September 17 can't come soon enough

"WHAT DAY DOES GRAND THEFT AUTO COME OUT?"

"September 17."

"WHAT DAY IS IT NOW?"

"...August 30."

"THAT'S TOO LONG."

And then he left without buying anything.

And yes, she had a smart phone

A woman came in today with a busted up Nintendo DSi, one that clearly belonged to a child.

"My son's birthday is coming up, and we were hoping to trade in his old DSi so we could get some money off of a 3DS," she said.

I'm going to note now that I somehow made it through all of this without ever touching the DSi, which is a small triumph. Nice try, kid germs!

"We can't take it here because it's missing the serial number," I said. She gasps melodramatically. I ignore it. "That's because of [town where we are located] pawn shop laws. They can take non-serialized handhelds in [next town over], though, and we have a store there."

"WHAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED TO THE SERIAL NUMBER," she said. "WAS IT HERE? DID IT RUB OFF? CAN I SEE A DSi OF YOURS?" I obligingly pull a DSi out of a cabinet and indicate where the serial number is supposed to be.

"They didn't say anything about that over at [third store location in a totally different area]," she said. "Can they take it without the serial number?"

"If they have a [town where we are located] address, probably not. But [next town over] can definitely take them in trade."

"Where is that?"

"Northeast of here," I said. "The store is right on Route X."

My store is located on route XX.

"Oh, so it's just up the road?" she asks excitedly.

"No, we're on route XX.  Route X is the street that goes through downtown [next town over.]"

"I guess I'll just drive back to the store I went to yesterday," she said. The store that is also located in [town where we are located], most likely can't take non-serialized handhelds, and is in the completely opposite direction of [next town over.]

"Ok," I said. "Good luck."

BOGO: A Rant

Whenever we have any sort of "Buy One, Get One" sale, we inevitably run into the same group of willfully clueless shoppers who refuse to understand how BOGO works and try to get something super expensive for free without spending any money.

I mean, really, guys? You really didn't think the store would see through your brilliant scheme to buy something for 99 cents, and then get a $90 item for free? My favorite is when people aggressively hand me their items in a certain order with the cheaper ones first, as if that's what matters. 

These people genuinely believe that "Buy One, Get One" means that if they buy something, they get to pick out anything they want for free. I've even seen people writing to corporations to complain that BOGO is "a scam" because they weren't able to get their $90 thing for free.

It's not a "Here, Have Some Free Expensive Shit!" sale.

Literally every store ever has done some variation of the BOGO promotion. It always works the same way. This is not rocket math. Buy one thing, get a second thing of equal or lesser value free. You can have a free $90 item if you first buy a $90 item. 

I guess we can chalk this up to things I can't believe people still don't understand, such as the fact that a retailer doesn't produce most, if any, of the products it sells. ("You guys need to stop making those shooter games!!" "Wait, what?") I mean, above all else, the retailer is a business, and it's there to turn a profit. Which leads me to my favorite retail complaint:

"THIS STORE ONLY CARES ABOUT MAKING MONEY!!"

...Yes. That is correct. 

I mean, obviously we shouldn't be ok with companies that profit at the expense of things that matter, like the environment, or human rights. But if your sole issue is that you think a store is greedy and money-grubbing because they won't give you free stuff?

I mean, really, bro?

I should start recording the things these people say and then playing it back for them.

Real-life customer conversation

"Would you be considered, like, a video game professional?"

"Sure."

"What do you think of the next gen consoles?"

"Buy a Wii U."

Well, I guess they can't all be winners

Today, a kid wearing a SWAG shirt came in and announced that he wants to play Grand Theft Auto V because the lady on the cover has an iPhone.

Tales of Xillia: A Retrospective

The entire plot is a thinly-veiled allegory for oil dependency.

AND NOW I AM GOING TO PLAY IT AGAIN

Some people can't be helped

Some guy is on his way here with a PS3, so that I can reset it to standard def for him.

"You don't have to do all that," I said on the phone. "It's really easy. All you have to do is hold down the power button until it beeps a second time."

"Can't I just bring it up there, and you can do it for me?"

ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS PUSH A BUTTON

Introducing: The TwinShock 3 Controller!

Some kid came into my job recently with a "TwinShock 3" controller, claiming he found it on Amazon.

Check out this gem.

So, the kid comes in with his mom, complaining that one of the buttons stopped working. (I can't imagine why the buttons would stop working on a $10 PS3 controller that was scraped from the bowels of the internet.) So I say the polite version of:

"Well, ma'am, that is a cheap-as-shit controller, so cheap and sucky that not even the most unscrupulous of retailers would be willing to stock it on shelves, hence why you had to scrape it from the internet's bowels."

You know, generally, product pricing isn't a huge scam. If the real version of something is $54.99 and you find a $9.99 knock-off in some internet warehouse, odds are, the $9.99 knock-off is not a very good product. Same goes for all the people who keep trying to sell my store disgusting off-off-off-brand tablets they found on a website they can't remember the name of.

"Will you buy our TwinShock 3 from us?" they asked.

"You literally just told me it doesn't work, so... no."

The kid swore.

Xenoblade Chronicles: Part 4

I finished Xenoblade Chronicles! A while ago, actually! SPOILERS LURKNG HEREIN

Reality imitates art

I recently had a guy pay for his collector's edition of Saints Row IV with a wad of seventy one-dollar bills.

Hey, I haven't mentioned the white board in a while

Lately, grubby little kids have been ruining my drawings.

A bunch of LEGO Marvel characters, drawn by moi.

The LEGO Marvel Super Heroes crowd lasted a surprisingly long time. Part of LEGO Hulk's face got erased, but other than that, it all stayed more or less intact. Ladyboss even went out and bought new dry-erase markers for the store, hence the glorious return of the color red.

I got bored of that, though, so I moved on to a title that's not on the board and never will be:

Tidus and Yuna, from Final Fantasy X, drawn by moi.

If I could draw characters for the Kingdom Hearts 1.5 re-release, why not Final Fantasy X and X-2? Mere days after I drew this one, though, poor Tidus and Yuna were completely destroyed due to the actions of an aggressively unsupervised child who ladyboss named "Captain Destructo."

I didn't want to do anything complicated to replace it, so:

Now it's a piranha plant! Hooray!

As of this writing, Mr. Piranha Plant's pipe and stem have been almost completely erased by little kid fingers.

Why, children!? Why!?

The glorious return of Free-Shirt

A particularly, ah, fragrant man was pushing Free-Shirt around while she tried to do a preorder for him.

"God. That guy smelled like all of my uncles," she said, after he finally left. "Like, cheap booze and dirty clothes."

"So, he smelled like a druncle?" I asked.

"Yes! He smelled like multiple druncles."

I challenge all of you to use the word "druncle" at least three times today. No, seriously. Your day will be better for it.

In which some guy claims that a charity is ripping him off

This particular gem didn't happen to me, it happened to bossbro. Apparently, some guy came in to check prices on some game he wanted. It was probably something stupid, so let's use some artistic license and say he wanted Call of Juarez: The Cartel. 

"Wow!" says Douche McLikesbadgames. "They were trying to sell Call of Jar-rez for more at Goodwill. I knew it was a rip-off."

"Uh," said bossbro. "Goodwill is a charity. All of the money they make in sales goes to charity."

"Total rip-off," said Douche.

Honestly, we probably did Goodwill a favor by taking this guy off their hands.

TALES-ZILLA

Like with most Japanese RPGs, no one can pronounce the title of Tales of Xillia, because Xillia is not a word. (For the record, it's pronounced like "ex-ILL-ee-uh." The more you know!)

Fortunately for the fun-levels of my job, however, when people mispronounce this one, it sounds like "Tales-Zilla," which is awesome.

Next on the agenda: breaking Japan's obsession with the letter X.

Watch out for NERD RAGE!

So, I finished Xenoblade Chronicles, but I haven't written about it yet because I haven't been able to write anything very good. But while I've been trying to do that, a controversy appeared!

Seems that Team Nerd Rage is upset that GameStop (ok, yeah, I'll just say GameStop again) acquired some copies of Xenoblade, and is selling them for $90 a pop. Thus launched a bunch of Wacky Internet Conspiracy Theories about how the top secret GameStop cabal is printing up bootleg copies of Xenoblade in their basement to sell for a million dollars, all while cackling maniacally and twirling their mustaches, or something.

Honestly, I think this is another instance of The Interwebs being enraged by a process they don't understand.

GameStop buys old overstock from publishers and sells it as used all the time. It's really no different from the way they buy old games from the public to resell in the stores, just on a larger scale. The only reason this bothers people is that this time, the "used" price is higher- quite a bit higher- than the old MSRP. Of course, "manufacturer's suggested retail price" doesn't really apply here, because Xenoblade is no longer being manufactured. That said, $90 is not an unfair price.

$90 is what the game costs now.

Everyone saying that GameStop is ridiculous for charging $90 for "old Wii games" is just being disingenuous. Xenoblade is not "some old Wii game"- it's a very specific product, an import with a limited run that's hard to get now. My own copy was only $60 because of layers of employee discounts, and it's a busted old disc that some moron sold to my store that didn't come with a case. If GameStop had dropped the selling price back to $50 after buying up new stock, all the copies they have would have all been bought up by scalpers in a heartbeat, because the established market value of the game is much higher than that. And then everyone would be whining about how GameStop sells to scalpers. (A common complaint with Skylanders figurines.)

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: GameStop (and other video game stores) are not some sort of gamer charity. They're a business, specifically in the business of selling video games for profit. If you, Angry Internet Nerd, were to go try to sell your copy of Xenoblade online, it's unlikely that you would ask less than $100 for it, unless you're stupid, or you need it to sell really fast. Why do people always expect corporations to be more altruistic than they themselves would be? If anything, you should expect the opposite.

Low supply and high demand means it's a seller's market, and GameStop can charge whatever they want to. (Of course, their ability to negotiate bulk purchases with publishers is a direct result of their size and buying power. If that's your issue, then buy from local shops. But then you'd probably complain that they charge more than GameStop, because you're an ass.) If you don't like it, don't buy the game from them. If no one buys it, the price will drop. Surprise! Also, since for now at least you can buy Xenoblade for $90 at an actual store, the eBay prices may drop somewhat.

Of course, that doesn't address the Wacky Conspiracy Theory issue, so let's do that, too. A subset of particularly intense Angry Gamer Nerds seem to have decided that GameStop has begun ZOMG reprinting Xenoblade Chronicles, an idea so stupid I'm embarrassed to write it on my blog.

GameStop is not printing up new copies of Xenoblade Chronicles.

First of all, they don't have the infrastructure for that, they're a retailer. Secondly, the Angry Gamer Nerds are correct in their assertion that doing that is illegal. Like, super mega illegal. Nintendo and The Law would be all up in GameStop's business in a heartbeat. I think these people assume that since GameStop had exclusive rights to sell retail copies of Xenoblade Chronicles in the United States, they're also a publisher? Because, no.

Now, Nintendo can do a reprint. But if Nintendo were doing a reprint, they would have made way more than a couple thousand copies, and they would be selling it themselves through their online store again. After all, everyone knows the game is in high demand. It's just not in high enough demand among a wide enough array of people for Nintendo to justify doing a re-release at this time. "Angry JRPG nerds" were barely enough of a market to get the game released in the US in the first place.

Is it kinda douchey to negotiate a large purchase of a product and then price the stock so high? Yes. But the moral of the story, I guess, is that I hate uninformed internet nerd rage more than I hate GameStop, and working in retail has given me little to no patience for people who willfully don't understand how retail works. I also have no patience for people who think they're entitled to rare, luxury items for cheap. When I can't afford something, I don't make up conspiracy theories about how the seller is out to get me.

I just don't buy that thing.

And yet somehow, despite this terrible hardship, I manage to carry on.

Texts from my coworkers

"Guy just called asking where he could get replacement bulbs for a slot machine." - Ladyboss, 8/13/13

Blogger links other, funnier website

Hey, readers! If you're in the mood to read someone openly mock the entitled asswipes who shop at video game stores, why not check out actsofgord.com?

He smacks around people in his store, though. Like, a lot. I've never struck a customer, though we do have a running joke that one day I'm totally going to lose it, go full-on feral rage monster, scream blood fury, lunge across the counter on all fours, and gnaw off someone's thumb, Gollum-style. It'll be all over the news when it happens.

"Crazed Game Store Employee Gnaws Off Neckbeard's Thumb."

Watch out.

Just another day in my shopping center

I just got to work, and our parking lot is full of police cars. This sort of thing happens here a lot.

"Why are the cops here?" I asked. "Did we get robbed again?"

"Nah," said bossbro. "They were arresting someone at [restaurant next door]."

"Oh, ok."

Retail!

No receipt, no refund

Why is this a difficult concept for people to grasp?

There's something in the water this week

Today, a guy was asking me about headsets.

"What do all these numbers mean?" he asked. "X12, P11, what does that even mean?"

"Those are just model numbers," I said.

"Oh, why is this one a hundred dollars more?" he asked, indicating the X42.

"It has full surround sound," I said.

"What's surround sound?" he asked.

Ladyboss and I exchanged A Look.

"There are multiple speakers, so the sound comes at you from different directions," I said.

"Ohhhh," he said.

He didn't buy a headset.

Really, GoogleAds?

If there are any women reading this who are wanting for self-esteem, just hit me up and I'll give you some of mine, Ni No Kuni style.

A screen capture of THIS VERY BLOG, featuring an ad for a series of self-esteem seminars for women. NOPE.

Uh, nope

Today, as always happens when I want to go home, someone came in at 8:58 and announced that she was "just looking." Like usual, we tell her we're closing at 9, and leave her alone while we shut down the store. Ten minutes later, after wandering around and touching everything we'd just cleaned up, she's finally leaving. She stops and says:

"Oh, I'll be back in five minutes or so to get a DS game."

"Uh, we're closed, and we're locking the door behind you," I said.

Ain't nobody got time for that.

We hold our clientele to a certain standard here, sirs

A guy came in today to buy something or whatever. He asked us to give him geeky movies so he could try to link them to the new J.J. Abrams Star Trek movies. Like the Kevin Bacon game, but not as good, because Kevin Bacon makes everything wonderful.

"Tremors," I said.

"I've never seen Tremors."

"GET OUT."

I think I'll be getting a lot of mileage out of this gratuitous graboid photo.

"Isn't that movie just a rip-off of Dune?" asked another guy.

I mean, seriously, where do these people even come from?

THE PIKMIN ARE COMING

In preparation for Pikmin 3, which comes out on Sunday and for which I have already paid, I spent some time today playing Pikmin 2. I've had it for ages, but I've never played it, because I have too many toys. And let me tell you:

I do not care for all of this spelunking business.

Loyal readers, let me make a list for you of my least favorite things:

1. Giant insects who are trying to eat me
2. Creepy caves
3. Elevators

A video game that involves nothing but crawling around in creepy caves while giant insects try to eat me!? The fact that I love the series is a testament to how great Pikmin is, really, because normally giant insects who are trying to eat me is a kind of a deal-breaker.

On the other hand, if somebody made a Tremors video game, I would play that shit so hard.

A gratuitous Graboid screenshot. From Wikipedia.

Incidentally, has anyone else noticed how similar the skags in Borderlands look to graboids? But, you know, with feet and stuff.

A gratuitous Skag screenshot. Uhh... do skags have eyes? Maybe they hunt by sound. Like a similar desert-dwelling fictional creature with a multi-hinged jaw and long prehensile tongue that has definitely not been mentioned in this post.

Of course, then in Borderlands 2 we got the thresher, which is like a fun experiment in cross-breeding a graboid with murder:

KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT OH GOD IT HAS EYES IT CAN SEE ME

Regardless of whether any of the people doing baddie design for these games are Tremors fans or not, I totally named my first Borderlands character Kevin Bacon. Trufax.