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."

Comments

Re:Where's the story here?

[cduffy]

The story is that a policy that's popular within the community where it was implemented was terminated with prejudice by upper management.

It doesn't have to be a legal or ethical violation to be news.

Bad rap

[rossz]

At the moment, you have to pass a test to graduate to prove you actually learned something. Most kids don't have any real comprehension that slacking off today is going to have dire consequences tomorrow. So this guy decides to get their attention through something they actually give a shit about, and everyone here on slashdot calls him an idiot.

"It's not his job to be those kids mom". Yep, you are right. So mom could lie and say he got good grades, or just buy her idiot son (with a promising future in the fast food service industry) the latest game. Problem solved.

I don't have a problem with what he was doing, though I think he would have been in a better position to offer discounts for good grades.

I also don't have a problem with certain types of games requiring an adult to purchase them. Again, it's not the store deciding if the kid gets the game or not. The parent will make the ultimate decision. Without the limitation, the parent doesn't get any say.

Oh, for you idiot teenagers with mod points today that will be modding me down as flamebait or a troll. Kiss my ass. You'll have kids one day. Your entire attitude will change.

Note to dad: Uhm, you remember when I was a teenager and was a complete asshole. I'm sorry about that. You were right.

Re:GREAT Business, GREAT sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Please name one high school that reduces grades based on a curve. I write assessment software, and the only time users ever use the curve function is to raise the high score in the event that too many failed. Nobody ever uses it to lower scores; no parent would stand for it these days.

Re:GREAT Business, GREAT sense

[DavidShor]

Yeah, you nailed it. I did very badly in high-school, and dropped out when I was 14. Though video games had very little to do with it, unless you count Slashdot and Wikipedia as games.

Anyway, I studied for some AP tests and audited college classes until I could get into a university as a math major. I'm 16 now, in my senior year in college as a math major.

So let me get to the root of my anger. If someone had tried to make me "get off my ass and get responsible" when I was a 14 year old based on my grades, they would have not known that I skipped my Algebra class to sneak into Calculus lectures at a nearby university, or that I poured over Physics and Economics textbooks at home instead of performing pointless county mandated busy work at home.

I invested a lot of thought into my choices, and if he has any advice I will be happy to take it into consideration. But I highly resent any attempt to actively discriminate against me and make my life more difficult solely on the basis of something that does not affect anyone else but me.

The grades of his customers are not the business of this Manager, and I'm glad he was suspended.

Re:GREAT Business, GREAT sense

[Dolohov]

High school was never about learning to think. It's about keeping a whole lot of untrained kids out of the work force where they would drive down wages and push out older folks. For the brighter kids, it's also a holding pen until you're old enough for college.

You may not think so now, but you'll be glad later that school was like that in terms of authority. Yes, schools try to indoctrinate kids that way, but thankfully they do it BADLY. You've been blessed with a healthy skepticism and disrespect for authority that will hopefully serve you well through the rest of your life. It's one thing to get it from a cultural perspective, it's another to see first hand that many adults really don't know what they're doing, and can't always muddle through.

my 2 cents

[neuro88]

Okay, flat out denying sales to kids, because of bad grades is a bad idea.

Offering a discount to kids with good grades is a good idea.

So far a lot of slashdotters have stated the first, and many have stated the 2nd as a good idea (I think it's probably a good idea myself).

But what I haven't really seen is that denying sales to kids with bad grades might be a bad idea,
because bad grades are not necessarily an indicator of playing too many video games or being lazy.
My grades in high school were often bad (and at times very bad though sometimes I got pretty good grades),
because I hated being there so much. I hated all the busy work. I wasn't learning anything interesting
(I wasn't learning much at all), I was just being told what to do. It wasn't until college that I finally
realized why I did so bad in high school. I did pretty well at the junior college, and I'm currently doing
well pretty well at the university. Both of which are far more difficult academically-wise (my high school
before it was shut down was one of the worst performing schools in San Francisco).

So yeh, giving a discount to kids with good grades while neither rewarding nor punishing the kids who
didn't get good grades would have been a much smarter route to go.

Re:MODULATE PARENT RATIO

[drakaan]

You know what? There's an old saying: "It takes a village to raise a child"

Fat jokes aside, that's substantially true. It seems to me that before everyone went lawsuit-happy, other adults that didn't even *know* a kid would tell them to stop doing something (assuming they were being miscreants), and maybe even drag them home by the ear to their parents.

Now, we have one of the very first responses to an article about a guy that was worried about kids wasting too much time on video games and not enough on homework displaying an attitude that suggests that he not only doesn't have children, but that he doesn't give a crap about how any prospective children he might have will do in school.

I love that idea...of course, if my kids aren't getting good grades, they're usually doing a lot of homework and complaining that dad gets to play video games, but they have to do homework...

It probably doesn't make good business sense, especially in this day and age, for a manager to try and make that kind of decision on his own, and I have no problem with GameStop for firing him...social engineering isn't his job. I get that. On the other hand, if said manager opened a similar store nearby on his own, and with the same policy, I'd probably shop there instead of GameStop.

If you think this is a reward or punishment, you're nuts. And "socialists" would have made a lot more sense than "communists" in your bold declaration.