GameStop — Local services in Bakersfield

Ah GameStop, if only I had diamond handed your stocks for a little longer.

Wall street bets aside, this particular location is a hot mess. From what I understand, the employees are a mutinous bunch, and from their perspective of working a dead end job for 15 an hour while dealing with punks who ask if they have Battle Toads in stock, I'd likely be dead inside too.

That being said, I find myself to be a fairly pleasant customer, and one particularly overworked neck beard at the counter couldn't bother to help out with my game trade in. He mumbled something about "pro week" and "the deals, my boy, the deals", then went back to his regularly scheduled programming of wiping down the anime figures sopping with drool from onlookers to pretending to stock game cartridges even though, well, everyone buys them digitally nowadays.

In fact, I'm not entirely sure how this company even makes money. It certainly isn't thriving in the sales of anime body pillows, but then again, perhaps I'm the wrong demographic for that sort of thing. I just want to get some trade in credit for my old Zelda game; is that too much to ask, overworked GameStop...

Staff are usually friendly and nice to interact with. Management never has enough people on staff though. Lines are long and forget about getting a phone call answered. Sometimes they don't have backups so they'll just shut the store down at random times so the poor single worker can take lunch. Never ever see management at this location. They're usually hiding in the back while some poor kid is getting slammed in the front. I personally hate GS corporate since they run these stores on shoestring budgets so they can give themselves nice bonuses every year. It's a better than average spot for action figure collecting so that's the only reason to go in for me. I haven't purchased a physical copy of a game over a decade though. Pre-orders seems antiquated in this day of modern gaming. A lot of their business strategy is centered around selling nothing basically. Pre-orders, Pro Plans, etc. How much money can they take from you while you end up leaving with nothing physically in your hands. Now they're buying graded Pokemon cards?! It's like trying to save the Titanic by bailing out water...

If I were able to give less than 5 stars I would. I was the first person in line, waiting 11 and a half hours to get ONE ETB. The store had no notification that they had switched from a PREVIOUS system of a line to a new lottery system. The organization was CHAOTIC. THE ENTIRETY OF THE STORE STAFF WAS YELLING AND BEING UNPROFESSIONAL AND RUDE. Tell me how it’s fair that someone who waited their turn FOR ALMOST HALF A DAY. Is sent to be placed at NUMBER 131 in LINE. I’ve cancelled my GameStop pro membership and frankly this has killed something I truly loved. This has been a hobby in which I thoroughly enjoyed. THIS STORE Needs to consider their customers and their professionalism that is owed to them. I’d love to have a more thorough conversation as to what I mean by unprofessionalism as well. If th district manager would like to have a conversation about the safety issues that were occurring this morning then please feel free to reply to this message. Again, I am HIGHLY dissatisfied and disappointed with the level of service I received as well as ALL store associate’s attitudes and lack...