Well if the rules stipulate you will not exercise personal judgement you will ask everyone then that's not a very good set of rules.

Unfortunately it is this one.
The stores I worked the very first part of the script was always...
"Every customer must be approached within 30 seconds of them entering the store" 
(this time varied slightly depending on store, never higher than a minute though)


The second thing you said is what the vast majority of retail staff want to be able to do, unfortunately management  seem to think most of their staff are retards. Where as lot of retail staff are students subsidising study or using retail as a stop gap and far more intelligent than the management.

I used to work with a guy who used to work in a Virgin Megastore and he'd forever moan about jobsworths and such but whenever he talked about his time in the shop he'd be all, like, "Ooh, I asked all the questions, it was more than my job was worth".

Tempy wrote:

Wot he said, though 30 seconds was quick.

Yeah it was a small store and we would have someone stationed at the front just to say hello, which is a ridiculous waste of money.

Matt_82 wrote:

I don't mind being asked if I need help.  As long as when I decline I get left in peace.  

But the script Matt! THE SCRIPT!
How can I do the fitting room part of the script if you won't go in the fitting rooms?

A hooters like experience should be applied to GAME tbh.

I want a smoking hot thick chick to sit on my lap whilst I order my games.  I don't generally need informed staff as most of the time I know what I'm there for... tits and games.

A forward thinking approach for a modern Britain there AHL. Huzzah!

No, I'm not mistaking it for sincerity. Quite the opposite.

I was just adding to your opinion by saying which stores have the "journey" and are going to the wall and which just serve people and are (afawk) doing fine.

The whole issue with the staff at Game is the same issue which is found throughout retail, namely that retailers give far more of a shit about the size of their wage bill than they do about the quality of their staff. It's an attitude which isn't helped by the fact that in general, retail jobs are seen alongside bar work or waiting as a job for young people who can't find anything else and are doing this until they get a job they really want to do.

Due to the fact that wages are so low and there are so few prospects, staff turnover tends to be very high which leads to having a large number of staff on the floor who have very little idea what they're doing and who have received very little training because what's the point? They'll leave soon anyway.

In this environment, things like scripts flourish as a way to try to make staff half decent with minimum effort on behalf of the employees. Meanwhile, all of the staff who are half decent usually have the wherewithal to get out and do something better with themselves as soon as they possibly can, as you're not going to support yourself on a retail wage for the rest of your life. You can be the greatest sales assistant in the country and you'd still be incredibly lucky to earn even the national average wage.

FWIW, I spent many years in retail, and pretty much all of my employers asked me to offer help to every customer and had specific things they wanted me to say to them, often without even considering whether it was even appropriate or sensible (case in point, one clothes shop tried to teach staff a few phrases in French, German and Spanish to ask things like 'would you like that in another size?' without giving a thought to what we'd do when the customer inevitably answers us in another language which we don't understand). I ignored as much of this as I could and carried on doing what I did, namely offering help to those that looked like they needed help (not hard to spot), and them giving them the best help I could. This was always enough.

I'm not sure it matters how friendly or helpful the staff are, unless the games are cheaper/available first in-store then we have a problem. It's strange that this has come full circle. Originally, online stores had to release early to beat the high street store. Now, it's the high street store that needs protecting. If a game came out on a Friday, and the store had it on a Monday, I'd be tempted but otherwise...

It's an industry problem really: £40-50 RRP for a new title is TOO DAMN HIGH. I'm not surprised GAME and HMV have both gone bust, but the problem isn't the stores themselves. The market is saturated with high-cost low-yield rubbish. The stuff I've read on this forum before about how much HMV was making on games (a couple of quid a pop) is crazy. It starts at the very top; how much does a game cost to make? More and more devs going bust (THQ ) says to me that something is broken somewhere. I'm not a fan of the mobile games market either; I'm yet to play something on my phone that was actually any good. Only just bought my first app yesterday after 2 years of owning an Android phone (Super Hexagon!) but people see these games as a replacement for your blockbuster title when they just cannot compete for quality. Then again, I only bought two launch titles last year because I no longer have the time to invest in games. MAYBE I'M THE REASON.

Nintendo making a loss last year terrifies me. 

tl:dr; ramblings of a disillusioned gamer. Competitions would be nice and prizes not really essential; a trophy would be nice OR BETTER STILL AN ACHIEVEMENT OR PS3 TROPHY. Now that shit would be cray.

regmcfly wrote:

The fear of ACTUAL HUMAN CONTACT that some people have on here never fails to amaze.

Hey, I started my participation in this thread by saying, like a few others, that staff is the main advantage of GAME.  They can engage with their customers!  Did you read my posts about targeted upselling and why it might not be shit?

The vending machine idea, though, is golden.  There will always be someone with a bit too much holiday money who wants to pick up a new pair of headphones at an airport, it's not too much of a leap to assume that they might be tempted by a new 3DS game, or even the system itself.

loxdog wrote:

It's an industry problem really: £40-50 RRP for a new title is TOO DAMN HIGH.

Spot the person too young to have paid £65 for SFII Turbo at 1992 prices!  About 90% of modern games are available for £35 within 10 minutes of release.  Games are demonstrably cheaper than the SNES era.

Historic inflation calculator online tells me that £65 in 1992 is the equivalent of £109.85 at today's prices.  So there you go, we were all happily getting £110 games for Christmas in 1992 with our SNESs, so £35-50 for a new release today is an absolute massive bargain.

Those of you who hate scripts might well like this news. The old Retail Eyes style mystery shop stuff is out, replaced with one where every customer is potentially one.

Can't remember the name of the company, but basically you get a code on the receipt, go to their website and and do a report on there. I'd have to see what this actually looks like, but in theory this should mean you have to give what the customer thinks is good service, and not what Game think.

g.man will have a fucking field day.

n0face wrote:

Only moaning or vindictive people will use that facility though.

Apparently feedback is generally positive.

You get put into a draw to win £200, which might be what sways people.