I know this is probably beating a dead horse because its GameStop but as someone who works there I want to break some thoughts down to kinda explain why now is suddenly the tipping point for a lot of GS employees.
-before they use to give out A LOT of free shit to employees. My store manager got her ps4 and switch as gifts from the company, and we weren't even an amazing store. I've gotten whole $100 games for free before. It was great because even though the pay sucked the free shit made it worth it. They stopped giving out free shit.
-there use to be store manager conferences where they were given goodie bags and told what to expect the following year. They started making people go to these events virtually and off the clock while in addition to not giving them any more free shit. Like before you didn't mind going unpaid because you were probably going home with a new console or a lot of games. Now that doesn't happen.
-the pay never went up. Like never. I know a store manager who celebrated his 16th year with the company this year. The man doesn't even make $20/hr.
-they started micro managing and the pressure from metrics is entirely unfair. Before they would make the store leaders have conference calls like 1 time every 2 weeks. Now it's every week. They also are now pressuring people to auto renew their cards so harshly that it actually hurts metrics to push the card without the auto renewal, so many don't push the cards anymore and get screamed at. Plus they want us to have certain goals reached for game pre-orders when there's Jack shit coming out this year.
-expecting go up pay doesn't. Besides the micromanaging that I mentioned many stores had to get rid of the ASM (assistant store manager) position. (Rank goes GA-SGA-ASM-SM) While getting rid of this position the responsibilities of the position fell on SM's (Store Managers) and SGAs (key holders) for no additional pay. Just more expectations.
-taking advantage of the fact that employees love talking about games to justify paying them nothing.
-inflation and again the PAY. The lowest tier employee (a GA) makes state minimum wage. In many states that's the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr. If an employee works 8hrs at that wage (not gonna happen in 1 day as a GA btw) they make $60 before tax…. that's not even enough to purchase 1 video game in the store, especially now that games are starting to cost $69.99 for ps5 and Xbox Series games. Their own employees can't even afford to shop there and they are the company's largest buyer group!
-pay but from a different angle. Remember my hierarchy list? GA (lowest)- SGA- ASM- SM. Now keep in mind this will vary based on location and store manager and district and stuff but this is to give you a rough idea of the average pay. GA will most commonly make state minimum wage. SGA typically will come in about $9-$11/hr. ASM is usually around $13/hr. Store manager (for someone who hasn't been with the company for 16 years like mine) is commonly $15/hr but based on years their they can go up to $18/hr (mine had to threaten to leave to get $20/hr).
-pandemic and lack of job scarcity. A lot of people realized the value of their life after they got sick with covid and said fuck this I'm out. Additionally a lot of people passed away in 2020 leaving new jobs open or inheritances to be passed down. BUT most importantly GameStop wasn't an essential business. They tried claiming they were. They even gave us stupid notes to print out and give to cops that showed up at the door to shut us down. The note pretty much said “fuck you and fuck off”. Within 24 hours that note was removed from the system and many stores had to close down (not all because of some weird thing with online ordering and picking it up). This meant that a lot of people had to find new jobs or something to make things work in the meantime and many people just never came back. Moreso with a lot of stores (like mine) closing permanently.
So yeah lots of problems but when I told my assistant store manager I don't even make enough to buy a game on the wall he had to sit down and think about his life a bit. I actually think he will leave the company soon, because he'd make more starting at the local Starbucks, which has its own issues yeah.
And again I know dead horse. I just wanted to break down some of the issues for someone who doesn't keep up with gamestops downhill trend. And I wanted to explain why suddenly now it's more of an issue since a lot of these problems existed before this year, but only this year being the tipping point.