I skimmed through the thread but...here's my two cents. Brace theeself.
Anyway, I'm a current GameStop employee. Like a lot of innocent gamers, I thought it'd be a dream job. I mean, being surrounded by games all day? You get to rent games for free? Discounts? Access to awesome games and goodies before everyone else? (Ever wonder why you never saw those limited Link plushies for sale...?) All that is great! And yeah, talking to random customers about games and having friendly discussions about why Brink sucks or how you're looking forward to Dragon Age 3 is just plain fun. And your co-workers are just as geeky as you!
That's the good part. And then the rest is the bad part. It's just too mush stress to someone like me. The way it works is simple: You must sell stuff (Pre-orders and store memberships, mostly) to get hours. You get hours and you get more money, obviously. You don't sell shit? Guess you don't want the money! What's that? Your customer service is amazing? You are amazing at everything else? Well...that's not a GameStop attitude! One analogy I often use is this: if the store was on fire and there were 6 babies trapped inside and I ran inside butt naked and saved them all suffering several 3rd degree burns, the district manager would stop me and ask "Well, how many reservations and subscriptions did you get while you were there? None? Oh...well, that sucks for you!".
I've been lucky enough to have nice co-workers. Our customer service is really good. I've worked at around 5 stores in our district. However, one bad customer review outweighs several good customer reviews for whatever reason. So all it takes is one pissy customer who walks in with the idea in their minds that GameStop sucks and they're only buying a game there because *insert some reason here*. No, seriously. We get a lot of those. My job requires me to engage customers but you always run into that customer that treats you like shit, as if you woke up today and said "Hey! I'm gonna piss of random people today!". The rare people that are polite (Whether they listen to me or not is irrelevant) are the ones that get my best treatment. Hell, if I have any goodies lying around, I might give them some (DS cases, posters, leftover pre-order incentives, etc.)
So for whoever wants to work at GameStop: You gotta be good on sales. Fuck, you don't even gotta know that much about games. When I started working, all I had was a PS2. Soon after that, I bought a PS3 and with time, I learned everything there is to know about all consoles. If you want to move up, it's fairly easy...but again, you gotta know how to sell stuff like crazy. I was skipped over for a promotion once because some new girl (B00BS!) could sell more stuff than me, even though I had been there for a year and her customer service sucked and she was smelly and lazy. And I was the opposite of that. If you can sell, you'll get noticed. My friend got promoted to manager in less than a year.
See, working at GameStop is not bad. If you don't mind getting a pissy paycheck and it's just a temporary job, then it's awesome. The people there are great, the environment is great, you can have a health plan, you get all those perks I mentioned and you get a raise every year. Working FOR GameStop is what sucks. But hey, my other co-workers don't complain as much as I do. To them, it's a really chill job. Stressful, yes, but also chill.
Oh, and here's what happens when you get hired. If you're hired during the Holidays, it's pretty much a competition to see who amongst the new hires stays as a permanent GameStop employee. If you're not chosen, then you only get to work there for like 2 months. If you do, then expect to do the following at the same time: Answer the phone, greet every customer that walks in, engage every customer in the store, handle the register, watch out for thieves, put gutted games (Empty boxes) on the wall alphabetically, put the guts (The actual game) on the drawers alphabetically, KEEP AN EYE ON THE SALES FLOOR, answer random questions, pitch something to every customer (Reservation, membership, etc.), don't take too long with a customer when you're charging them stuff, make sure to buy/sell the right item (sometimes people change the price stickers), remember all the current promotions and upcoming games because you're always gonna get that smartass customer who wants to prove he knows better than you or assumes you must have played every single game for every single console in the store because you work there, and so on.
And yeah, you don't get paid a lot. You start off a bit above the minimum. For all the stuff you're required to do, they should pay us more (I've found poop on the sales floor before. Poop. HOW?!). But of course, they know that if an employee quits, there's like 20 teenagers right behind him just dying to snatch that position.
Most of the time, 90% of the employees quit because they found a less stressful job that pays more (Not that hard to find, really) or are just plain sick and tired of everything. So yeah, the environment is good but the corporate higher ups make it really stressful for you to work there. And we're not even allowed to say we work there via facebook or whatever. I mean, we do, but if the district manager or whatever were to find out, we'd be in trouble. Same if you film stuff there or even say anything nice about the store online without permission.
Oh, and I'm not even gonna talk about the managers and the stress they go through every day to make sure their store doesn't suck. If you don't sell stuff, they get the complains about it everyday. Really, you can't fart there without someone finding out.
A couple of things I'd like to clarify, though:
-Trade in system: It sucks. We know. But from a business point of view, it's the way GameStop makes profit. They give you 22 bucks for Ghost Recon and they sell if for 47. Profit. I can see why some people just sell their shit there, though. I've been trying to sell Skyrim brand new for 40 bucks on Craigslist as opposed to GameStop for 60 bucks. Every single people who contacts me wants to either trade me some games or buy it for 25-30 bucks. People are just greedy. So they might as well sell their shit at GameStop.
In fact, when people frown at the 10 bucks I give them for their 30 PS2 games (I'm not exaggerating), I honestly tell them to try and sell it to a friend or something for 5 bucks each. Awesome profit for them. They nod and leave the store all sad. Or they just say they're lazy and sell them anyway even after I insist.
-Open new games. Also sucks, yes. But as a rule, we're required to have two copies of the "hottest titles" up for display on the sales floor (CoD, BF3, etc.) For whatever reason, we don't have dummy boxes. I guess it would be too much of a hassle for everyone to put dummy boxes out there. We kinda do but only for some used games or for promotional displays. But that way, if you bring the box to the register, we know we gotta have the game. When we open a new game for that, we gotta pull out all the DLC and Online Passes and such. Some dumb employees do forget to do that and that's when some unlucky customers buy a brand new copy with some missing DLC and then they come back complaining about and they have a hard time proving that. Personally, if I can avoid it, I won't open more than one box. I'll play dumb or I'll say I forgot to gut the new copies of a game. But of course, someone else will do it eventually. Those are the rules. I usually ask customers if it's okay that they're getting the gut copy. I show them the DLC and the disc and all because I actually hate it when I buy a game like that myself.
-Offering you to buy stuff: Like I said, we're required to "pitch" something to every customer, either a pre-order or a membership or whatever. Don't get all angry when a employee asks you to please pre-order Blops2. They're just trying to keep their job. Just be polite and say something like "Oh, I already pre-ordered it somewhere else" or "Oh, no thanks". Don't be an ass. Same when an employee approaches you while you're browsing games. As a matter of fact, we're required to do this to look out for thieves. Nothing against you, but again, it's a rule.
Also, we get secret shoppers. If we don't greet or engage them, we'll never hear the end of it. It doesn't matter if we had a line all the way to China or if I was on the phone with a customer or whatever. So we gotta do that.
-Offering stuff v.2: Most people are against memberships and pre-orders but it's not all gloom. If you buy tons of shit per year, then you should definitely get a card. I mean, I'm not trying to convert anyone or anything. I've got a coupon for 20% off my next purchase for my birthday that I combined with a Buy 2, get 1 for Free coupon. I got 3 good games for 40 bucks (Donkey Kong, Blops and L4D). If you only buy there around 5 times per year, skip it. Same with pre-orders. I was glad I pre-ordered Xenoblade Chronicles because of the artbook and because only two other people pre-ordered it. Because most customers ignored the game, we only got like 5 copies. Two were pre-orders and we only got two artbooks. We haven't got another copy ever since it came out. (The more pre-orders, the more copies available post-release).
-Used games: Alright, so I get why people don't like them. However, try finding a brand new copy of The Orange Box or Dragon Age: Origins or, hell, Midnight Club. You can't! Know why? Once a game doesn't sell that well brand new, the store moves them to used. So yeah, sometimes, you can just buy a brand new copy for the price of a used one. We even give them sealed copies in the case of 360 games.
I hope that gives a bit of insight on what we do. Like I said, the environment is great. But once you realize all the stuff you're required to do to keep your job/get more hours and money/must do because higher ups are retarded, then it gets stressful.