You can’t walk into a GameStop without having to fend off requests to sign up for a membership and preorder games. A former manager says he refused to take part in the often irritating environment, faced a demotion due to poor upselling numbers and lost his house as a result.

He writes:

I am the ex-assistant manager of a GameStop location somewhere in the eastern United States. I’m writing you to inform you of my horror story with this company.

I started off as a simple clerk (or Game Advisor as they’re called in GameStop land). Three months into my job, I received a promotion to shift leader (Senior Game Advisor). This, in turn, resulted in a pay raise and more hours which allowed me to quit my second job.

Enter recession.

While part time, our hours as lower level management were higher than those of regular employees. I quit my second job with the prospect of a better future with GameStop (and while it was not their fault the hours got shafted, it still made for a struggle to get by).

A year and a half into my tenure, I was approached by my store manager informing me that an opportunity had recently become available in a store 25 miles away. I happily accepted.

Christmas time in 2009 rolled around and I was now “Happily” placed at a smaller volume store as the assistant manager (full time!). Things were great for a while…
As many of you readers already know, if you don’t sell a certain percentage of GameStop’s “exclusive” membership cards (referred to as Edge Cards), and meet a certain percentage of reservations, you are worthless to the company. Let me simply state that I believe the customer’s satisfaction comes first. Apparently, that’s a frowned upon statement in GameStop land as I soon received a nice write-up telling me to “Improve my numbers or be demoted”.

I was faced with a difficult decision; be demoted and lose hours and lose my house, or quit and lose my house. I elected the latter option and soon landed another full time job making less money but with more hours (which ALSO didn’t work out.. but I digress)
My point of this writing is not to receive your sympathy, but simply to give you some insight into the workings of the company.

“Sell Edge cards and Reservations or lose your job”.

On a much more hilarious and sad note, I now work for Best Buy / Geek Squad.

At least he has optimized his work situation.

If you’re into video games, how does GameStop’s upsell-happy culture affect your choice to shop there?

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