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GameStop Manager Suspended After "Games for Grades"
mikesd81 writes "A manager at a GameStop has been suspended for instituting a 'games for grades' policy. 'Brandon Scott says he started a unique new policy in his store to promote good grades in school but now his employer has sent him to detention for speaking out of turn. Scott says he's been suspended by GameStop in the wake of his unconventional "games for grades" policy at an Oak Cliff store.' Apparently, on his own, Scott decided to stop selling video games to any school-age customer unless an adult would vouch for the student's good grades."
I can understand giving kids a discount for good grades...had he done that and been suspended then that would have been wrong, but refusing to sell? That's just bad business.
So some idiot decides to abuse his power (for better or worse does not matter) and loses the company money? How is this remotely surprising? He's a bean counter, if he decides anything but which colour beans to count this week he gets kicked out for someone else.
I like muppets.
They can just say that they fired him for lack of sales and be done with.
There's a high probability that they don't have to give him any reason why they let him go. Honestly, while this might be great and all in theory, I don't see why GameStop wouldn't act the way they did, it would be different if this guy owned his own store and was instituting his own policy. When you work for corporate America you follow the proper channels or you end up like this poor bastard.
Because, you know, it's not like good grades will earn you anything else in life.
And then the parents wonder why their children aren't ready for the real world-- because they haven't been shown any of it!
The lesson here is: don't try to be someone's Mom unless you are his Mom.
I wish more people in our society would learn this lesson. I'm old enough to not need a Mom to tell me what to do or not to do. Kids, on the other hand, already have a Mom and don't really need 50 of them.
No matter what 'system' he came up with, he should be fired for putting another step in the middle of the "Hi I want to buy this", "Here you go" process.
If anybody thinks this guy is a good Samaritan or should be rewarded, you're living in your own little hippy infested lovey dovey moron world. He just made customers go another block to the 'other of a million' game stores and buy there for the same competitive price.
He also took away a pretty basic freedom / right from all of his younger customers. So maybe he's the one that needs to learn a lesson. I wish I lived close enough to refuse to buy anything from this store ever again. If the government instituted the same policy for merchants - there would be riots in the streets.
Ace
He shouldn't have instituted this policy. The trick to business is to sell things to people that can buy said things, not to say "Sorry, kid, your money is no good here. We don't cater to no dumb people."
It's completely insane to deny a sale to anyone for any criteria other than that which makes them eligible to own (i.e. you can't buy this m-rated game because you are 4 years old, or you only have $7). I mean, that's like saying "Sorry, you can't buy this car because you work at McDonalds. I don't care if you can pay in full in cash right now, have great credit, etc, etc."
Having the opposite policy (as some seem to be suggesting) would have been equally as bad. A discount for good grades is just as discriminatory; "Sorry, Mr. Gates, we can't sell you this Toyota - you'll have to go to the Porche dealer down the street."
Anyone else think the comments just weren't rendering right before they turned off ABP and saw ads?
Look, fools, you can't have it both ways. Either there are going to be standards, or there aren't. There's already a standard that you don't sell M-rated games to underage kids, this isn't any different.
If he's unwilling to sell games to kids who are flunking out of school? I TOTALLY LOVE THAT STAND. Seriously, think about it. We have major issues these days with schools being fucked up. If kids aren't making the grade, we may love games, but just letting them play the games is not going to teach them to take school (and work) seriously.
Fuck Gamestop for suspending him. They should be putting him on a pedestal and making this a nationwide policy.
Sure, that's how many stores do operate, but why does a store have to operate that way? Read his account he turned down only about two dozen sales, and some of those kids came back and made purchases later after cleaning up their grades.
If he gets parents' support through his policies, that has potential to result in a net increase of sales -- two dozen transactions isn't that may in the larger scheme of things.
Example: Someone has a car and good grades, but doesn't like to cart his mom with him. Result: No games for you!
God spoke to me.
Chuck E. Cheese used to have something very similar. You bring in your report card, and you would get free tokens for each good grade. When I read the title I thought this is what the manager was doing and thought it was a fantastic idea. After reading his negative-reinforcement approach, however, I agree fully with his dismissal.
He hasn't the authority to be making those decisions. If the president of GameStop decided to do this it would be fine. When a peon goes behind the President's back and does it, it's a different story.
A manager is a person hired to oversee operations for someone else. He doesn't own the store, he doesn't make the policies, he just runs it. If it was his store, great, but pulling that at a place you don't own could even get you sued for lost revenue in addition to fired.
Also it is stupid because it really isn't a store's job to play police over what people buy. If parents don't want their kids playing games, that is their responsibility. It isn't his responsibility to make that decision for them. Maybe a parent decides that Cs are good enough. Maybe their kid isn't all that bright and Cs are all they can do, and that's doing well for them and thus they are rewarded for it.
As I said: If you want to open a store based on this, go right ahead. However don't be surprised if you find your business suffers for it. If you choose to work for someone else as their representative, your duty is to do what they tell you. If their policy is "Sell to anyone who has the money," it is your duty to do that. You were not hired to play morality police, you were hired to do a job. If they had a policy prohibiting all sales to minors, it would be your duty to do that as well, even if it was costing them money.
I get real tired of people trying to play morality police with others. How about you decide how you and your family are going to live your lives, and I'll decide for me and mine?
If he were one of my employees, he would be fired. Not "suspended". (What is he, a school kid?)
His idea of not selling games to kids with bad grades was a good idea in general, but not if it isn't his own business. His employer should have decided whether or not to implement something like that.
If one of my employees decided, without my knowing, to refuse to work for "stupid clients" I'd have him canned immediately. So why is this front page news? The headline should read "Man refuses to do job, gets fired."
Who's taking someone's money and just doing as they would? This story is about someone refusing to take kids money unless they were passing their classes.
Yeah, it's against the corporatist attitude that you went way overboard trying to defend. But it was an admirable act. Which is why that corporatism sucks.
Isn't it cool that the people defending corporatism aren't as smart as those who can see that humans are more important than money?
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make install -not war
So the whole 'manager' title is now no better than the lofty responsibilities associated with flipping burgers? You tell someone they are a manager, then you let them make decisions, the title deserves that respect. Seems to me that the glass towered retards at the top don't understand that a couple of phone calls might have solved this issue far better than suspending him and very possibly losing a crap load of sales. You might not like the guy's ideology, but you can bet the average middle class soccer mom cares far less about some random companies bottom line.
I'm well beyond 18-21 years of age, though I don't think what this guy did was something I would disapprove of. If I want my child to have a game, I can always go and buy it myself.
This guy is a fucking moron. I mean the guy from TFA, not the parent poster. I'll refrain from insults for now although I completely disagree on all counts. To get this out of the way, let's ditch the ratings too, they're bullshit. This way there shouldn't be any confusion about standards.
First of all, declining to sell the games to customers on random basis (he defines what "good grades" are, doesn't he?) is not what he was supposed to do. If he thought this would be beneficial to the business, he should've talked to the actual owners. He didn't and he got in trouble.
Secondly, the reason schools are all fucked up is NOT video games. I repeat, video games are not the reason schools suck. I'm rather big on procrastination, and I don't need any games to avoid working on the thesis. Neither do these kids. They'll find something else to do, which would be inevitably more interesting than doing homework. There are many options available, one could argue on slashdot, get drunk with their underage friends, watch paint dry, or, hell, even read a book.
And finally, even if we ignore the above two points, his negative approach is still stupid. Positive reinforcement would've worked just as well if not much better, without attracting any of the criticism. Simply give kids discounts for good grades. I've seen this done in a local computer hardware store, and while the discount wasn't huge, it was a nice touch. Maybe make each subject graded above X points worth a 5pp discount, or something. The more good grades the kids have, the more games they can buy. Everybody wins.
So in conclusion, fuck that guy. I'm glad they put a stop to this retarded policy before it could spread anywhere.
"I don't like your grades, you can't have a game!" "I don't like your business practice, you can't have a job!" There's always somebody one rung up the ladder from you.
Day after day, this guy has to sell games to little bastards who can barely read the package, and can't tell how much change they're owed.
... Game Stop will fire him, no doubt, but with any luck he'll land a sweet "gamer community correspondent" gig with CNN, or write a book or something.
How much money do you think a manager of a Game Stop makes?
I don't really know, but I'd venture to guess, magnitudes less than most of the IT professionals commenting in this thread.
What do you think the guy had to lose, really? Did he really think his corporate masters were going to stand for FEWER sales where they could have been MORE? Hell no!
This guy knew full well WTF he was doing, and it was absolutely brilliant.
He made his statement, and got his 15 minutes
If you've got to burn out of your just-barely-more-than-minimum-wage job, I can't think of a better way to do it, and with flourish, no less.
excellently played, sir. Bravo!
I'm not buying there anymore.
Corporations claim to be all about profit. I can accept that. I WORK for a decent sized corp. But if you don't nurture and maintain the community your profiting from, before long there won't BE a community. This is an incredibly short sighted response. Most people understand you don't shat where you eat.
Those of you who want to whine about how 'it's the parents responsibility', go ahead. I happen to think this store manager is right on the money. He actually CARES about his customers, which is something that is sadly lacking at most layers of business these days.
That right there will get him more business and more REPEAT business than all the marketing dollars that trickle down to his store from corporate.
I don't know where they learn it, but the lack of ethics, morality, or a sense of community consequences in the last 20 years or so of corporate history is just appalling. This is just one more example.