Tough customers

[Marek]

Another wonderful 1up one-sheet article.

I never talk to game store clerks. Do you?

[ysbreker]

I almost never buy my games in an actual store but when I do I don't really talk to the clerks.

I do have this urge to comment on other peoples choices and point them to the proper games but I never do. somehow.

[Chris]

I am now a "game store clerk". I rarely talk to myself though.

[Roderick]

Amazing that they (all of them except the Gamestop store) let people who don't know a thing about what they're selling, sell them. Okay maybe the last one was knowledgeable, but certainly not customer friendly.

I've never really talked to a clerk about games. I'm one of those new Prosumer bastards that tends to be better informed than the clerks. I do talk to the guys of the gamedept. of the store I worked (at the DVD-dept), but those were friends. And they knew what they were talking about, too.

[Chris]

My interview to work at GameCrazy (honestly way better than your average game retailer, I haven't worked there long enough to have enough loyalty to be biased ) actually consisted about 90% of making sure I knew a lot about games and game systems. I got marked down when, during the "Pretend I'm a Customer and You're the Salesperson" phase, I forgot to mention that in order to hook up more than two controllers to a PS2 you need to buy the multi-tap since it only has two ports.

[Marek]

Didn't know you were hired at GameCrazy. Congrats!

[Roderick]

Well actually, despite the fact Mediamarkt is pretty mainstream and has the image of being a supermarket, there's quite some effort taken to ensure that the clerks have a thourough knowledge of things.

[Nick]

Whilst in the US I went into EB to try and get a GBA USB charger for my DS (which I have and had forgotten back in the UK). The staff insisted that no such thing existed and that I was getting confused and I was thinking of the PSP USB cable.

This annoyed me.

Edit: Also I didn't read the article as it wont load

[Tanukitsune]

Shouldn't they have asked more than one person at each store? So just because ONE clerk there was good therefore Gamestop is "teh" best?

The owner in the local Centro Mail (now Game.es), knew his stuff, we could talk for quite a while, and the clerks at the more recent store, most of them, seems to know their stuff too...

I was offered a job at the other store, at the only time I actually had a job, so I had to decline, and when I went to an interview later I didn't get it because there weren't any stores close to my town...

[Wormsie]

There is only one EB Games shop in Finland (as far as I know), and strangely enough, the first day it was opened the clerk there was English. And only spoke English. In Finland. Where English is a foreign language.

Like, what.

[Salka]

Nobody ever spoke to me. I would have to ask each customer that bought a PC game 'are you sure this game will run on your system? There's a 7-day software return policy, but it has to be unopened, so check blah blah blahhh'. They would grunt and look away. Male and female alike.

[Kolzig]

There is only one EB Games shop in Finland (as far as I know), and strangely enough, the first day it was opened the clerk there was English. And only spoke English. In Finland. Where English is a foreign language.

Like, what.

Where is it? In Helsinki?

Some years ago there used to be game shops around here where I live, actually about five shops that were specialized in selling games. Now there ain't even one left. Well anyway, I buy all my games through internet these days so really doesn't matter that much.

[MrHoatzin]

Best Buy motherfucker tried to persuade me there was no way of hooking up a PS2 or an Xbox controller to a PC.

[Wormsie]

Where is it? In Helsinki?

Yep, in the brand new Kamppi. I don't know if they have stores elsewhere, too - it might be possible.

[Wormsie]

BTW, they had lots of older games for sale in the bargain bin, such as the Sam and Max + Day of the Tentacle double CD and Broken Sword 1.

[TOMMY B]

There is only one EB Games shop in Finland (as far as I know), and strangely enough, the first day it was opened the clerk there was English. And only spoke English. In Finland. Where English is a foreign language.

Like, what.

The same thing happens here in America with the spanish-speaking clerks (be they Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, whatever). And yet, if I was to suggest that if you live and work in a country, you should learn the language of that country, then all of a sudden I'M the asshole.

[Chris]

I've never had that problem in the US. Working in various retail capacities I've sometimes been unable to understand my customers but I've never been faced with a clerk or cashier who couldn't understand me. And I live about as close to the Mexican border as you can get.

[MrHoatzin]

America is awesome because you really don't have to learn the language of the land to live here. Your ability to do stuff is limited, but hey, not as much as it would be elsewhere. You can be a longshoreman or a garbage man or a gardener or a fruit picker or whatnot without ever saying a word of English. The traffic signs are all written out (as opposed to symbolic as they are in Europe) to force you to take the bus, although you can always fake it by looking at what other people are doing and follow suit. At the store you just pick what you want yourself and hand the dude the amount of money written in green numbers on the register. You may watch TV when you come home from work, but that shit is generally so moronic that you really don't need to understand the language to follow it. Before you know it, you will have a house in the suburbs and little retarded first generation American children who will when they come of age gently break to you that ever since you came to the states your favourite crackers were in fact dog snacks and that you've been washing your hair with tanning oil.

[manny_c44]

That's one thing moronic TV is pretty good for (if you're foreign): learning English.

[MrHoatzin]

That's one thing moronic TV is pretty good for (if you're foreign): learning English.

Adventure games are better. ¬ ¬ ¬

[Wormsie]

I was able to communicate with the cashier. "Cheers mate!" It just struck me as odd. You are likely to not understand the waiter or be understood by the waiter in a Chinese restaurant, sure, but otherwise there aren't too many service workers from abroad working in Finland. At least, not yet. And I think that Englishman was the owner or something like that...

[Erkki]

Adventure games are better. ¬ ¬ ¬

I'm not so sure. Not that I've actually thought about which is better.

I learned Finnish by watching Finnish TV and I learned English by using a computer and reading books, and in school. Playing adventure games probably helped me learn some words that are not often used elsewhere.

But I can't really write in Finnish because I've hardly ever needed to do that. And I don't speak it very fluently either. TV only works one way.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Before you know it, you will have a house in the suburbs and little retarded first generation American children who will when they come of age gently break to you that ever since you came to the states your favourite crackers were in fact dog snacks and that you've been washing your hair with tanning oil.

Don't forget that your kids will be diagnosed as obese at age 8 with type 2 diabetes because of the culture of shit (otherwise known as junk food and no excercise) they're being raised in.

Oh, wait, that's also happening in many other parts of the world.

[Dingo Chavez]

I buy games in a quaint little import shop in a nearby city, the guy knows me by name and I just call him and order, simple and efficient (though expensive with a tedius wait). So I don't exactly talk to game clerks, I think.

There's a site that specializes in the idiocy of the Video game consumer called Acts of Gord, it's rather funny but also frustrating.

http://www.actsofgord.com/Annoy/chapter01.html

I would never want to work at a Video game store after reading it. Never.

[nsps]

For the record, the U.S. doesn't have an official language, although it's obviously expected that you know English most of the time. I've only encountered customer service personnel with limited communication skills in fast-food restaurants, where they'd know the menu items but wouldn't be able to help if, say, you asked whether MSG was in something. In that case, they would probably go ask a fellow employee to help.

Speaking of English and hip new words (OK, so we weren't talking about hip new words), I thought prosumer was only used in reference to electronics that were high-grade consumer products with some pro features, although not quite as nice as the super-expensive pro items. Eh?

I went by EB Games the other day hoping they'd have some used Dreamcast controllers, and heard an informed employee talking to people about the new systems, mainly the Xbox 360 backwards compatibility possibilities. I wanted to jump in and say that the Revolution would be super-backwards compatible, but instead left in defeat because they only had N64 and PSX controllers. So yeah, there are probably annoyed clerks at Gamestops and knowledgeable ones at EB, depending on timing.