[TRENCHES] Thursday, March 29, 2012 - Ramifications
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Ramifications
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/ramifications
Why I don’t work at Gamestop anymore
AnonymousI worked in Gamestop through two black fridays and two Christmases. I was a Game Advisor, the lowest rung on the ladder. There had recently been a robbery at one of the stores in the district, and they were installing cameras in our store when it happened.
It was about an hour before opening. I was there to help clean up from the camera installation and get a longer shift that day. My manager was there, and this was just before the release of the first UFC game. A guy, dressed in what can only be described as red footie pajamas for adults, walks up to the door just as the security installer is finishing up. He leans against the door and starts trying to look inside at us. There’s about $500 sitting on the floor, out of sight of him, but it makes the manager very nervous.
He turns to me and says “Go tell that guy we aren’t open and to come back in an hour, but I don’t want you to open the door to say it.”
I walk over to the door and shout “We’re not open until eleven!” The guy is in his mid thirties, receding hairline, drool in the corner of his mouth, with eyes that don’t lock onto anything. No response whatsoever. He continues to drool in front of the door.
My manager says “Go around the back of the store, outside, and tell him. I don’t think he heard you.”
So I go through the uber-secured back door (this thing was pretty cool, for a door) and head outside. It was at this point that I realized how good the air seal on the front door was because this guy smelled like a burning sewer rat. I was a good 10 yards away from him, and I could smell him clearly.
I cleared my throat. No response. I cough a little louder, trying to get his attention. Nothing.
I say “Sir?”
Direct eye contact. He spins around and looks square at me, then starts groaning and grunting and making really, truly fucked up noises. He starts to *run* towards me. I panicked and sprinted for the back door. When I get there, the manager has closed it. I’m stuck outside with a man who smells like the breeze off a landfill, and my manager has locked me out here.
There’s not even a doorknob on this side of the door. The man comes bolting for me around the corner. I pound on the back door and run.
He chased me around the whole building four times. Finally, my manager opens the front door for me, and we both are surprised when the man continues to run past the entrance, all the way around the building.
He’s dead silent, not breathing weird or making noises or anything. Just running in red footie pajamas around and around a mostly empty strip mall.
We both stand there in silence for a few minutes.
“Why did you close the back door?”
“I didn’t want him to get inside and rob us.”
“Aren’t you going to let him in once we’re open?”
“Yes, but not until then.”
“I’d like to tender my resignation.”
And that’s why I don’t work at Gamestop anymore.
Posts
This story is the craziest.
Take off those glasses.
Satans..... hints.....
Indeed. The almost lifeless reply to "It's beautiful in a way" actually made me laugh. I'm still smiling a bit. This one, amuses.
Please shoot me a PM if you add me so I know to add you back.
Also, the comic is legit.
... My, what a boring Signature.
Path of Exile: snowcrash7
MTG Arena: Snow_Crash#34179
Battle.net: Snowcrash#1873
CUSTOMER!
THIEF!
OR ZOMBIE!
Apparently, my reaction to being a hostage is to play 'Rock You Like A Hurricane' on expert.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
Also, why didn't they call the cops.
Comic is great.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Yep, there are several mounts in WoW that allow you to give a friend a ride. I had a chopper with a sidecar back when I played. It was pretty fun! There was also a dragon form that would allow you to pick your friends up and fly with them.
Also, the story was well-told.
That is, of course, the correct reaction to being a hostage.
Nintendo Network ID - PirateLuigi 3DS: 3136-6586-7691
G&T Grass Type Pokemon Gym Leader, In-Game Name: Dan
God, does that outfit look stupidly awesome.
The only person whose employment would have been on rocky footing would have been the Store Manager's. GA would have easily been given a transfer if he felt uncomfortable and would have ended up in a store with a Store Manager that would have said, "Wait, he did WHAT?"
True, but let's be honest, you can't read that and not post it.
Also he technically didn't do anything that the cops would need to get involved with. It's not illegal to be weird.
A superior tells me to do something I know for a fact is wrong, I'll try and, y'know, suggest the proper alternative. If they shoot that down, I just say I'll do it their way, wait til they're out of sight and then do it properly instead.
Ideally I'd cut out the stealth part and just do my job properly in full sight of the boss, but eh, I do not have the stones to say "no" to someone higher up than me.
When I was in management, the policy was to get cops involved in anything suspicious. Better to be safe than sorry.
Nintendo Network ID - PirateLuigi 3DS: 3136-6586-7691
G&T Grass Type Pokemon Gym Leader, In-Game Name: Dan
I'm a fan of Trenches on the whole, but that story is less about the industry, and more about that one particular story teller allowing himself to be put in serious danger, because he didn't value himself enough.
We've already proven that, when instructed to by someone with an air of authority, humans will even go so far as to torture each other more often than not, well beyond the point where they felt obligated to stop. So, yeah, if an employee is told by their boss that they need to go outside and confront a "customer" then they're more likely than not to actually do it, regardless of how they would respond when not under pressure.
It's one thing to say "No, I wouldn't" when not under that pressure or in that situation, but when actually in it, most of humanity would cave and do it. We have good scientific evidence to back that up.
The assumption is that the employee was interested in transferring to another Gamestop, especially considering that from the story he didn't view the other ones as much safer.
When a drooling, groaning man in pajamas chases me around a building, I call the cops.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
In truth, I didn't learn it was a robbery until much later; the robber dashed out of the store and all hell broke loose, only, to me, it looked like a guy leaving the store in a hurry, and then management is forcing me out the door and the place is being swarmed by cop cars. I had to take an employee friend out to dinner to find out what happened.
A few months after I found out what happened, I was walking along in a different GameStop and a fellow behind the counter was talking to a new hire; I overheard a brief snippet of their conversation. He was telling her what to do in the event of a robbery. Then he told her the story of the brave young man who stormed into a hostage situation, surveyed the area, and found the only acceptable recourse was to play a face melting guitar solo on a toy instrument, and refuse to leave until his song was over.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
your = belonging to you
their = belonging to them
there = not here
they're = they are
My interpretation was that if the boss had learned a lesson / felt bad about it, he probably would have acted differently towards the end of the story. Like maybe offering some plan to deal with the crazy person once the store opened other than essentially "Yeah, in about a half hour I'm going to just open the door and then you're going to have to deal with Batshit McCrazy all over again. Good luck."
Unless you meant that after the narrator of the story was shivved by the crazy person after the store opened, the boss would feel bad and cut him some slack, etc.
I dunno. There were a lot of failure points in that story, shared by the employee and manager.
The weird man chased the Gamestop employee, putting him in immediate fear of bodily harm.
That is Assault. If he demanded something of the Gamestop employee, it would be Robbery. If the Gamestop employee had been harmed in any way (even incidentally) it would be Aggravated Assault or Robbery.
Also Fuckworld sounded like a dumb punch-line to me at first, but the more I read it the funnier it gets.
Satans..... hints.....