All the things you learn as a girl working in GAME

As soon as I finished my GCSEs, I was incredibly bored. So, I decided to get myself a part time job in my local shopping centre. Fortunately for me it wasn’t a case of traipsing round every shop until someone accepted me, I got very lucky. I popped into my local GAME store to pick up Animal Crossing: New Leaf, and happened to get served by the manager who told me they were currently hiring. A couple of interviews later, and I was officially employed. Here’s what I’ve learned along the way. 

You will want to buy EVERYTHING

I started working there in possibly the worst time for my bank account, the launch of the Xbox One and PS4. After weeks and weeks of telling people how great the new consoles were and convincing them to part with their hard earned cash, I was slowly convincing myself. I think I ended up spending in excess of £600 on an Xbox bundle when they came out in the November. That was more than I earned in my time working there, oops. Totally worth it.

So many free t-shirts

From working there only two years, I have a life long collection of XL game shirts. I mean if anyone happens to be a collector of these things I’m sure I can sort you out. I’ve got your Elder Scrolls, your Far Cry 3 and even exclusive Destiny shirts. Definitely open to offers.

Sadly no free games

The most heartbreaking realisation for me is that the discount wasn’t even that good either, through the two years I think I put at least half of what I earned back into the store. Again, no regrets. I love games and I miss the discount I did get.

‘Girls know nothing about gaming’

It didn’t matter that I’d went through monthly training both in person and online, daily briefings and actually, you know, played games. I still apparently knew nothing according to the majority of customers. I had blokes come up to me saying ‘You probably won’t know this, but…’, and they’d finish that with some stupid easy question like ‘…is Call of Duty multiplayer?’ or ‘…where are the PC games?’ My boyfriend at the time even said he should’ve had the job rather than me. Ugh.   

They also don’t look like they work there

Once stood having a conversation with my male friend in front of the digital content board, and some guy came up to him and said, ‘Hi mate, could you help me with a PS4 bundle?’ My friend just looked at him confused, then gestured towards me, ‘No, but she can.’ At this point the customer actually laughed before looking down at my uniform and realising his misogynist mistake. He didn’t even apologize, just a, ‘So can you help then?’. A lot of people would say to me, ‘It’s just a job right? You’d probably rather work in Topshop.’ Double ugh.

People are so concerned about the gender of the person they’re buying for

Honestly, this wound me up more than the sexist bullshit directed towards myself. I had customers come in and ask for gift cards that weren’t pink because it was for a boy. I politely told them that it’s just the brand’s colour and we hadn’t ran out of ‘masculine’ gift cards. The amount of little girls I saw told to put the Skylanders they wanted back on the shelf to instead get a Disney Princess Infinity character was disheartening. I also saw little boys being told to get the blue DS rather than than the red one for no goddamn reason. Little kids don’t care about your gender stereotypes.

Guys will hit on you, like all the time

A lot of men seemed to think that it was entirely appropriate to ask a 16/17 year old girl out while she was at work. If they weren’t that forward, they’d usually just magically figure out my shift patterns and come into every time I was there and stare at me whilst I was stacking games, creepy right? It didn’t stop after I left the store either, it seems that some men regard girls who plays games to be almost mythical creatures, and will immediately fetishise your hobby. I just want to talk about the benefits of playing Mage in Dragon Age without you getting a boner please.