Okay guys, I know I’m not alone on this one. The time of year is quickly approaching where you will find great bargains, sales, and clearances on your favorite products, including video games, and electronics. I love the Holiday season as much as the next guy. Thanksgiving Turkey, Santa Claus in all the Malls, Figgy Pudding, and all that other crap. However, this is also the time of year, when most stores double, and some even triple their sales staff, to heckle, pester, and bug you into uneccessary purchases.
For instance, GameStop announced on Tuesday that it plans to hire about 15,000 seasonal part-time “game-advisors” between now and Dec. 24th, in order to manage the upcoming holiday rush. Now, you might be saying “15,000 people? That’s not very many for the whole U.S.“. Well, considering that there are only 4,300 GameStop locations in the U.S., that’s 3.5 persons per GameStop location. That means my local store will be going from 3 employees, to 6, or maybe 7 people. Of course, depending on the size of your local GameStop, this number could be much much higher.
This also means that the neverending swarm of red-shirted, cash register jockeys, with nasal, nerdy voices yakking at me to buy Diablo II will be two times more annoying. I do understand that the recent price drops on all the major gaming consoles, and the upcoming release of major blcokbuster gaming titles will most definitely create a lot of store traffic. But I still think that 7 people running a GameStop with only 2 registers is, well, overkill. I know the same will be true of all the other major electronics retailers, and probably retailers in general, but I still hate this.
I think that Ninja-Santa Claus needs to come down and open a can…Who’s with me?
*BAH-HUMBUG*
I would prefer staff that actually know what they are talking about. Better yet, I would prefer cut costs and lower prices. ‘Nuff said.
+1. If they really wanted to move product, save the money from not hiring new employees and give like 5-10% deduct on games or $20 off on all consoles. THAT would increase traffic and sales exponentially.
You do realize that that increase in “sales force” isn’t really for sales right? With increased traffic most GameStops will experience increased trades and increased gift shoppers, that don’t normally come to GameStop. The employees are there to make sure that the GameStop doesn’t just wind up getting piled up with a ton of product that no one can buy because it’s not on the shelves and that it’s not cluttered with Moms and Grandparents that have no clue what they are looking for.
Would you rather wait in line for 10-20 minutes longer because the only person that can answer a question is stuck behind a counter or have someone walking around the store making sure everyone is being helped?