Friday, March 29All That Matters

My dream job as a kid was to work at Game Crazy and talk video games all day with my fellow nerds.


My dream job as a kid was to work at Game Crazy and talk video games all day with my fellow nerds.



View Reddit by goldenboy2191View Source

37 Comments

  • AmbitionSpecialist

    I think I bought my Nintendo Wii at a GameCrazy, it was attached to a Hollywood Video if I remember correctly.

  • Altruistic-Curve-573

    Used to want to work at GameStop until a talked to someone who worked there and found out how shit it was for him

  • TheGnomecop

    I loved our local Game Crazy, the manager was a really nice guy, always gave great recommendations, and was lenient with returns. I spent a lot of time at our store before I was old enough to work.

    Was eventually hired there and worked for several months around 2008, it was a toxic environment. Manager at the time (different guy) was burnt out, Ass. Manager was a 25yo that spent most days smoking out front with young high school girls. Our store started liquidation when the company was going under. Everything went from bad to much worse, district manager made outrageous daily demand about the appearance of the store and sales numbers. They removed all current gen games and shipped in the used garbage accessories and terrible games that would never sell. Easily the most disappointing job I ever had and ruined all nostalgia and positive memories I had of the place.

  • FoundmyReasons

    I worked at one. It’s sucked lol. Having to badger people to get a mvp card was annoying and then to follow it up with would you like to put 5$ down to reserve your copy of street fighter 4?

  • downonthesecond

    I worked in the video game section at Toys R Us, it was a horribly run store with a lot of downtime leading to repeatedly stocking and re-ordering shelves. Likely way better compared to GameStop and others.

  • Bosscharacter

    Being someone who spent some time in my 20’s working at Gamestop,

    Trust me, that dream isn’t worth fulfilling.

  • franckensteen

    The best thing about them partnering with Hollywood Video is that if you took your receipt in from renting a game you would get the rental cost off of your purchase of the same game.

  • 2geek2bcool

    Literally had moms try to drop their kids off at open, and pick them up around 5. Really didn’t like it when I told them I’d be reporting abandoned children the next time.

  • OlTommyBombadil

    “Cool” jobs usually make you hate the thing you loved that made you want to work there in the first place

    Source: worked at a guitar store and a record store. I rarely play guitar anymore and don’t listen to music very much

    I also hate everyone now because they’re all assholes. Retail is a fast track to being a miserable person by 25

    Anyways, not trying to kill vibes. I’m happy you still have pleasant nostalgia!

  • fazlez1

    If you want to nerd out today visit a Microcenter. I worked at one for four years and there’s all types of nerds there: gaming, anime, audio, programming and just tech as a whole. The pay wasn’t great because of the department I worked in, but man i was home.

  • abby-normal-brain

    I worked at a GameStop back in either 2005 or 2006, can’t remember. Chatting with my boss was great, and he regularly sent me on (paid by him) DQ Blizzard runs(we were located in a mall and it was close to us) to keep morale up. Lots of asshole parents that used us as a daycare for their kid while they left to shop. Also, I was the first girl hired at that location, so plenty of jerk dudes either trying to quiz me to catch me out as a “fake nerd” or trying to flirt. On one occasion, both somehow? My gay ass just wanted to talk about vidya.

    My proudest moment was talking a mom OUT of buying Shadow the Hedgehog for her kid. My boss called it my good deed for the day and bought me a Blizzard. He really was awesome.

  • redDKtie

    Former GameCrazy employee here! The job was retail whatever. But if you collected retro games at the time, it was a gold mine. We were still taking retro trades when GameStop and EB weren’t so we’d get all kinds of shit traded in. Occasionally we’d get something that just wasn’t in our system.

    This one time a guy was trying to sell his entire Sega Master System collection. We couldn’t take it, so I asked my manager and went outside with the guy to buy it from him for $40.

    I walked away with a TON of stuff. This was in like 2006.

    Also we’d resell the rental copies of newer games as discounted used copies. I got a lot of my games that way because they were basically half off only a month out from launch.

    I miss that place.

  • lincolnmaddy

    I loved it. Transferred from video and played games all day. One downside was the public controllers were nasty. We brought our own in. As a 19 year old would 100% work there again!!!

  • jdmorgenstern

    I traded in my Game Boy and Nintendo DS at GameCrazy and got a year’s worth of free rentals at Hollywood Video (in addition to whatever cash value those systems were worth at the time). I miss my Game Boy.

  • Mittsu3

    another former gamecrazy employee/shift lead here.

    we had endless compliance checks from vendors and regional managers, kids who would just knock over displays and endcaps as soon as they went up, co-workers who would steal and cause inventory variance, (my lead manager was cool as hell but also a drunk), the non-stop coaching parents would ask of us, stacks of discs for repair brought over by randoms, an inability to do anything inside as the backroom was only just one area of overflow (hollywood allowed us to use their promo room for the 2nd), there was requisite pre-release training and vendor specific courses, holyhell it’s all flooding back to me, the midnight releases with less than enough inventory, the waitlists for consoles, the trade in backlog, being asked to upsell to meet goals, having to schedule 5 employees and never getting the good shifts or enough overlap, young children being dropped off for hours without notice like it was daycare.

    the worst of it might have been the time when I was working solo on a holiday, a bunch of dudes rushed the counters and just ransacked the place, cops didn’t show until weeks later and only for insurance purposes.

    **that job was butt.**

  • rurouni318

    I worked at multiple game crazy’s for years. Then I went to work for gamestop, and it was definitely different. I do miss working there.

    We would always have tekken 5 on a ps2 that we would play with regulars and staff. Those were good times.

  • CptJaxxParrow

    I remember finding the Legend of Zelda Collectors disc for gamecube at a game crazy. I regret selling that to gamestop knowing how rare they are now

  • Boing26

    i DID work at game crazy it was MISERABLE. or at least the store i was in was, dumbass jock manager, and the district manager hovered making the employees follow his scripted conversations and upsell nonsense. i honestly thought it was gonna be fun, but it was pure hell.

  • bettycocker

    This brings back some memories! I worked at a Game Crazy for basically the entirety of the PS2/GCN/XB era as a mid-twentysomething and loved nearly every minute of it – especially the Halo 2 midnight release and the halcyon days of the Guitar Hero era.

    The store was in a decently affluent area, so clientele had disposable income and weren’t trying to haggle, scam, or dump stolen merch. The area was so nice that our theft loss was basically zero. The regulars would happily sign up for the MVP memberships because they were dropping so much on games that it would basically pay for itself in the same transaction. In fact, all of our numbers were decent enough that we never got hounded about pushing anything from the DM. The store was basically on autopilot and the manager was chill af. He never even drug tested us! Which was good, because we all smoked together after (and sometimes before) work. Even the neighborhood kids that would get dropped off for hours at a time were decently respectful and we rarely had to bounce them.

    Not all stores were like that one, though. When I moved cities, I could only get transfered to a location in a pretty rough area with a dick DM. I basically left as soon as I had something else lined up.

  • GoodDayTheJay

    I worked at Hollywood Video and Game Crazy for years, and let me tell you, it was exactly as awesome as you think it was. I was so sad they went out of business.

  • GoodDayTheJay

    Lotta people saying “I worked at GameStop, it was terrible, blah blah blah.” GameStop did not equal Game Crazy. Different beasts and working for Game Crazy and Hollywood Video were two of my favorite jobs ever, exactly for the reason OP pointed out. Talking about games and movies all day was so fun.

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