Saturday, November 6, 2010

A Rundown of My GameStop History - Part I

I started working at GameStop when I was 18 and a sophmore in college. My mother kept pushing me to get a summer job and I started jobhunting. And by jobhunting I mean driving around, hanging out with my friends and NOT filling out any applications. Eventually she wised up to my plan and I had to actually get a real job. I had worked before so holding a job wasn't a completely foreign idea. In high school, I worked at American Eagle for about three months and I also interned on Capitol Hill for a Congressman (Can you guess which one? XD). So I headed to the only place I'd seriously considered working at.

I'll be honest, I'd been in GameStop twice in my life before applying. I usually bought my games at Best Buy instead but I didn't want to work at a big store. I walked in to XX41, my first store, and met Pierce and Vinny. Pierce is gigantic and covered in tattoos. He is also the nicest person I have ever met. He is about 6 years older than me. Pierce was our ASM. He'd started at GameStop as a GA and worked his way up. Vinny was the SGA at the time. I call him Vinny here because he looks EXACTLY like Vinny from the Jersey Shore. He's nice enough though we butted heads at times. I filled out an application on the spot and hung out for a bit. When I left, I figured they wouldn't call me and that would be that.

Later that night I got a phone call from Barney, the store manager. He asked me to come down to the store later that week. Barney is about three years older than me. He's tall, super skinny with glasses and is totally awesome. I met him at the store to do an interview. The interview was pretty basic. He asked me questions about my work history and what kinds of games I played. He had me sell him some stuff (I hate roleplaying with a passion -__-).

He called me back the next week to offer me the job with a starting pay rate of $6.55 an hour! At the time minimum wage was $6.50 in my state and the only reason I got an extra 5 cents was because I asked. I didn't care, I finally had a job! I could get my mother off my back!

I worked at Store XX41 for a year and a half. I met some of the best people working there. And the worst. My coworkers included the GAs: Harold, the biggest stoner I have ever met. One of my favorite people, Harold is super chill and funny. I love working with him. Also he would totally hook me up with weed if I asked. Harold worked at GameStop as a second job to pay for his gaming needs though he was eventually let go and he's now back in school (with me XD). Harold and I were the main GAs at the store along with Jen, a former ASM who demoted herself down to GA when she got another job. She's around Pierce's age with bushy straw colored hair and pale pale PALE skin. We got along at first until I got promoted to SGA and she turned into a raging b*tch. She was always commenting about what I wore and what I did. But that's for another day :) Other GAs included: Ash, a chubby asian kid a couple years younger than me who loves everything from Pokemon to Twilight, and Cappie and Beaver, two typical college freshmen who love sports games and shooters. Their only defining characteristic was that Cappie had short brown hair and Beaver had long-ish blond hair.

This post is already super long and I'm pretty tired. I'll continue this in another post :)

3 comments:

DarkAvenger said...

It's interesting to know how things work out of my country. (I'm from Brazil)
So, you are quite young... Let's say that I'm more than 10 years older than U lol! Which course are you taking in college? Are you following the gaming/computing career?

swarkles said...

I'm not, I'm studying Biology :)

DarkAvenger said...

That's nice! In touch with gaming 24h a day can make U white and nerdy! :P