A new PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X / S package assignment brought crowds of hopeful customers to physical GameStop locations over the weekend, according to a report from Bloomberg and corroboration for Kotaku font. The shortage of staff and the threat of the ongoing covid-19 pandemic in the United States made employees feel as overwhelmed as they were insecure.
GameStop workers were first informed of the assignment on Saturday morning, just 15 minutes between the internal announcement and the time customers were notified by email. How have the next generation consoles almost impossible to find, stores overflowed almost immediately with phone calls and visitors hoped to get limited stock.
What was already a stressful situation escalated further when the GameStop point-of-sale system crashed when the event was released, leaving crowds waiting for hours in commercial premises whose precautions were previously revealed less what perfect.
An employee, who asked to remain anonymous, said so Kotaku the whole situation was “bullshit.”
“I have no idea what our corporate office was doing trying to get people to approach the store amid the pandemic and the increase in the number of covids,” the employee said.
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The GameStop subreddit, which employees regularly use to complain anonymously about the company’s working conditions, is full of similar accounts.
Talking to Kotaku, a GameStop representative said the weekend’s events were a way to deter the company’s scalping. Below we have included the entire company statement.
“GameStop has recently received a new inventory of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X | S. To reward our most loyal members of PowerUp Rewards Pro, we made the decision to exclusively notify these customers of the new console offering as a way to express our gratitude for their business and confidence in GameStop to meet all your gaming and entertainment needs. Our approach to quickly notify these customers was designed to ensure that, rather than resellers, they could purchase the console of their choice through our e-commerce app in the web store. We realize that, in some situations, our approach to notifying customers of this opportunity may have provoked unwanted reactions from both our partners and our customers. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. “
In recent years, GameStop has seen one mass reduction both in location and manpower, but the troubled business has managed to stay alive despite the complications introduced by the covid-19 pandemic.
The remaining employees, however, have seen their hours reduced, which often leaves GameStop managers without the support needed to cover both normal working hours and the currently extended hours of the holiday season. A controversial internal promotion recently called for stores competes for Black Friday hours sending dances to the TikTok platform to share videos.
While dressed in noble intentions, GameStop’s surprise weekend assignment is the cherry of shit that has been the treatment of employees in 2020. Being a worker in a capitalist society is rarely a walk and can only become more stressful when people running your business seem to care so little about your well-being.