Since I've said a few things about two of the three retail jobs I've had in my life, I may as well share some stories from the last one. Or rather, the first one.
My first retail job came about a week after I graduated college in May 2007. There was this little mom-n-pop gaming store called Game X Change. It's a franchised corporate deal but the particular company I worked for was a franchisee that had a number of locations around the OKC metro area.
I'd become enamored with the place during college because this was an actual local store that sold games for older systems. Between being a late adopter of the N64 and wanting to shore up my Genesis collection (I only owned a handful of games for it growing up because I was one of those cool kids that had the Sega Channel), it was great to have around.
The place was also the original inspiration for a webcomic idea I've been tinkering with since before I graduated college but that's a story for another time.
Oh, and before I go any further, I want to set the stage on one thing. One rule franchisees have to follow is to have the walls painted to match the logo. At the time this meant a deep hot pink as seen
here. Somehow I never noticed it as a customer but it's something else to be around it for 40 hours a week.
But yeah, I like to refer to my getting hired there as "victory by default." My own interview went OK but I mostly got the job because two of the other candidates didn't show up for their interviews and the last one had scheduling conflicts.
The manager that hired me was this guy named Mike. I only got to work with him for three months before he was transferred but most of my memories of him are pretty positive. He even gave me a PS2 that I had until its laser finally died in 2015. He did pull a pretty dirty trick once, though.
After his transfer, he had an employee that wanted one of the early PS3s with built-in PS2 compatibility and was calling around to the other stores. Our store happened to have one, so he asked how much that would be with tax. We're looking forward to this sale because it will basically make our sales for the day in one go. Except, when the dude finally showed up, he paid with a gift certificate from Mike's store for the exact amount with tax.
Mike essentially stole our sale. Our $400+ sale. Not cool.
Anyway, stores in this company typically ran on a skeleton crew so the only other employee was Erik, the assistant manager. He seemed decent enough when I was just coming in as a customer but I've learned that there's a difference between how you see someone as a customer and how you see them as their coworker.
Like, don't get me wrong. There were times when he was still fun to talk to. But one of his deals was that he would sometimes take the bank deposit early in the day, take lunch while he was out, and then be gone for almost half the day.
Then there were days where he would spend the rest of it playing a game in the back of the store. Playing games on the clock was forbidden by company policy except for testing purposes but it's not like we had cameras so it happened sometimes. I was even invited to play co-op from time to time with one coworker or another.
Mike's successor was Edwin, the other candidate for worst boss I've ever had. Even the regional manager admitted after the fact that he probably shouldn't have ever put him in as our manager. He was a stoner redneck and also kind of a dick. One day in late 2007, we received a copy of the latest Guitar Hero game, so he and Erik are taking turns playing it in between taking too long to get inventory counted. Towards the end of the day I ask if I can have one turn at it and he tells me "no, you're just here to do the work."
I called him an asshole... under my breath.
Between the two of them, I got burned out pretty quickly because I was basically the only one doing any work. Yeah, management may have its own responsibilities but it's also not like they didn't have time to help. Even on weekends I'd come back Monday and there'd be a lot left for me to do. One day I was feeling pretty fed up so, since nobody was in the store, I took a minute to play a quick breather round on one of our demo stations in between stocking shelves. So of course, that's when somebody from one of the other stores happens to stop by.
Makes total sense. We had a guy that played games all day sometimes and yet I'm the one to get caught, written up, and put on three month probation. Pissed me off to no end.
And yeah, I did finally end up blowing up on them one day. Just before Christmas, in fact. I'm basically running around trying to process incoming merchandise in between Christmas shoppers while they're goofing off in back again. And, unbeknownst to them, I had been in a car accident a few days prior (one that has had permanent effects) and was starting to feel the whiplash.
Erik made some snide comment about how it's taking me so long to get everything processed so I yelled (inasmuch as I ever yell) at him about how I'm trying to juggle everything myself between customers. They tried to defend it by saying they had to do the same thing when they were in my position but I still call BS. Just because previous managers did that to you doesn't mean it's OK for you to perpetuate the cycle.
Their successors further proved this to be BS because they actually worked but I'm getting ahead of myself.
Thankfully, after Erik finally decided to quit, the regional manager took that as an opportunity to install a new manager and I was rid of both of them in one go. I don't really have any complaints about their successors but it's worth noting that the new manager is the guy that caught me playing a game. He even told me one day that the RM had sent him to our store to spy on things. I want to say he was even there to spy on me in particular for some reason but we're talking about a conversation from 12 years ago.
I don't think the regional manager was ever very impressed with me, to be honest. The few times he saw me work, I was still pretty green because, hey, first retail job. I also overheard him on one visit making fun of the way I answered the phone (to be fair, the greeting I was trained to use was quite a mouthful) in a homophobic manner. He did give me kudos for doing big business on my own one day but he was also willing to let me go when they decided to close the store (and he had told the manager to keep the closure a secret from me - thankfully he didn't) until the manager persuaded him to find a place for me at another store.
That's another thing. I worked there in 2008 when the economy was going south, and we could tell. There were days where we had more people looking to sell games than buy them. There were days where we could count on one hand how many people we'd see in an hour, even during peak hours. Hell, there was one day where we didn't have a single sale. We even ended up being $15 short in the register after having to pay for one of the regular cleaning services that happened to come in that day.
In hindsight, probably the biggest sign of how rough things were getting was that the decision to close came about a week before Thanksgiving. You know you're hurting if the Christmas shopping season won't help.
So, I ended up getting transferred to another store that was 45 minutes away. I even passed two of their other stores on the way to that one. It's significant to mention that because it wasn't like they had a lot of them.
The RM told me he'd try to transfer me to one of the closer ones if an opening came up but I knew the writing was on the wall when I saw the manager faxing a copy of the new hire forms to one of said closer stores one day. Still, I stuck out the holiday season despite gas prices for that commute costing me an arm and a leg, partially out of some warped sense of loyalty but mostly because I knew from previous experience that trying to find a job during the holidays is hard.
I ended up quitting in late January as soon as I had another job secured, but I was at least nice enough to give notice. Unfortunately I didn't get to work my last two shifts due to winter weather making the commute too treacherous but the manager understood.
