming out of it, I'm glad that I'll be my own boss soon.

Elysium wrote:

Deep breaths, and move on to talking about me! This is my spotlight and I'll gut any man from groin to grin who steals it from me.

heh, yep, its true. Everyone needs a tad of attention every now and then.

As for the whole EB thing, look at it this way. It could be worse. You could be working in the marketing dept. at a publisher.

As for the whole EB thing, look at it this way. It could be worse. You could be working in the marketing dept. at a publisher.

yep...good point.. you'd actually have to sit there with a straight face while discussing how your next big AAA title is going to be Nanny 911 the Videogame.

My biggest beef with EB and Gamespot is how they push the strategy guides to death.. the best reactions is when I comment that no.. I can use this new fangled technology called the internet if I get stuck and need a spoiler..

They look at me like "What the f*ck is the Internet?"

Are EB/Gamespot employees specifically told to pretend the Internet doesnt exist?

EB... hmm, Elysium, do you still take pre-orders for X360? Can I get a good deal on some thing, like throw in a free memory thingy... may be a poster or... just... maybe... a free game!

...By the way I'm just kidding, besides there is nothing to be ashamed about it. In end result you need to do what you need to do in order to support your family... whether working at EB or packing groceries, or be a contract hitman. You got to do what you got to do.

I worked at the Hotel once... washing dishes, collecting/moving tons of garbage around, cleaning up after people, etc... I hated my job and hated the people. I had no schedule meaning working either 6 to 24hours with 5 min notice (when they bother letting me know). None the less, I need money and they were paying, not bad either 16$! That is the only thing that kept me going... eh, lesson learned.

Elysium, when you channel your misery into articles of this caliber, we are all measurably improved. Let the steam vent remain open and the anti-EB invectives fly with abandon.

It is always easy enough to post sh*t about someone else, while hiding behind the cloak of anonymity and living pitifull mediocre lives. Failed product or not, I bet I'm the only millionaire around here and have something to show for my troubles. So what have you done lately?

I banned Derek Smart.

In the end, nothing good will ever come of his posting. He says something arrogant/insulting, gets a little of the same back and flies off the handle. I'm breaking the cycle and hoping those who insist on responding to loud-mouths with their own pithy comments re-evaluate why they're here and what they are contributing.

I banned Derek Smart.

*hugs*

So what have you done lately?

I put my pants on! Yay!

(Hope that wasn't pithy... )

Certis wrote:

I'm breaking the cycle and hoping those who insist on responding to loud-mouths with their own pithy comments re-evaluate why they're here and what they are contributing.

Nothing anymore I guess.

Certis wrote:

I banned Derek Smart.

Aww, It's been my lifelong dream to have Derek insult me. I always miss it whenever he posts

Elysium,

There is no shame in being an honest, hard working family man. You pegged it when you said that it was a means to an end. I admire and envy your courage to carry such a burden. Fletch is right, one step at a time. Walk away with your head held high.

As further catharsis for the end of your stint at EB, I propose that we all get in the BF2 server and lay down on four of your C4 packs. Right before you blow us up, we can recite some customer-speak to you. As you blow us all to bits, you'll be one step further away from the madness.

Edited for clarity.

The article made me come late to an appointment this morning, thankyouverymuch.