As a former 'Stopper (by several years), I can vouch for much of what has been said in here. Former low-end manager, and former general wage slave for a few years. Note that I had one of the good stores, staffed 100% with game enthusiasts would even tell people NOT to buy certain games because they sucked so badly. If someone ignored this advice, they invariably came back a week later saying, "I wish I had listened to you..."
Sales over...well, everything. Ho boy. I've listened in on the occasional District call and the like. The simplest way to explain Corporate's message on just about any topic is "If you don't exceed our expectations, you/the workers must be lazy. Push harder. (yes, if you DO exceed expectations, said minimums will rise)...If you break a rule that theoretically costs them money in any way, you are a thief. Failure to meet expectations also makes you a thief because you don't "earn" your salary".
- Corporate assigns a specific number of non-Salary hours per week; often an anemic amount. Salaried Management (usually just the store manager/SM) needs to take up the slack. This is typically 50-60 hours to week for said SM -- not atypical for a salaried job. During holidays, this can easily exceed eighty hours a week at a big store. Note that -- to Corporate -- an employee who inadvertently works 5 minutes over their allotted hours can expect a First & Final warning (read: one more screwup and you're toast), for the heinous crime of stealing from the company. If this gives them even one segment (15 mins) of Overtime...well...just don't show up any more. Ever. This, too, is the SM's fault, even if he was not there that day. If the store in general exceeds hours, same deal. Manager is accused of outright THEFT from the company/incompetence/he'd better shape up/etc
- Being #1 in the district in say, 5 out of 6 areas and #7 in the last does not equal "Really good store with one deficient area". It equals "(F***ing) lazy management who really doesn't care about their job" (an example of how this could happen: High theft in a high crime area with no security cameras, no guards, open late, etc; or crap Reserves/subscriptions sold in an area where people just don't WANT them and are not afraid to tell you so)
- Preorders vs how many they get -- Yup. If they get 2 preorders for a game per store as of the order date (Corp does the ordering), they will either order 2 copies per store or none at all, and hope that it ends up getting ordered eventually anyway. If a game has 700-900 preorders per store (read: Turkey-lovin' Dude FOOTBALL that comes out every year), then they'll order in more like 1500 for the initial release. And yes, like any other subject -- offering preorders/magazine subscriptions/cards is not optional for the workers. Their only way out of it is if you ask them not to ahead of time -- preferably via cleverly working it into your banter when you get up to the register...Saying it before that point means nothing, and if the DM or any Corp brass are in town, they gotta say it anyway, just in case.
- Employees -- just like any other shop. Sometimes you get the awesome dudes, sometimes you get the people who just don't care. I have found the former far more often, tho.
- Constantly bugging you/asking questions...Well, to be fair, the best way to prevent shrink (theft) is to make sure that the thieves (who ignore all of the overtures of friendliness anyway) know that you know that they know that they are being watched. Doesn't help all that much. After all, according to Corporate, the overwhelming bulk of shrink is by employees...And they act that way. High shrink = the employees must all be filthy thieves. This despite the fact that they get searched/bag checked every time they leave the store for any reason (or are supposed to be anyway). Also, Corp looooves to send in mystery shoppers. Failure to greet ANY customer upon entry into the store means the store fails that audit automatically. If the cashier is the only one on the floor at that time, he is also the greeter, no matter how rude that may be to the customers actually checking out. This is also supposed to apply to answering the phone, too.
- Holidays -- wasn't really touched upon. Ever wonder why stores seem to double their staff for 2 months or so from around Black Friday to early January? That's because Corporate forces them to. Naturally, one might assume that, with double the staff, the store would get double the hours, so that they may all be properly trained (Corp expects the newbies to be well trained). You can stop laughing now. Mayybe 10-20% increase in hours. The purpose of the newbies is so that one, mayyybe two might hang on after January to replace any current employees who burn/freak out and quit during the holiday season, for cheap. Our store routinely got several dozen applications a DAY during XMAS time.
Waagh -- GS bought out EB some time back. For reasons still a mystery to me (and I have a friend of 15+ years who runs a GS), some stores retain the EB name.