GameStop Reviews

Pros

It can be a fun place to work, you get a decent discount on products, and the coworkers are great.

Cons

They focus too much on their sales numbers, and it leads to a very stressful and tense work environment, and it also promotes negative competition between employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Focus less on sales numbers, and quit publicly ranking employees. Pay more attention to how your employees are feeling about their job.

Pros

Fun atmosphere
Great team of associates
Game checkouts for employees
Free items for managers
lots of perks for management

Cons

District manager is detached
Stores not visited on a regular basis
criticism is often given instead of support
lack of payroll hours to effectively run a business
Favoritism and politics play more of a role than hard work and dedication

Advice to Senior Management

Regional Directors need to police what happens at the District level.
People at store level work really hard to make the company successful but those results are often "manipulated" by less than honest District Managers.

Pros

Relaxed environment (usually)
Casual attire
The occasional fun customer
Small location
Well organized
Best assistant manager I've ever worked with

Cons

Cranky customers-this is a bloody video game store, one would think the people shopping there would be a little more cheerful!
Feel a little resentment from some of the other associates, and as if I'm not catching on to procedures as fast as those who have been there for years (could it be because I have only just started??)
Associates have a tendency smile in each other's face only to badmouth each other later-I shudder to think what might be said about me when I'm not there!
Pay is far too low for the amount of work expected
Never enough hours, (I can understand a GA only being on a few days a week, but as a keyholder, it's kind of ridiculous to only have one or two short shifts a week!) and woefully understaffed
DM dosen't seem to fully understand that our store is a low traffic location, and yet is putting a lot of stress on us to sell products that most associates are not trained on, and therefore not likely to push on unsuspecting customers who basically just want to pick up their game/system/accessory and high tail it out of there.
Insane amounts of "busy work"-no fewer than 6 different types of inventory, expected to be completed within a store day or before opening, when there aren't enough extra hands to take care of customers, but you've got to get it done. SM-not always well informed, and unfortunately too focused on personal matters to really be an effective leader. ASM is completely on their job and would make an exceptional Store Manager, but is heading for greener pastures.

Advice to Senior Management

Understand that if you expect the myriad of reports, inventory, price changes, ect to be done in a timely manner, you have to provide more staff to accomplish this. And please, for the love of God, spend a little extra time on properly training. Just because some of you have been stuck here for years, doesn't mean the rest of us have.

Pros

1) For the avid gamer: employee store discounts
2) Discounts with daycares to cell phone companies

Cons

1) Working as customer phone support you get a lot of disgruntled callers
2) You can only get promoted or transferred to a different department if you are buddy buddy with a manager or supervisor
3) If supervisors don't like you they are constantly trying to get you in trouble
4) If you have issues you can only report them to your direct supervisor, no one above them will help you out
5) Very low pay
6) Mandatory over time during holiday season that start as 1 extra hour per day & eventually to 6-day work weeks that include the extra work hour!
7) Phone support must work holidays while the rest of the company has off

Advice to Senior Management

1) Listen to all employees regardless of position
2) Enable open door policy so that if the direct supervisor is being uncooperative you can go to the next higher up for a resolution
3) Promote employees for their work, not for whom they know/associate with
4) Increase pay
5) End mandatory overtime during holidays--just hire & train more staff in advance
6) Give ALL employees off on federal holidays

Pros

1. You work with an exciting product.
2. Your customers and co-workers vary in personalities and backgrounds.
3. Structured steps established to be promoted.
4. Structured training support to assist with employee training and development.
5. If you have sales skills while still being professional, and then develop leadership skills on top of that, you will move forward to a multi-unit manager position within 3-5 years.
6. Extremely competitive internally among stores, and most will be recognized and rewarded for monthly successes.
7. Very corporate.
8. Loyal customers can become "groupies" (without the sex and drugs, THANKFULLY!), so some days can be fun when they come in and shop or hang out.
9. SWAG! Good SWAG! Publishers will give you their games for free. In the time I was with the company, I received Dreamcasts, XBOX 360s, DS, Game Boys, clothes, and AAA games. The holiday time is when you see the most, but you can expect free stuff all year around.
10. Pretty good benefits and bonuses.

Cons

1. Expect long days if you expect success and consistency. Most days are at least 10 hours, and I have had 17 hour days more than once. The minimum scheduled non-holiday work-week is 44 hours, but it is nearly impossible to work that few hours and have your store stay intact because...
2. No payroll support. Since it is the easiest way to control the bottom line and impress their stock-holders, you will find yourself working by yourself or being short-handed most days of the week.
3. Very corporate. Many of the corporate office's decisions are focused on how the move will benefit their stock-holder portfolios and not the morale of their employees. It is always a tricky balance and, to their credit, if the home office has been sticking it to their store managers for several weeks, they will turn around and reward them with extra payroll so they can have extra days off. After all, a good pimp knows when their lady has had enough.
4. ALL emphasis is placed on getting customers to reserve product and sign-up for the rewards program. Your month and year's "success" centers around this. Your store could be very profitable and have the lowest inventory loss, but if you are ranking low on your reservations and reward numbers, you will be made to feel terrible about yourself in the most politically-correct, corporate-washed way. So you BETTER have good sales skills and hope you customers have enough extra money every visit. If your store is in a low-income neighborhood or an area struggling with unemployment, only the greatest sales people are not going to struggle.
5. The sign of a good manager is also how often their own members are promoted. However, this is a double-edged sword. At the moment you have the most stability in your location and you begin to balance the professional and personal life equation, your best employees can be taken from you. You will be lauded at how great you are at preparing the employees to move on, but you will also have to always have someone ready to take someone else's place, which is not the easiest thing to do. It is not always possible to have a talent wait 3-8 months at minimum wage while the person who you are grooming them to replace awaits their own promotion. It is a very thin line and balancing act.
6. No respect from many customers (this is in all retail in the United States, of course) and very little respect in the professional community (retail or otherwise) when you mention what you do and who you work for.
7. The pay is OK, but when you consider the amount of hours you work and break it down into an hourly rate, it is not that impressive, especially if you have been working there for more than 6 years.

Advice to Senior Management

As much excitement that is brought about being a public company, morale and work satisfaction was higher when we were privately owned and struggling for exposure.

Pros

If you love video games its a great place to work, but if your not a fan of messy kids it is it not.

Cons

Dealing with peoples junk that they bring in to trade-in, sometimes its dirty or smelly. It just junk that they don't want.

Pros

-Get to work in the gaming industry.
-Selling games to people is as fun as you make it.
-Fortunately I had a very supportive leadership team which respected employees needs and growth.
-Medical benefits are very competitive for retail.
-Yearly management meeting in Vegas, lots of contests as incentive and yearly bonus.
-Performance Indicators are easily manageable and easy to translate to creating a guest experience rather than just driving a number.

Cons

-A lot of change happens in a short amount of time.
-Leadership dictates the success of your business, if you are not confident in your supervisor you need to be or consider something else.
-This company is driven by it's people at the DM level in too many ways, I was fortunate to have great DMs but a mediocre or bad DM would make this a difficult place to work as a manager.
-Labor hours for non management are too few to operate during busy times, Game Stop is doing a great job of transitioning to customer a 1st model, but it is hard to do at the store level with out hours to support the number of employees needed to appease the demand.

Advice to Senior Management

Make sure the directives and intent of corporate policies are executed at the field level. Integrity, communication and commitment are lacking in the field when compared to corporate direction.

Pros

You can sign out games, however, it is not a solid reason to stay employed there. Personally, I would have liked to have seen benefits.

Cons

CORPORATE OFFICE IS A JOKE. None of the other stores treat you respectfully and management lies. There are never enough hours to go around.

Advice to Senior Management

OFFER MORE HOURS!

Pros

Its not a fast food job. If you like talking about games, and recomending them to other people, then you may like it here. There is opportunity to advance, if you are a good salesman, and are willing to always play by their ever changing rules.

Cons

Its essentially a sales job without the compensation of a sales job. You are always given more tasks to do then you could ever accomplish and then criticized for not doing a good enough job. There is always presure coming from the top, that trickles down to every level. They treat most low level employees as dispossable. Making money is always the top priority.

Advice to Senior Management

Spend more on wages! Seriously, we never had enough employees to do the job. I worked in a high volume store, and we were always 1 to 2 people short, virtually every day. And we couldnt keep employees because of how they were treated. Consider hiring dedicated sales people to run the sales floor and compensate them for it. Let the supervisors run the logistical side of the buisness, instead of expecting them to do both.

Pros

The discount is pretty nice, especially if you play a lot of video games. Customers are usually pretty nice and fun to talk with.

Cons

No hours most of the time. They expect you, even as a new hire, to be able to do 15 things at once with little or no real solid training. Everything revolves around making customers reserve games and sign up for their rewards cards (which cost money, mind you). If you can't do that, you're pretty much out. I've had one problem after another with getting paid also.

Advice to Senior Management

This shop should be a fun and relaxed place to work for. It's small, and most of the times gamers are just looking to talk shop and get something to play. Trying to force them into reserving games they probably don't want, and making them sign up for those cards gets old really fast.