275: Confessions of a GameStop Employee - Part Three

[L3D]

Sometimes it seems like company policies are meant only to punish the good customers. After buying and testing a new game, a customer trying to return would be told that it's against company policy to return opened games. Good and well behaved customer would be fine with that, a bad customer would throw a hissy fit, make threats and complain in a loud manner. Bad managers usually come and save the day by reward people for behaving badly.

Rewarding such behaviour makes no sense. This only teaches people to act like dicks, it brings down employees morale and causes loss of profits. Not very wise at all. Unfortunately some people still think that customer is *always* right.

 

[Spellmaster]

Here's a nice "observed" story that I was reminded of reading this. I was shopping in a Gamestop when a little kid comes in, probably 12, with his brother who is even younger, asking for COD4. Naturally (well, I don't know how well most do it, but to me this was an easy choice) he refused. The kid offered his mother's ID and credit card. He told the boy he could not give him the game, he could only give it to someone who is at least 18. The kid says OK. He walks out the door to a minivan parked and idling right in front of the store. He comes back with his mom, who of course left the van there, running, and then begins to berate the employee for making her get out of the car. She tells him to just give him the game, which he says he still can't because of the rating, he can only accept payment and hand the game directly to her. She tells him that he can decide for himself if it's appropriate or not, but it takes a few more minutes of her being pissed off before she just grabs the credit card to buy the game like she's been greatly inconvenienced. It was utterly ridiculous, and of course, the worst part is that the kids were both just standing there the whole time watching this ridiculous display. I rather feel sorry for those kids, though I felt the one at least handled it rather better than his mother did. Hopefully he'll grow up smarter.

I caught the tail end of one of these arguments at my local GAME when Modern Warfare 2 came out. This woman was going seriously mental at the Assistant manager because her 10 year old had been refused a copy. She just couldn't get it into her thick skull that it would have been illegal, and if someone had sold it to him they could have got a police caution

This happens all the time at my local store, the young brats get there parents to buy them games they can't get themelves, when if the parents were informed the item is not for their darling spawn, due to a mature or similar rating, they go ape++++

Honestly, stores today should have people in that position sigh a waver at the counter basically saying " i understand i am buying a game in violation of several laws for my immature spawn, and any rights i have to complain due to my outright stupidity for any reason after i leave are hereby waved" , people need to be aware of the cause of x-box and pc rage is due to PARENTS buying their kids games they should not have to begin with!

We have workable systems for keeping mature and advanced content out of kids hands, but they dont work if someone decides that the rating in the game box corner is just a suggestion

 

[PipPup]

Now I understand why each time I go to GameStop I see different employees working at the same store I visited only a month ago.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

I've heard of stories like this soccer mom. District managers have zero contact with customers at all, and if customers throw a big enough tantrum, they'll get whatever they want.

 

[DoomyMcDoom]

I've worked customer service/retail a fair ammount, and in my experience, it doesn't matter where you are, or what you sell you will come accross self entitles assholes who will find SOMETHING to rail on you about, even if you are already doing EXACTLY what they want.

Last time I had that happen I kicked the customer outa the store(calmly, I can keep a level head about pretty well anything), time before I simply told them "I don't need to be treated this way." and "Could you please leave before this turns into an issue." now at this point the customer in question had already recieved their requested goods, and had at that point gotten what they had ordered 5 minutes earlier than it was quoted to them when they called me, so bringing personally inflammatory remarks into it for no goddamn reason other than said customer(a lawyer) had a meeting to be at and I had apparently slowed them down by being faster than anticipated.

I'm a greatly kind and generous person to customers whome I serve, but sometimes, a customer is just PLAIN WRONG.

Where I work now, it's first come first served, I don't care if someone is in a hurry, I don't care if they have supper cooking at home, I will treat EVERY customer equally unless they provoke me in such a way as to remove them from the establishment for causing a disturbance.
I will sell them whatever they want that is available for purchase, with a smile on my face, and possibly a dissarming comment about some recent positive event in the paper.

 

[Furrama]

Isn't this the same guy who did the Zero Originality videos? It's the exact same stories and everything.

 

[Allthingsspectacular]

This reminds me of one time where I was working on Sonic and was working at the window. This obnoxious teenager came through with his cowboy hat and truck. The order started out nice, then he started talking about how awesome his truck is. I was politely agreeing because, hey, that's what customer service is for. Then he was like "Do you want to see what she can do?" I politely declined. But apparently he didn't get the hint and decided to this massive screeching peel out. The smoke from the tires covered the whole building and we had to vacate.

The manager immediately approached me and started accusing me of short changing him or offering bad service. She then took a fine out of my paycheck for the incident.

From that point onwards I pretty much knew to never work in customer service again. Because, if they so desire, they can get you in trouble for NO reason whatsoever.

 

[warmachine]

I've never worked in retail but I reckon if the employee did issue a refund and this was discovered, he'd be fired. I'd like to know, from those who've worked in retail, whether flatly telling a district manager you can't deviate from company policy, only follow an officially amended policy, would work?