Insultingly low pay for the workload - Recensione dipendente - Assistant Manager presso GAME Digital

- supportive environment - kind coworkers - opportunities for growth

- pay - long hours - low vacation time

Right off the bat, the people you work with will be really fun as a rule. Most every team I've spent time around has good chemistry. Benefits are getting steadily lessened over time, but discounts to staff on products should be a huge benefit to anyone looking to join the company given its focus. Ties to industry teams are great too. With a close partnership with Xbox UK and also teams like Sony and Ubisoft, you'll get training from respective companies and their reps who visit stores. Microsoft are particularly strong here with in store reps in most locations as well as specialised online training. This is especially helpful in offering a chance to migrate to these other teams down the line should you choose to follow it. There is a growing presence in both PC gaming and eSports, helmed by the Multiplay division. With events like Insomnia and the Arena Clashes growing in strength there is real potential for a strong growth in the eSports community in the UK having a unified league growing in this way. There are chances to help work at Insomnia events too, which are extremely taxing, but also pretty rewarding. Pay remains just ahead of the minimum wage, so you'll actually do alright on pay compared to lower tiers in other retail chains. A chance to engage with other gamers to share your loves with them and vice versa. There is a sense of community with the regulars in stores and they will be a big part in your enjoyment in the role. There will be odd balls, but as a rule most will be good fun to help out.

This is a tough one, with some personal influences, but still important. The most troubling part is a completely broken chain of command between Head Office, Management, both Regional and Store and then the general store teams. Quite often there will be rapidly conflicting commands, especially during the Christmas period, as this will quickly lose track and create tensions both in store and above. Second to this, a lot of management is so in with each other that it's mostly impossible to be heard when it matters. The most glaring issue on this is when a Christmas Temp doesn't feel they can bring forward severe issues of sexual harassment against them for fear of it being enough for them to not be kept on after the retail hellscape that is Black Friday and Christmas. Not only that, but after word getting management, there was a refusal to actually tackle the issue properly, and so the staff in question repeated the behaviour with at least 4 other members of staff over the course of a year, until finally being given the option to leave rather than it being put on their record and fired. Store management as well as regional were aware, and the mishandling of this was disgraceful. On a more personal footing, don't ever make your plans public to the company. This may seem a bit obvious, but even potentially moving regions or professions will be enough for you to be kept stagnant regardless of performance. You can outperform the entire store consistently and see no reward for your efforts, either in hours gained or promotions. This then paired with nepotism and sexism being rife in places means that some promotions are given to people who are either not fit or not ready for a role. Also bear in mind that if you challenge this too much you are ultimately easily replaced, each store is consistently inundated with applications. Don't expect to be able to be able to plan much of a life around the job, as often management will be critical of other work you may need to get just to pay the bills given how few hours they provide you. Rotas change weekly and often will only be shared mere hours before the next week begins. There is a frustrating fascination with keeping many staff with small contracts, meaning most of the team will struggle to get by from their pay. This also gets mixed with drop in the hat expectations to fill hours often without consideration for what you can or cannot do, and sometimes not even checked. There is an increase in the forcing of overselling. There should be no surprise that attaching to sales will be a main part of every role on the floor, but this is poorly maintained. Especially given a lack of forward thinking rewards for good performance, there is also no present reward either, seeing no reason to be the best at trying to force people to buy things they didn't want, when you could remain consistently average and stay in. However, they will absolutely lord the performance over you as an excuse to fire you if you don't meet often ridiculous sales targets set by head office. With the introduction of the credit option in stores, this is increasingly difficult to perform well in while being comfortable with business practices, often expected to push trying for credit, even with people who clearly shouldn't be. The company outright refuses to spend money where it doesn't have to, so don't expect any hardware instore to improve during your time there. Till systems are woefully outdated and slow and even machines used for management and team communication suffer the same issues, messing with efficiency further. With supermarket chains jumping on the gaming market too, prepare to constantly be on the firing line during the holiday season. Game can't take the hit as easily to compete with retail chains that easily make the missing revenue up elsewhere, so in the customers eyes, you the Sales Assistant are the villain trying to rip them off and during the heat of the Christmas buildup, that could get messy fast. Prepare to be overruled constantly. The company will insist on a set of practices to follow in store that you have to follow, and yet even if you follow them to the letter, if a customer complains enough they will be given what they want, regardless of whether they should or not. If you are applying to a bigger store, then you will constantly be given unrealistic targets for release sales, and on the flip side, if you apply to a smaller store, then you will be consistently under stocked and under funded, all that good stuff go to the bigger stores, but at least the figures are obtainable. Most people will not do their job properly, and will try to hide their frequent mistakes. In stores this will screw up everything from stock management to floor presentation. Behind the scenes it gets worse with stores sending phones and consoles they shouldn't have taken for a variety of reasons to other stores hoping they won't notice before selling on to customers. This ultimately makes the store and by extension the company as a whole look bad, but it is never challenged or curbed properly, so expect people to coast through the job. Lastly efficiencies are an absolute joke. The store will always be under staffed because regional will want to spend as little as possible on hours. As a result there will never be enough people on premises to both run the store and keep stock in check. Deliveries can arrive whenever and are hard to fit in to the embarrassingly small windows you're given to check through and organise to company standards. You are expected to be active on the floor to discourage theft, and yet due to under staffing there is no way to have floor staff when all hands are needed on tills. Because people don't bother with handling stock correctly, either for lack of care or a lack of spare time, the stock will be a shambles, and unless you have some angel who is prepared to sort stock constantly to keep efficient running of both front and back of house, it will get messy and both stock recalls and sales will be a mess with stock on the system not matching what you can find now everything is so mixed and lost. This then paired with the company often sending out instructions for store rearranging only in the hours where the staff is back to skeleton teams means that both the open and close teams have more to do because there simply isn't enough time or enough staff on hand. As you can imagine therefore, mix that with Black Friday/Christmas madness and the mess is just unbearable and will only heighten the frustrations of the customers.