A couple of days ago a post on the official subreddit of Lincoln Nebraska noted that all the staff for the Gamestop within the Gateway mall decided to walk out on the job due to bad working conditions and an abusive district manager. These employees left a note on the front door of the store noting they all quit and suggested other family-owned video game stores within Lincoln.
Since then, the gaming community discovered it in large part due to an article published this morning by Kotaku which has received overwhelming support. The post of Kotaku’s Twitter has over 105,000 likes alone with over 11,000 retweets.
Many employees have noted their frustration with the district manager with one former employee writing on Facebook:
“There have actually been four walkouts since august 2021 because of him. Two at each location. The first ones were kept pretty quiet though.”
Another former employee from the same area told Kotaku:
“I left because they pushed my old boss out and the new one was brought in by the district manager from South Dakota he was from just really bad. He was a jerk to customers and employees, when he got hired the entire staff quickly left except for me, I stuck around until it was clear he wanted rid of me too. I’m honestly surprised more GameStops aren’t down on workers.”
Discussion for unionization was brought up as recently as today over on the official GameStop subreddit with many feeling that despite horrible experiences from employees becoming more known to the public over the past couple of years, they would still be able to be replaced with new hires very quickly This is despite some store managers speaking out they have had to close their stores temporarily due to staff shortages. A similar sentiment was shared by an anonymous source for Camelot331 who revealed last December that executives at GameStop are aware of what kinds of discussions take place on the GameStop subreddit with one executive even referring to store associates as “bodies.” This is despite some store managers speaking out they have had to close their stores temporarily due to staff shortages.
GameStop have already experienced a slew of controversies this year that adds to the discussion that employees have been vocal about for years including unrealistic goals and higher-ups being out of touch. In late January an employee went public by stating that corporate wanted a 50% auto renewal on Power Up Rewards despite many feeling this was both unrealistic and unethical. The latter was due to those who previously payed for their memberships via credit or debit card having it automatically renewed.
Just this past April, one employee took to Reddit to state they were told they were required to receive approval from their district manager to use the restroom during single coverage.
