On the subject of people thinking different chain stores have a hive mind

There are certain things we can't share between stores. Pre-orders are a big one. If you put down a deposit on something, that deposit is tied to the specific location. It's done that way for security and inventory reasons. Of course, the customers are never happy when we take precautions to protect their money.

I wasn't there for the first part of the fight, but apparently some loser got in a huge fight with The Veteran because he couldn't find his preorder. The first question is always, "Did you do the pre-order at another store? We can't share pre-order information between stores." Regardless, this guy did another pre-order for Ghosts, and left. Apparently.

He came back, rage-ablazin', during the Ghosts midnight release.

"I FOUND MY RECEIPT!" he shouted. "THAT GUY HERE BEFORE TOLD ME HE COULDN'T FIND MY PRE-ORDER BUT I FOUND MY RECEIPT."

He triumphantly threw the receipt down in front of me. I glanced at it.

"I KNEW I DID IT HERE. I DID THE PRE-ORDER RIGHT HERE."

"This is a receipt for [store on the other side of town]," I said flatly, pointing to the store name and address printed at the top of the receipt.

".......oh."

"Did he tell you we can't look up pre-orders from other stores?"

"........."

"Would you still like to pick up Ghosts?"

".....yeah."

CODBLOPSBIES

In honor of Call of Duty day, here is a text conversation I had with High Maintenance Roommate last night:

An iPhone text conversation. Transcript is below.

UM, JUST KIDDING! I could NEVER get a second kitty when my first one is so cute!

A picture of Valenbaby cuddling with another kitten on the back of a chair.

Ok, yeah, my roommates have a kitten, too.

Don't worry about it.

Call of Duty is here

Got home from the midnight release. It was surprisingly calm, as was the double release for Battlefield 4 and Assassin's Creed IV. I have a creeping sense of dread that everyone's waiting to buy all this crap for the new consoles, a week from now.

If I get mauled by holiday shoppers, tell my family that I love them.

We have a sort of tradition at my store where we give out prizes to people who know our names. Sometimes we have real trivia, or a raffle, but we always do the super secret special trivia question:

"WHAT IS MY NAME?"

Our names print at the top of every receipt for every transaction we do, so even if we're not wearing name tags, it's easy to find if you think about it. And all of us except The Veteran have extremely common names. Besides, it's a fun Get To Know Your Game Store Register Jockey activity, and it's all in good fun.

None of the people in the first line group knew who I was. It's the Call of Duty people- they come in once a year.

"It's a really common name," I hinted. "Really common." Someone guessed it almost immediately. We gave him his prize- a Call of Duty tchotchke. He didn't even want it, so he gave it to a kid in line. And while all this is happening, an older gentleman in the front shouts:

"THAT IS NOT A COMMON NAME."

Trust me when I say I have a common name. There were at least three of me in every class growing up.

"It is for people my age," I said. "It was the number one girl's name in the country every year for over a decade in the 80s and 90s." He grumbled a bit, took his game, and left.

On the plus side, almost everyone in that first group thanked me by name when I handed them their games. It was actually really sweet.

Thanks, customers! You're all right.

Even if you do play Call of Duty.

I guess it made sense in cod-text

So, my store has this policy where employees can borrow used games if we have enough copies.

And as it turns out, my new roommate High Maintenance Roommate is obsessed with Call of Duty: Black Ops.

"I can't check that out! All my coworkers will make fun of me!" I complained.

And then I checked it out, and then all my coworkers made fun of me, and then this happened, in a conversation about game check-outs with my bro, Jean-Luc:

A text conversation. "I mean, it is cod. Checking that out looks fishy."

NO. GOD DAMMIT.

But seriously, we all literally call Black Ops "COD BLOPS." And then we tell those people that they should totally buy copies of Brink and The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct, because fuck Call of Duty.

Hellspawn alert #2

Right before I left today, a kid came in who was thinking about pre-ordering Call of Duty: Ghosts. I would peg his age at approximately Old Enough To Know Better. He asked me when Call of Duty comes out.

"November 5," I said.

"Oh." He thought for a moment. "What month is it now?"

If his parents were there, I would have stared at them incredulously. But alas, he was alone.

"June," I said.

"Oh." More thinking. "How many months until November?"

I held up my fist, uncurling my fingers to count for him.

"July. August. September. October. November. Five months," I said, displaying five fingers.

"Oh."

He left and didn't come back.

Introducing coworker Free-Shirt

"What is wrong with Call of Duty people?" asked one of my subordinates, a woman who wants to be referred to as Lesbian Free-Shirt.

"Everything," I said.

"No, seriously," said Lesbian Free-Shirt. "I was walking to work today, wearing one of my free work shirts, and a guy stopped me to ask if I work at the store whose free shirt I was wearing."

"LOL. Free shirt," I said.

"I said, "Yeah, I do." And he said, "Do you play Call of Duty?" And I said, "No." And he was all, "Maaan, you must just play girl games or some shit." And I said "I play a lot of Borderlands," and he said, "Borderlands is for pussies!" and in my head I was like, Call of Duty is for twelve-year-olds."

"I'm putting this conversation on my blog," I said.

"LOL," said Lesbian Free-Shirt. "You should call me Lesbian Free-Shirt."

The end.

Returns, returns, returns

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A Facebook conversation with pictures, names, and places blocked out.

A: Never going to [name of store redacted] again i buy black ops 2 new played it once and i dident like it and i take it back to [name of store redacted] and i cant trade it in for super mario u...or they will give me 15$....no im going to [name of competitor redacted] from now on

B: Well, maybe u should play the game before u spend 60 dollars on it!

B: Why do u think people have things like gamefly, block buster, or even redbox?!?!

C: Try [name of competitor redacted] or [name of competitor redacted] they tell you what u get for the game on their website

D: How did you not like it it's the best game of 2012

A: [B] i have played it its just that when i played i got bored of it really fast and i like battlefield now

A: call of duty is just boring now

A: i cant rent it im broke  ]

It will come as no surprise that the original poster is a kid. B is one of his real-life friends, and thankfully, has some sense. "I can't afford to rent games because I spent $60 on a game I didn't want!" Really, kid? Really? 

Opened media isn't allowed to be returned. Period. Every retailer has the same policy. It's the same as with a DVD or a CD. You can't buy a DVD, watch it, then return it for full value. That's why you pay for a rental for any media item you don't want to own forever and ever and ever.

Video game purchases are complicated by the fact that many new games come with one-time use codes now, with no way for the retailer to determine whether it's been used. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 in particular comes with a download voucher for an extra map called Nuketown 2025. Since that content is missing, the game has to be sold as a used game or not at all, which is a huge loss to the retailer on an item that has next to no profit margin anyway. That's why you can't return opened new games. It doesn't stop people from impulse buying expensive items they don't want and freaking out when they can't return them, though.

To those people, I say:

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, USE A RENTAL SERVICE.

Please just go rent your games instead. If you return everything you buy, you're not really a customer anyway.

Real-life customer quote

"I don't have time for video games because I'm too busy with Call of Duty."

Yes, and I don't have time to blog because I'm too busy writing posts for my blog.