Misadventures of a Retail Game Guy: Episode 2

Written by Coldguy

Friday, 10 October 2008 01:01

Alas here we are the pre-opening to the store, the following names have been changed to protect the innocent and the following you about to read is honest to goodness truth.

The Meeting

So the first point of duty was to meet with the various employees and to learn the ropes of the system. I arrived early, ate breakfast, and meet the various employees. I was the only one with a college education and a stable job. They all worked in retail before, some more then others. Many of them wanting to leave their past job to work here because they all knew it was ground floor for a high potential company.

Now we were chatting and talking about what we like and where we came from and then the Owner arrived late. This is something that will be a running theme for days to come. Apparently the Owner wanted to get into this business because the Owner did not want to be involved with it. Yes that last statement did not make any sense to me neither, apparently the Owner is more of a DM then a store manager. The Owner is planning on making more sites, we are the crop of people that will eventually run these stores, this is a boot camp in order to prove our worth to the Owner and help expand to eventually get a store of our own.

Now about everyone's eyes lit up, including mine, about this opportunity. Granted at other game stores you need to assimilate into the company by going to training and essentially being an employee of the company. However with this all we need to do is bust our balls, get on the good side of the Owner, and boom potential for being in a stable job. Now granted there is no way in hell that this is going to take me away from my main job, but it is a good thought just in case this do not pan out.

The reason we were meeting was two fold, first to get inventory done, and second go over the ground rules of the store while meeting each other. Now the meeting part was nice since we took care of most of it while we were waiting for the Owner to show up, however after talking to them individuality I noticed one thing we all had in common, we were aggressive.

I don't mean aggressive in the sense of beating you in a game of tennis, I mean business aggressive. This quality separates the Entrepreneurs from the Managers, the Risk Takers from the Risk Worriers, the Go Getters from the Getting it to Go. You know what I mean, we all wanted this store to succeed due to the fact the only other opportunity has such a PR disaster that someone can easily come along and take it out. This place has the infrastructure to do so, it is all a matter of winning a customer one at a time.

Now you may be wondering why I have not mention the pains of doing an inventory. Well the system to do it on was not up. Why's that? Well first the modem was a week late, the IT contractor was past due by two weeks, the computer systems came in the night before, and when the program was supposed to be installed last night they didn't do it. Good start for a business right?

Now there was one thing the corporate office wanted us to do, they wanted us to sign up for a free trial to go2mypc.com for each computer, give them the information, and then they go in and do their thing. Now as soon as we saw this we knew that this is highly illegal for any business to do. Since the free trial states that it is for personal use only, and in our case it was a business case. When we tried to call out corporate on their bluff that it was "completely fine" we didn't buy it. However the program was installed after I left that day, so I did not have to do a single piece of inventory. Getting paid to stand around is so much fun.

The next day I came in and everything was done, inventory was made, games were placed on the shelfs (in the wrong order but I'll get to that later) and the end cap was removed. So people saw the store for the first time now and it was garnering a lot of attention. Granted they were from mall employees and random teenagers in a mall during a weekday morning (who are these people?) but it was enough to start a buzz going around that a new place was opening up.

Then corporate came in, a guy who's job is to go to every new store and guide them through the bumps in the beginning of a store opening. He was an awesome guy, a true gamer at heart. He had just enough business sense to know what goes on, but has the innate personality to charm anyone they talk too. Of course he came right before I had to leave for the day and go to my main job, however he did go into how to use a disc resurfacer like a pro and the way he can talk to anyone and explain how to do something was an art to be in awe of. Really nice guy who also gave me a tip into the structure of the corporation to realize there are two types of people, people who love to help you, and people who love to cash your check and leave you alone. Something we had already witnessed the day prior.

The was going to be the last time the store would not be opened to the public, that evening when I was at the main job the store did open up and business was underway. Stay tuned for part 3 when I actually worked at the job for the first time.

This article was done by Coldguy

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