I’m glad I don’t work at a gamestop… This new policy they’re enforcing is total bullshit that makes both the customer and employee suffer greatly.
The program, called “Circle of Life,” gives each GameStop store different percentage quotas for 1) pre-orders; 2) reward card subscriptions; 3) used game sales; and 4) game trade-ins. Each of these quotas is based on the store’s total transactions. Pre-orders and reward cards subscriptions are based on the number of transactions, while used game sales and trade-ins are based on the total dollar value of transactions. If a store’s quota for used game sales is 30%, and the store sells $1,000 worth of merchandise, GameStop expects at least $300 of that merchandise to be pre-owned.
I could see this Circle of Life thing being about as effective as the red ring of death if they decide to keep this policy.
The more new games an employee sells, the more used games they’ll have to sell to make up for it. In other words, according to salespeople speaking to Kotaku and elsewhere on the internet, GameStop is incentivizing employees to stop people from buying new games and hardware. GameStop staff say the company has threatened to fire people who don’t hit these quotas, which is leading to all sorts of scuzzy tactics.
If a customer wants a new console, or a new game, and an employee gives them what they want, they either have to make up for it by selling a certain percentage of used game wares, or be terminated. Or the employee has to lie to the customer to keep their job, forcing the customer to shop elsewhere. Which in this day and age with the internet isn’t very hard, is it? This will lead to pissed off customers and a high turnover rate for employees. I’m sure the gamestop execs aren’t too happy about the news circulating teh interwebz right now.
I feel sorry for anyone who works there, reading the comments to the article are quite illuminating.
Having worked at Gamestop for a short time, I am in no way surprised by any of this. Thanks for the heads up. I’ll never shop there again.
Worked for Gamestop for 3 years as a store manager. I was fired for paying my employees out of pocket to help me out off the clock because corporate pulled all my hours during Christmas time so I was soloing a fucking store by myself. I doubt none of this.
As one of the unfortunate Gamestop employess, my first reaction is ‘love my job, hate the company. Been working for the company since 2005 and the circle of life is the biggest crock of shit ive ever dealt with. My district Manager, sorry Leader (were not supposed to use the words Manager or customer any more) has directly told me to lie to customers about stock in the past. I would like to say more but this is already enough to get me fired.