Making Game Retail Less Deadly

Kotaku asks an interesting question with a somewhat obvious answer: “Is it dangerous to work at GameStop?”

The immediate answer is “Yes.” I’d get a regimen of rabies vaccinations done before working at any sort of game store because fanboys froth and bark when their pre-orders aren’t in on time, and they care not where they sling their drool. Looking more deeply into the question however, it actually applies to the risk of robberies. More than one GameStop employee has been held up for money and merchandise.

Robbery is a sad fact in all retail establishments. That can’t be helped. What can be helped is retailers’ blatant disregard for employee safety, for which GameStop needs to be slapped as hard as any store. Most sales clerks are pushed into the battlefield with little more than advice to “Give them what they want” in the event of a robbery. Good advice, but not always effective. A GameStop robbery has the potential to go wrong very fast, since more than money is at stake. The Wii is still rare enough that some blitzed-out idiot might decide it’d be a fantastic idea to grab a bunch and sell them off for horse crack. How’s he going to react when he finds out there are none? It might sound silly, but people have died over dumber things.

I’ve worked a lot of cash registers in my life (though I’m surprisingly incompetent at it and can never balance my till), and only one store–Canadian Tire–taught me thoroughly about register safety. Never open your till all the way. Never cash out in sight of customers. Don’t fall for the ol’ “Can you change this?” switcheroo, a con artist’s favourite means of confusing the cashier and making off with a hundred easy bucks. Hang onto debit/credit cards until the transaction is complete. All this is good advice, but I’ve seen hundreds of cashiers in game stores and other establishments leave their till open as wide as a boot, showing off stacks of 20s and 100s for hoodlums to grab.

It’s the store’s responsibility to train their cashiers not to be targets, but robberies will still happen–how can they not, since one clerk manning a lonesome GameStop at 8 p.m. is such a fat target? The terribly sad part of all this is that big box stores are often desperate to save money (and God forbid they not be open in the dead of night), so it’s not unusual for a sole employee to be left to clean up, cash out and stumble home in darkest night. It’s a dangerous situation for guys, but girls are often left alone, too–which has happened to myself in the past. I’m a grand total of five feet. Put me behind a counter (I barely clear the top) and I instantly become a walking, breathing “Bingo!” for any robbers with ideas. Until they find out I can bite pretty hard.

Seriously, retail chains take terrible advantage of young workers because they’re usually desperate college students. A little extra effort on the part of GameStop and other establishments of commercial consumption would go a long way to improving customer service. It’s always nice to know your employer took special pains to help make sure you won’t, y’know, die on the job.