Chindie

The worst thing about the Avengers being 3D is it's a conversion job, i.e. it'll be **** shit in 3D.

The stock is all being redistributed, it's what I've spent this week doing. All the stock is being boxed up and shipped around to other stores. Don't expect some massive clearance sale. Even if the company goes bust it's more profitable for the administrators to shift the stock to other stores rather than sell if to the public - for a start simply because to sell to the public they need to keep stores open. Anyway... Reward and loyalty cards came back online today - you could use reward and loyalty credit to purchase preowned stock. A lot of people are speculating that this basically means they knew theres a sale of the company coming very soon. Which is interesting because all the talk is that RBS are going to come in and take on the company. The only issue with that is, that RBS won't have much interest in running a games company. They either are going to further trim the company and get it running on it's feet again to encourage a bid, or are aware of an interested party already who aren't quite able to purchase now, or they will simply asset strip the company to get their money back and maybe some profit. Because theres no **** way you'll have RBS actually running things long term.

I was actually tempted to say something when he dropped the 'happy today' line, I was right next to him sat on the floor bagging up a fuckload of stock. I took some solace in the fact he looked... concerned that we were using bags. If he'd have spoken to me like it directly I'd have said something. Definitely a bellend though. Not looking happy today?! Yeah we're **** ecstatic mate, we've lost our jobs and having to box up the entire **** store, it's **** fantastic?! Today looks like it might have been my last shift. Worked 10-6, but can't say I really did much for that time. The idea was we'd come in, see to the delivery pick up of all this stock before 12, get the shop tidy and go. While we were waiting we had the other 60 boxes we'd wanted turn up (we only needed them 2 days ago...), so we just decided to whack as many of the bagged stock into boxes as we could. And then the bloke never turned up. We spent most of the day sat around. We actually got so bored we started carting over some of the remaining bags we couldn't box over to the GAME store nearby, which has wrecked my hands. We suspect that head office **** up the pickup day. Nice to see they're proper pros to the end. PwC have provided us with what appears to be some kind of rendundancy pack, just a few printed sheets with a few Q&As. Our favourite Q is basically 'What should I do now?'. The Answer? 'Sign on'. Might have to go in tomorrow to help the pick up go through, but probably not. So thats that. End of my first job.

He came in with his Louis Vuitton man bag, all happiness and smiles, most 'fake'person I've ever seen, didn't say a word to the 3 of us sat around the shop slaving away bagging up all this stock. He walls up to my manager and I swear this is what he said 'Hi, how you doing? Don't look so happy today do you?!'. He talked about how the boxing up was going, checked some off the bags, and disappeared upstairs alone. Came back, and started telling my manager how he wanted things (stuff my manager already was gonna do, effectively just tidying). He goes 'Basically, when the game is over... Haha! Game over!...I want it like this...' as he starts to show my boss what's what. One of the other guys turns to me, behind this pricks back, and does the rocket polisher gesture to me. Then he **** off. You could he was a prick the moment he walked in, head to toe designer, fake smile, fashion cut that didn't suit him, walked about like we should be pleased we could even look at him.

Going to uni in Wales made me learn to find some Welsh women's accents attractive. Go too far south and it's too harsh. Goo too far north and it becomes proto Scouse. In happy median has go all wibbly. Especially on a hot brunette. But saying that I find most Celtic accents quite attractive. I was seeing a Stirling native for a while, and good God if she spoke in the accent long enough my head shut off and stopped listening to words and just liked the sounds, which also made me go all wibbly. Also helped she was easy on the eyes and bloody nice.

I'm **** useless at goodbyes. A couple of guys at work are not working our last shift tomorrow, so today was the final shift for them and probably the last time I'll see them. I got on well with both of them, the one guy in particular was just a great guy. The other had to hurry off but we just shook hands, said it'd been good, and he went on his way. The other let me out of the store at about 7.15, shook my hand and hugged me and said 'It's been a pleasure bud. I worked with a load of guys over the years here but you're one of the few I'll genuinely miss. See you around mate'. And all I could think to say was 'Thanks. See ya'. I actually felt really bad pretty much immediately afterwards, he was a sound chap and I really will miss working with him.

Yesterday was a grim today, today was a **** sad day. A couple of guys I really get on with aren't working tomorrows final shift, so it was a case of some goodbyes today. Really not nice. As for what went on today, well... we ran out of boxes, as expected. Ended up using the largest bags we have and just taping them up shut. The shop is now just... well, horrible. A bloke from the administrators turned up. **** prick he turned out to be.

I believe staff are considered first priority creditors, then lenders, then everyone else. I think that's probably right.

I'm fairly sure we're being paid in fairness. The way to think about administration with GAME Group I've discovered is this - GAME Group is basically now a husk. On Friday, GAME Group was GAME Group, the company we know. On Monday, GAME Group became effectively a shopfront of PwC, and was in such a bad way they implemented actions (in some cases unavoidably - redundancy pay) to stop the thing not being 'a thing' anymore. The refund thing provides a decent example of quite what that situation means. As I understand it, yes, GAME Group no longer will refund anything. PwC has taken that option away from the company as it believes it cannot be trusted to do that and survive. Thus, it has altered the balance of quite what your contract with GAME Group was when you bought something, your contract is now with them, arising from their stewardship. And they basically see anyone in contract with the company as a creditor now, and they have degrees of importance. If you bought a console on Sunday, had it die on Monday, you'd now need to take it up with PwC, they're effectively in charge of deal now. And unfortunately they've bigger things to worry about from their point of view than your faulty console. It rather does appear that administration completely changes the game for everyone involved.

Put it like this - it hasn't come up in discussions between staff, so we better **** be. I suspect that part of the reason they want it done so fast is the last half decent thing the management managed to do was, apparently, to shove a pot of cash in an RBS fund to guarentee wages for March, effectively meaning PwC can get a load of donkey work they want done, done, with no cost to the company finances. Interestingly, they've actually managed to **** up something as simple a organising the transfer of a load of stock, if our store is anything to go by. We're packing everything up, getting all the gutted stock on the shopfloor refilled, getting all of it out of the drawers and stock shelves. We're a small store, and our stock has taken a hammering in this sale, but we've still got a decent amount, and we've got a very decent stock of consoles. So obviously, we need boxes to pack this stuff into. They asked the managers to look at stock levels and estimate how many boxes we'd need. My manager reckoned, largely because we'd got a decent amount of consoles, we'd need about 120 (you can fit 4 consoles into the boxes we use, if you're lucky, and you can't fill them to the brim with games because they'll be rejected on pick-up if too full). Thats a decent estimate imo from my boss. They sent 60. We'd filled about 30 today before you even started to take consoles into account. Thankfully though, they aren't expecting us to cart them to the nearby Game ourselves like they normally do for last minute transfers. They're sending them all the central depots and then redistributing them, apparently.

I don't think anyone expected them to just shut a load of shops the moment administration was officially in place. Even our shop, which we knew was going to be closed, hadn't expected to get a call at noon saying to shut immediately. But you can see why PwC did it. All the staff in those stores were basically another cost to them, they wanted them shut as fast as possible to stop... well, the rot, as far as they're concerned. The talk has been they just looked at all the stores profitability and shut all of the stores the didn't believe matched up instantly. The cost cutting is further evident in our store pack up this week - they want it done by Friday, and no later, and they want everything packed up.

I couldn't tell you, management at Game Group is not that hot once you get above store management, as our predicament can attest, and we thus don't hear a whole lot from them. I do know that the administrators in charge reckon theres a chance a going concern in the company, the reason they dumped 40% of the company yesterday was to make the company more sellable, as well as more straight forwardly just to cut the costs. Theres rumours of a few interested parties, the guys who bought Comet, GameStop, lenders consortium... The only management I encounter a lot, my store manager, is out on his ear already like the rest of us at our store so theres not much hope in him... What I can tell you, and you probably won't be happy to hear, assuming by voucher you mean credit note/gift card, is that at this moment in time your voucher is worthless. It's not been voided - the value is still on it, but you cannot spend it. PwC suspended all the trade cards pretty much immediately. They have said they might reinstate them in the future, and there is a chance if someone does buy out what remains of the company and decides to basically restart the company, they may as a good will gesture let old trade card accounts be used. If you mean you have literally a voucher, I think they've been knocked on the head for time being too. Fingers crossed. (Though now I have no reason to be bright about the company, I'll say this - I'll be **** amazed if they let trade cards/gift cards and vouchers be used)

I can understand why they've done it (it appears that the company has broken Irish law), but basically it appears when administration comes knocking all bets are off. I mean we're not even offering refunds on faulty goods, you have to take it up with PwC, which is a curtailment of a basic consumer right. All they've achieved is withholding stock. And it's probably all they will achieve, because theres literally no money.

Logh - The Black Box

Incidentally the Irish stores doing sit-ins will achieve very little - nobody is getting redundancy, and thats that.

I like ShopTo, generally, but they've been utter words removed with regards to Game's woes, that offer is the kind of thing that would make me less likely to want to use them. Blockbuster weren't much better, and they've nothing to crow about whatsoever. Anywho, pretty sad time at work, 6 hours of just boxing up everything - they want the shelves, phones, you name it. We spent 6 hours just clearing the shelves and boxing up stock for it to be checked out of our stocklist and then sealed up for shipment back to head office. The store looks sorry for itself.

'Joked-properly-joked' or 'joked-but-it's-a-totally-happening-thing-joked'? I furnished my first flat with such shenanigans, but then my moral compass is stuck on evil. Just joked.

That's been joked about

While I agree somewhat with Juju that the games market will suffer in the UK with Game Group gone (I think someone will fill the void, if I'm honest though, it's a difficult market but you could make a decent profit from a well run games retailer in the UK), Game Groups problem was in part caused because it wasn't well run. Management **** up in some key areas. They exacerbated problems that came to pass in the last couple of years that were out of their hands, increased competition that they couldn't compete with, poor online, idiotic expansion, etc etc. Gamestation staff, especially those who have been there a while, will feel particularly aggrieved - the company has been killed by Game, not vice versa.

Cheers. I'll be OK. I'm worried about being out of the job despite not liking it all that much (I've no problem with manning a till, I just never liked the upsell stuff and knew customers didn't either, so did it largely half arsed, and the rest of the job was basically store admin, stock processing and the like, and helping the customers. Really, really sound bunch of guys to work with too, I'll miss the banter) and it paid terribly and the contract was rubbish, I was looking to leave anyway, but I'd rather have left with something else to go into. Glad to have helped people. I like helping people, and I love gaming. Dunno where I go from here. Gonna think about having a while to just think where to go from here.

I suppose for balance I should also say that I've always been really happy to help people in my job at Gamestation, and I only made sops to the upselling we were supposed to do because I had to. And you do get some good customers. We had a lot of regulars who were all sound and would pop in for a chat sometimes. Most of them have been in this week and wished us luck, used up their cards and left happy. I've also had 4 or 5 customers go out of their way to tell my manager how happy they were to be served by me, and a few of them have come back because of that. It was always nice when someone would leave the till after I'd served them and stopby the management that day on the way out to say I'd done good by them.

Hunger Games sequel is in pre production already. It appears to be a Battle Royale crossed with Twilight. With all the horror that may bring.

I won't have that problem at all BOF - my store is shut, no more customers! The guys in today got a call at around noon telling them to just close. My manager has asked me to go in for 6 hours tomorrow, presumably to pack the place up. Where I to be on tills tomorrow serving as usual, I'd have carried on doing what I have been for the last couple of weeks, I've dropped all the crap I hated having to do at the tills with various loyaty cards and trade in reminders. But I know I'd end up dealing with angry customers. I told the only angry customer I ever had to deal with the reality of the situation (his loyalty card was a duff one, sometimes happens, they don't swipe and the system requires swipe authorisation to use the loyalty balance, effectively it stops people coming up to the till and saying they're Joe Bloggs and would like to us the £X on the card). Unfortunately the man was an absolutely hateful scum sucking prick of a being, and decided he could swear and threaten and generally treat me and other staff members like shit, throwing things at us, insulting us, throwing things off the till, to the point I lost any sense of trying to help the man, let my manager take over, lost my temper entirely on walking away from the till at how **** angry this mans attitude had made me, and as I walked out back and up stairs shouted '**** word removed!' at the top of my lungs almost involuntarily, he had made me quite so angy. He later trashed the shop a little more, poured beer over the PSP section. I apologised to my manager, who told me not to worry too much, as did the assistant manager at the time, who said he was surprised I'd lasted as long as I had and that the guy deserved it. The bloke did all of this in front of his clearly unsettled partner, his increasingly upset young daughter, in a small store full of Christmas shoppers and children. Funnily enough that moment, on Christmas Eve, was the moment at which I decided I didn't want to work in retail much longer - a lot of people you encounter are utterly despicable beings who decide that you are not worthy of even the slightest slither of common human decency simply because you're wearing a uniform. I ain't proud I lost my cool with that guy. I know that that would happen again though, because I've no temper for people who cannot at least be polite and reasonable and understand that the people across the till, are just that, people, and generally they want to help you, because helping you is the easiest thing to do. But sometimes things stop that. In the coming days, Game and Gamestation staff are going to face that type of customer time and again, and I feel a little sorry for them. Theres been some talk of it happening already. (To be fair to the chap who drove me over the retail decorum edge, he came in a couple of months later and asked to speak to the staff member he'd upset. I wasn't there. He apologised profusely to my manager and asked that he say he was sorry to me. At the time, I couldn't have cared less if he'd have dropped dead in front of me).

277 store closures. 2104 job losses. One of them's me. 4 others are some good guys I work with. 1 of thems a prick I work with. I feel a little sorry for those in the stores still open. The changes to things we'll be able to do (no refunds, returns or exchanges at all, no use of store credit, no use of loyaty points) are going to cause aggro country over with... ahem... unhappy customers. I've had to deal with a slightly upset customer, and suffice to say I would not be able to maintain decorum with some people when they find out this news. Certainly not when I knew chances are I'd have no job soon anyway.

Oh, and assuming they've not gone pop yet, Thorntons.