Really, bro?

Just had a guy get mad at me because we would "only" give him $397 for his PS4 if he traded it to us towards buying an Xbox One.

UM, THAT'S WHAT YOU PAID FOR IT IN THE FIRST PLACE, DIPSHIT! 

People, man. 

Saturday night customers

"He looks like a lost, stoned Wolverine." - Free-Shirt

Real-time blog update

Someone is in here right now talking about an older relative she has whose hair is so long that she has to "fish hair out of her butt" every morning.

I don't know what that means, and I'm not going to ask.

Help.

I'm tired of explaining how electronics work to people

So, some dude was complaining about some game that's on PS4 but not PS3 blah blah blah yawn.

"MAN, THEY'RE JUST TRYING TO FORCE YOU TO BUY THE NEW SYSTEM."

"Well, no one wants to develop for an outdated system." I didn't go out of my way this time to explain the concepts of "resource management" and "marketability," like I have to for the Wiiple.

"THE PS3 WAS BRAND NEW LAST YEAR!"

False.

"The PS3 came out in 2006."

"WELL, WE JUST GOT OURS IN 2010."

I should note here that 2010 was not "last year."

"HOW LONG DO YOU THINK IT'LL BE BEFORE THERE'S A PS5? TWO YEARS?"

Nor is it two years ago.

At this point, I've started just walking away from people who want to whine at me about the PS4. In particular, the whiners about backwards compatibility.

Hey, guess what, whiners! Sony tried making a backwards compatible current-gen system. It's called the first generation PS3. You know why they took it out? Because sales for the first-gen PS3 were terrible, because the system was too expensive. If they had made a backwards-compatible PS4, you'd be in here right now complaining at me about how for that price, a gaming system should come with a car.

If you want to play PS3 games, keep your PS3. I mean, I have six systems hooked up to my TV, and I turned out ok.

...

Why is everybody looking at me like that? 

Bravely Default is here!

HOORAY!

A picture of my cat, posed with my copy of Bravely Default. She's very photogenic.

Everyone at the store has been playing the Bravely Default demo for weeks, because we're those sorts of people. We've also been telling everyone to pre-order it, because both Nintendo handheld releases and JRPG* releases in general are usually a nightmare of underavailability.

I still have lingering trauma from the Fire Emblem: Awakening release.

Anyway, I wasn't working today, so I made a super special trip to the store to pick up my reserved copy. Sure enough, the store was already sold out, because we only got enough copies to cover our reserves. As I was standing in the store, a frumpy JRPG nerd stomped up to the register.

"DO YOU HAVE BRAVELY DEFAULT!?"

"No," said bossbro. "We can order it for you, or you can download it from the eShop."

Frumpy JRPG nerd stomped his way back out of the store.

What follows is an open message to my fellow JRPG people:

Hey, ladies and dudes. You know how every time a new JRPG comes out, none of the stores have it in stock? That's because demand for these games is super low.

STOP WHINING ABOUT IT AND DO SOMETHING INSTEAD.

The stock that stores order for low-demand games is directly based on the number of reserves they get for it. My store was the only one of my chain in the entire district that got any copies of the new Project Diva game, because we were the only store that had reserves on it.

We had one reserve. We got two copies. The second one sold to a walk-in on launch day, and I haven't seen another copy since.

And don't give me any of that crap about "WELL, I WASN'T PLANNING ON GETTING IT" or "WELL, I'M JUST MAKING AN IMPULSE BUY." If you went out to buy it on the release day, then it wasn't "an impulse buy," and you are a dirty, dirty liar.

If you want more Japanese games to come to the United States, and in greater numbers, you need to commit to buying them on launch day.

Now, I know not everyone can afford to buy launch-day games. This rant is not for you. This rant is for the swarm of people I see every launch day who refuse to commit even one day ahead of time to buying a game on day one, even though they were clearly planning on doing so anyway, and complain when we don't have a pile of extra copies waiting for them.

Every retailer does pre-orders now, as do the manufacturers, typically. It's not like you don't still have a choice of whom to give your money dollars to. Most places (Amazon, StameGop) don't charge extra for pre-orders, either.

PRE-ORDER YOUR SHIT instead of complaining to me about lack of availability, for a market the manufacturers didn't know existed. With the onset of downloadable games, manufacturers have basically no reason to print physical copies at all outside of consumer demand. It's still hard to find physical copies of Fire Emblem, a year after launch. Hakuoki: Memories of the Shinsengumi barely had a physical launch at all.

I'm sure Bravely Default will be the same way. 

*Today, someone asked me what "JRPG" stands for, and I said "Japanese RPG." Then Ladyboss stepped in and added "...role-playing game." I forgot to translate that part. Whoooops.

No receipt, no refund... an ongoing saga

My store doesn't do cash refunds without a receipt. Period. If you cannot prove that you bought the item with cash, then you don't get cash back. I really don't understand how this is so difficult for everyone, especially since many of these people buy things with THE FULL INTENTION of returning them a few days later, so why wouldn't you keep the damn receipt!? But I digress.

Some lady came in a couple days after Christmas trying to get cash back for a game. We gave her the usual spiel about how we can't do cash refunds without a receipt, but she was welcome to exchange it for another game. Things escalated quickly.

"WELL, THIS IS SOME GREAT FUCKING CUSTOMER SERVICE," she screamed as she flounced to the door.

"I'M GOING TO TEAR APART MY HOUSE AND FIND THAT RECEIPT AND MAKE YOU GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK."

"Please do," said the Veteran. "If you have the receipt, there's no problem."

"MERRY CHRISTMAS," she yelled, and then- wait for it- she broke the door.

She slammed the door so hard that it broke.

Fortunately, the glass wasn't broken, just the pump that stops it from slamming shut. We only had to suffer through one or two days of the door slamming every time someone used it before it was fixed.

Unfortunately, she never did show up with the receipt, so we never got to go all "Oh heeey, we have you on camera breaking our door! This is me calling the cops! MERRY CHRISTMAS LOL!"

And really, since when does "customer service" entail giving free cash to random members of the public? Need I remind everybody, again, that Buying Stuff is not the same as Putting Your Money In The Bank? And that you don't get to withdraw Money from your Stuff whenever you want?

WHY.

X-rated shift

A man came into The Store to buy an Xbox 360 for his 7-year-old daughter. As he was looking at games, he asked me:

"Do they make X-rated games yet?"

"Well, they exist- the rating is AO, for "Adults Only"- but there's not a big market for them, because none of the major retailers will carry them."

"So I could go online and buy them?"

"I mean, your daughter would be able to see everything you'd been using the 360 for. She'd be like, "Daddy, what's the XXX achievement?""

"And I'd say, "NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!""

I still don't know if he was serious or not. He was probably serious- that's the kind of people who shop here.

Later on, a guy was buying a bunch of Skylanders toys, for Christmas presents. They come in bulky, awkward packaging.

"Those must be impossible to gift wrap," I commented.

"Oh, they are. I always make my wife do it."

"That's why I don't have any kids," I said. "I'm terrible at wrapping things."

"Or maybe you don't have any kids because you're really good at wrapping things," he said.

I laughed really hard.

NEW FAVORITE CUSTOMER.

Really, bro?

A guy just came in to return a DS because he claimed it wasn't able to charge, because the charge light wouldn't stay lit.

We had to explain to him that the charge light goes out when the battery is done charging.

Fuck this guy

According to his fbook profile picture, this person is an ADULT MAN. We ran a small child out for trying to do this recently:

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

 

"Thank you to the worker name [redacted] at my local [redacted] for excepting my money in all pennies which we counted on the front desk so i can get GTA5. Than you for taking your time to count 60k+ pennies" ]

On the subject of hard drives

Today, a man came in to buy Grand Theft Auto V. Much like many other games that have come out this year, GTA V requires a partial install to play. So, I ask this guy if he has 8 GB of free space on his system.

"What's the basic amount?"

"...4 GB," I said.

"Yeah, I had one of those hard drives but I sold it to some kid." Super. "I can't play Grand Theft Auto at all?"

"No. It requires an 8 GB install."

"Why!?"

"Game developers have hit the limit of what the 360 can do," I said. "GTA V is too big a game to run off of a disc. You can't even play Battlefield 4 without a real hard drive. "

"How can they do that!?"

"...it's not their fault that you sold your hard drive."

He ended up buying GTA V and a 16 GB flash drive, only to return twenty minutes later to return it because he "couldn't justify spending that much."

"I'd rather just put that money towards a One," he said.

"You can't play Grand Theft Auto V on an Xbox One," I said. If he understood me or cared, he didn't show it.

And, naturally, he paid with a Visa gift card, so we got to go through the whole song and dance about how Visa gift cards aren't refundable as Visa gift cards. Hooray!

And the winners keep on rolling

Today I got a call from someone who had an Xbox One preordered at the store. He wanted to know how long we could hold it for him, since he "spent all his money at the bar last night" and didn't know when he was getting paid next.

SOLUTION: He should team up with the food stamps guy and have wacky sitcom adventures that end with neither of them getting a next-gen console.

But WHO'S ON FIRST!?

The other day, we had some Wiiple trying to return a Wii remote because they claimed it didn't work, when really the issue was that they hadn't synced it. This happens all the time. So I opened up the Wiimote to show them where the sync button is.

"See this red button here? There's an identical button on the front of the Wii, inside the panel next to the disc slot. All you need to do is push those the buttons at the same time." The girl asked,

"So, what do I push on the Wii?"

Pause.

"There's a panel on the front of the Wii, next to the disc tray. When you open it, you'll see a red button that looks just like this one."

"Red... you mean the power button?"

"No. There's a panel on the front of the Wii. When you open it, you'll see a red button that looks just like this one."

"But what do I push on the Wii?"

"There's a panel on the front of the Wii. When you open it, you'll see a red button that looks just like this one."

"NO. I NEED TO KNOW WHAT I PUSH ON THE WII."

"That's what I'm telling you," I said, tired of repeating myself. "There is a panel on the front of the Wii. When you open it, you will see a red button that looks just like this one. That is the button that you push."

"Oooohhhhhh," she said. She and her mom left to pick out a game. The mom came back almost immediately.

"Can you explain that again?"

"The directions are in the box."

"I THOUGHT THIS XBOX CAME WITH THE INTERNET!"

"I thought this Xbox came with the internet!" is our go-to joke stupid-question-that-customers-ask.

"Oh, I have a really silly question- can I hook my 360 up to a standard definition TV?"

"Yes, you can! And believe me, that's not a silly question at all. We get people complaining because they thought their Xbox came with the internet."

One of my first customers ever was a woman who didn't understand why her DSi couldn't connect to the internet in her internet-free home. (At least a DSi is a handheld, though, so someone who doesn't understand the difference between WiFi and 3G could get it confused with their phone service.) I haven't had an "I THOUGHT THIS XBOX CAME WITH THE INTERNET!" person for a while, so I don't think there are any posts about it on this blog. But never fear, my friends!

THE STREAK HAS BEEN BROKEN!

I got a phone call yesterday from a gentleman who had bought an Xbox and a subscription to Xbox Live. He had screaming kids in the background, and I'm pretty sure he was talking on speaker, which makes every phone call great. He told me he couldn't figure out how to redeem the code on the Xbox Live card.

"The directions for how to redeem the code are printed on the card," I said. As are the words, I might add, "broadband internet required."

 "IT KEEPS TELLING ME TO GET A MODEM OR A ROUTER OR SOMETHING," he shouted.

Pause.

"Do you have an internet connection in your house?"

"NO. THEY DIDN'T TELL ME I NEEDED ONE."

Pause.

"You can't use internet services without an internet connection."

"THEY TOLD ME I COULD GET MY NETFLIX ON HERE."

"...you need an internet connection to stream Netflix. It's an internet service."

"MAN, THIS IS MESSED UP."

No it's not.

"WHY DIDN'T THEY TELL ME I NEEDED INTERNET FOR NETFLIX!?"

Long pause. Total silence. Resisting the urge to say "because I'm sure they thought they didn't have to."

"WHAT CAN I DO WITH THIS LIVE WITH NO INTERNET!?"

Pause.

"Literally nothing. Xbox Live is the name of the 360's internet service."

"I BET I CAN'T EVEN RETURN THIS."

"What store did you get it from?"

"YOURS!"

"The [location] location?"

"YEAH!"

"If you have your receipt and it's been less than thirty days, we can give you a refund," I said.

He never showed, which means he either lied outright when he said he got it at our location, or he doesn't understand that different stores in the same chain are run by different people, and don't have some sort of hive mind. Either way, I'm sure the other store was thrilled to deal with him while he ranted about how some lady on the other side of town told him he could have a refund if he brought his receipt. 

I'm really tired of angry old people who don't understand gift cards

A grandparent came into the store to buy a gift card.

"I WANT A GIFT CARD," he shouted. Now, we have a lot of different gift cards with different pictures on them. In particular, we have "Happy Birthday!" gift cards, and of course we just got all of our holiday gift cards. So, my coworker asks:

"What's the occasion?"

"I WANT A GIFT CARD. SO HE CAN SPEND MONEY HERE," the angry old guy yells, as if it's the register jockey who doesn't understand how a gift card works.

At non-Christmas times, when people buy gift cards, I always ask whose birthday it is. And then they look at me like I am a goddamn wizard and ask how I knew it was someone's birthday. And I always say:

"Why else would you be buying a gift card?"

The embarrassment on their faces fuels my soul.

IT'S PRACTICALLY HERE

We just finished hiring all the seasonal people.

Christmas is coming.

I love Christmas, but people get a wee bit irrational the closer we get. And this is the first console launch I've worked, and I've been told that once we're sold out, grandmas will be crying at me all the time. Cool! My grandma would never cry in a store for a video game. If I asked her to wait around in stores to buy me one, she'd be like, "Um, no. You already have too many toys. Go play with your hoop and stick," or something, because my grandma is hardcore.

Anyway.

Last year on Black Friday, we were doing a sale on used games. Sometime in the morning, an elderly woman wandered in because she'd heard about the sale. Ladyboss asked if she could help her find anything.

"THESE ARE ON SALE, RIGHT?" She held up some brand new merch.

"Actually, the sale is only on used items," ladyboss explained. The woman shouted:

"I DON'T WANT ANYTHING USED!" and threw all her stuff on the floor. As she was flouncing out of the store, she turned, looked at ladyboss, and growled: 

"You better shape up."

Ladyboss waved and said:

"Have a nice day! Merry Christmas!"

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.

Whoops your James Bond

A lady called me today, wanting to check trade values for games.

"I have some 007 games."

"Ok, what are the titles?"

"I don't know."

Pause.

"There are about a half dozen different James Bond games, so I can't give you trade values unless you give me the names of the games. But if you bring them in to the store, we can give you an estimate."

"I'll go check what they are and call you back."

A couple hours passed. The phone rings.

"It's me again," she said. "Ok, the first game is Medal of Honor."

I couldn't help it. I laughed.

"That's not a 007 game at all," I said. She didn't get it.

She did have James Bond Legends. The third game was Fable 3. Medal of Honor and Fable 3 are both super old and super cheap, so they were worth about 50 cents each.

"I might've gotten those titles wrong," she said. "I'll just bring them all in."

I'm really excited for the $7 cash trade. I bet she'll ask us to give her extra for gas, too.

I'm sure this sounded more profound when you were super high last night

"Like food. I don't understand food. You're like a battery, and then you get to eat pizza or whatever and then it turns into sugar you get to live. You eat sugar and live. It's mind blowing." - Real thing a real person just said in my store.

She also didn't understand how Playstation Plus makes money, when it costs $50 per year.

Introducing: Coworker Awesome Sauce

My basically unmentioned final coworker, who wants to be called "Awesome Sauce" (ASS for short), is the last of our part-time people. You may remember him from when he barfed in this post. Mr. Awesome Sauce is, naturally, our resident super high-maintenance cashier, who has more degrees than everyone else in the store combined. (Every store has one.) This is actually his last week, as he's decided to become a full-time dog walker instead. You know, because he'd rather literally handle shit than work at my store.

I don't really blame him.

Today, some weirdo came in with a busted Wii U and started ranting. This is not uncommon, so I missed the first part of it.

"-and I spent forever on the phone with Nintendo, and it's totally busted, and it was supposed to be new but it wasn't," he was saying. His girlfriend was with him, punctuating the story with complaints about some return policy I didn't recognize.

"Um, what?" I asked.
                                                     
"I got this on eBay and it's not new at all," he said. ASS stepped in.

"How much did you pay for it?"

"$265," said Weirdo.

"Wow," said ASS. "That's a great deal."

(No. No it is not.)

"It would be if it worked,"  said Weirdo.

(Doubtful.)

"So- why is it here?" I asked, pointing at the boxed Wii U in Weirdo's hands. I was genuinely concerned that he was going to try to get us to exchange it for him. Luckily, Weirdo wasn't quite that stupid.

"I want to trade it towards getting a new Zelda Wii U," he said.

"Whoa whoa whoa hold on," said ASS. "This was a huge rip-off when you bought it, but when we buy it it's totally fine?"

Weirdo looked right into ASS's eyes, with a perfectly blank face. And after a long moment, he said:

"Yes."

My shift was over and I was on my way out, so I missed the end of the saga of Weirdo's Busted eBay Wii U. Apparently, though, bossbro refused the trade because the cords had exposed wiring. Then Weirdo's Girlfriend complained that Pokémon was too expensive, and they went on their merry way.

And I totally got permission to call Mr. Awesome Sauce ASS on the internet, so, win-win.  

Oh for the love of

This guy, and people like him, make my life miserable on a regular basis:

"Good job letting us know the GTA V Limited Edition was pre-order only"

FOR FUCK'S SAKE. ALL LIMITED EDITIONS ARE PRE-ORDER ONLY.

What do these people think "limited" means? "There'll be copies for purchase all over the place"? BECAUSE THAT IS THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT LIMITED MEANS.

We had people strolling into my store one or two days before the release demanding to reserve a collector's edition of Grand Theft Auto V. Um, even if there were any left- which there are not, because other people bought them all already- how would we get it to the store by launch day? You realize we're not printing and packaging games in the back, right? We're supposed to fork out for overnight shipping because your entitled ass didn't think to order a limited run item from any of a million retailers, at any point in the past year?

Sorry. Buy the stuff on eBay. I don't even care.