GameStop Pushes Employees To The Breaking Point During Holiday Rush

Pay freezes, online orders, and staffing shortages plague the last video game chain still standing

It’s been a gangbusters year for those at the top of the GameStop pyramid. Revenue is down and stores are closing, but the stock price continues to hover around an unprecedented $200 a share, forging gilded parachutes for its fleeing C-Suite. For many at the bottom, however, it’s been one of the worst in recent memory, with the current holiday onslaught driving a final nail in the coffin for those tired of all the bullshit.

The GameStop subreddit, a digital water cooler employees gather around to commiserate, has been even more grim than usual. “I did the best thing I could think of doing for my mental health...and dropped those keys,” one user wrote over the weekend in GameStop parlance for quitting. “Last year is when things started to turn into a psychologically abusive relationship between me and this company,” wrote another. “The last few weeks have been the worst.”

There have been a flurry of posts like these recently as the company approaches its busiest time of year. GameStop has always been a notoriously difficult retail job that people put up with in order to be in proximity to video games, but the ongoing pandemic, labor shortage, skyrocketing inflation, and transformation of the company into an online sales giant has put strain on employees like never before. “Every store is held together by tape and glue,” one current store manager told Kotaku.

Read the full article on Kotaku