GameStop: We Can Stay Open During Lockdowns Because We're 'Essential Retail'
kotaku.com
kotaku.com
"You were instructed to keep the store open, but were unable to perform your job-required duties because you got arrested attempting to do so, therefore you are fired. Request to pay your legal fees is denied."
If you work at GameStop, call the local authorities, get a copy of the police report, go home and file for unemployment.
What's that? Is that a thing people have in US? I'm honestly curious, never heard of such a thing, outside of a context of mortage insurance which can cover you temporarily if you lose your job.
It was a smart acquisition by GS executives. Unfortunately, they weren't smart enough to manage the brand as well as they should have. The parent company should have inverted to become ThinkGeek immediately after the acquisition because it's pretty obvious to even layman that the retail market for video games is dead within a generation or so, while the market for pop-culture tchotchkes is evergreen.
Turning an already online platform for truly cool items, into a side counter in only a few core stores, just goes to show how truly clueless GS management really is.
Yeah, I'm bitter. Wife and I gifted each other lots of TG stuff over the years.
[1]: https://kotaku.com/we-are-all-scared-for-our-jobs-gamestop-e...
[2]: https://kotaku.com/sources-gamestop-changes-their-controvers...
I heard Tesla is going to produce ventilators?
I think the quote was something more like (from memory so meh) : "Going to produce ventilators if there are shortages."
specifically chloroquine
This is a malaria drug. Also, it can be fatal if not properly dosed.
It is especially problematic that Musk is promoting this, given that part of his reputation is that he gets his science right; he is bold, takes risks, but he at least has science/facts/truth/math on his side.
https://decrypt.co/22946/elon-musk-shares-coronavirus-cure-p...
Before you start spreading FUD, learn a thing or two about the topic.
but it is far from bullshit and is showing early promise in trials in China and Italy.
i.e.
https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/fkizd0/we_were_abl...
I'm for Musk skepticism and he started off complete on the wrong footing on this thing but if you don't know what you are talking about don't make claims like this
Musk is now saying that they well produce ventilators, although they have no design, no experience in medical devices, and a factory that makes cars, not ventilators...
[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a31748353/tesla-alameda-co...
[2] https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/12365584618249789...
He's also said they will only do so in the event of a shortage -- he has not said he'll be proactive and divert manufacturing resources to prevent any shortage.
Worth noting that SpaceX, not Tesla, would be the business making the ventilators, as they already make similar equipment for space travel.
He's not incorrect in the tweet you linked: both cpf and mortality are currently overstated due to lack of testing and asymptomatic cases.
He has plenty of other silly tweets such as: https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/12360294490421985...
Look at the growth charts on this page: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
About 10x more cases every 8 days. Sure, the medical care for the current number of critically ill people is OK for now, but can it handle 10x that in 8 days? 100x that in 16 days? Have you seen videos of hospital wards in Italy?
But I agree, hoarding TP is dumb.
https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-children-serious-ill...
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/03/childrens...
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/most-coronavirus-...
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/11/health/coronavirus-children-s...
Hasn't he always been overconfident in his opinions and often acts like those who disagree with him are wrong (and sometimes even bad), even those who arguably know better than him?
https://analyticsindiamag.com/the-many-failed-predictions-pr...
I think Musk is more often wrong than not, but a lot of people focus so much on when he's been right that they forget all the rest and form a false impression.
The virus isn't that likely to kill you that you should be personally afraid of catching it, but when enough people catch it, the healthcare system will break down. And then if you have a heart attack or a car accident, you won't be able to get care either.
Somehow people just seem to feel this is all contradictory in some way so they deny one part or another. To me it all seems quite consistent.
Also, these employees should be thankful they even have a job right now. Many retail / service industry jobs have laid off their staff.
How much does GameStop pay?
Several companies are doing this, it allows the worker to choose between reduced employment benefits from UE insurance at the benefit of less exposure to C19 or earning more money.
Most people I know that are making an hourly wage have chosen to be laid off if they had the option.
Yes, they should be thankful that they can't collect unemployment, and that they might get themselves or their loved ones killed.
The state of their business isn't a criteria right now to determine if they should be open.
I personally agree. It's a flu and it's way overhyped by the media and the left-wing crazies who just echo the sentiment and shame those who don't follow as religiously as them.
Also, this pandemic wouldn't be as big of an issue of the US government would acknowledge the need for better workers rights. Sick leave, better policies about vacation and days off, etc. But what does the Trump admin do? Here's 1000 bucks for your troubles.
EDIT: Talk about showing true colors: Someone leaked what's apparently an internal conference call between the company's execs and their store managers, where they're being instructed to keep everything open despite health concerns: https://twitter.com/CAMELOT331/status/1240743954246709265
Many companies will go out of business as a direct response to these closings. Millions of people will lose jobs. Before throwing out insults, consider that GameStop probably has to try and stay open, or they'll go extinct.
Considering that a retail employee that sells video games isn't exactly an in-demand profession, you're also looking at the livelihoods of 16,000 full-time and 23-45,000 part-time people. Corporations aren't just faceless bogeymen.
Let it die, I say.
There are many reasons why GameStop should finally die. Exposing their employees to the current danger in order to remain operational to continue selling games is just one more.
At the potential risk of human lives?
Even if we say that customers are coming in voluntarily, it isn't the executives at GameStop manning the counter at these stores; if it were, people would have less objection. Those staff are ordinary people like you or I.
I see no reason why a GameStop employee can't just quit or refuse to come to work if he/she fears getting infected.
You see no reason? I'll give you one:
In most jurisdictions, if your employer lays you off or closes their doors, you can apply for some kind of benefits, e.g. EI up here in Canada.
But if you quit your job on principle, you don't get benefits and have to live on whatever savings you've amassed working a retail job.
It seems you believe that everything should remain open, everyone should keep going to work, and hey, if you don't like it, quit your job and stay home.
That is not how a society gets through a pandemic, no way, no how. If you were in charge, millions of people would die. But they'd "Have their freedom to choose for themselves." So there's that.
I've seen a lot of "the economy will tank because consumers can't visit shops". I've seen a lot of friends in food & bev lose their jobs.
I haven't seen much in the way of hard numbers. Seems to me that a huge increase in worldwide deaths and a huge increase in sick time absences would be economically worse than lockdown.
In any case, as I mentioned before, the danger here is that the consequences are unknown. We really don't know what will happen, which in many ways is worse than a known danger like the virus itself. The complexity is rapidly spinning out of control and affecting trade, economics, other medical conditions, and virtually every job that isn't a remote programmer.
As far as numbers go, Cuomo just ordered that 75% of people stay home from work in NYC. If you google around, unemployment applications are growing exponentially. It seems likely that a pretty significant portion of the population will apply for it.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-19/cuomo-ord...
As a nation and collective of states, leaders are decisioning on events from a couple of weeks ago. Because we don't know the ground truth at the moment, we are working with stale information. Each pandemic period -- let's use OOM cases to define it quickly -- has different levels of response needed.
The lockdown needs to happen now, then we can have the conversation around our options. As we discuss options while things spiral, the inputs are out of date, which is very very dangerous in a quickly changing exponential chart.
No business has a right to do whatever it thinks it must to survive. Tobacco companies don't get to do whatever they think they must to survive.
If a restaurant is in trouble, it doesn't get to tell its employees to speed up service by not washing their hands, nor does it get to hire employees under the table for cash to avoid payroll taxes or minimum wage, nor does it get to serve slaughtered horse to save money on beef.
Companies do not have an inalienable right to existence. If they cannot make money while being good members of society, they must close or be forcibly closed.
Secondly, the risk of dying from the coronavirus from working at or going into a small video game shop is negligible. You are far more likely to get it at Walmart or a grocery store. Are you calling for the closure of these stores too?
Thirdly, you are painting GameStop as some faceless entity. People work there. These people probably rely on their income to survive.
Lots of people, if left to decide these matters for themselves, decide that the risks of their behaviour are negligible. That's why Spring Break is crowded.
But you aren't even framing this correctly. It is not just about the risk of a 20-something retail employee dying. It's also about the risk of them transmitting it to each other and to customers, who in turn transmit it to people who have a non-negligible risk of dying.
Get a grip.
This is not an abstract argument, we are watching thousands of people die from this, and we believe that community transmission comes from otherwise healthy people passing it around long before they have any symptoms at all, and those carriers need not die to cause the deaths of others.
> You think the risk is negligible. The rest of the world does not.
The catch here is that people are really short-sighted evolved primates. While shutting down the entire world will indeed stop the virus, it is already having an innumerable number of unpredictable effects like putting millions out of work, crashing the economy, diverting resources from other medical issues, to name a few.
The statistics are pretty unconvincing so far, to me personally, in order to justify a long-term shutdown.
> This is not an abstract argument, we are watching thousands of people die from this, and we believe that community transmission comes from otherwise healthy people passing it around long before they have any symptoms at all, and those carriers need not die to cause the deaths of others.
Millions die from obesity, car accidents, war, and the regular flu every year. Where's your outrage for that? Why are you not calling for the shutdown of McDonald's? The restriction of car use? These are vastly bigger issues that are actually controllable.
As I said above: the actions being taken now will have consequences which have only just begun.
Does this comparison actually make sense in your mind? Considering the cadre of medical professionals point blank asking us (repeatedly) to stop comparing this to the flu?
In my mind, the main reasons that for the coronavirus hysteria are media overreaction, especially social media, and the fact that this "source of death" comes as a fast-acting virus, rather than something long-term and abstract like obesity. The whole "slowly boiling a frog" metaphor is apt here.
Can you imagine any possible reason for why that might be?
That's my point.
Could I have an answer?
I mentioned it in another comment, but: the doctors are not the problem here. Of course doctors will recommend the best medical advice and I don't doubt the medical consensus. The issue is a broader one: what are the societal and economic consequences of total shutdown? Are these consequences better or worse than the estimated death count of the virus? Keep in mind that this includes death, too. Is there something we can do that attempts to minimize the negatives of both?
These are difficult questions and I don't pretend to have the answers. I'm simply noting that even suggesting an alternate path is shouted down.
Reading this thread, and several others and watching several other discourses, I do not see that to really be the case in whole. In part maybe, in whole? No.
Disagreements are being had sure about this or that element of this situation, but disagreements have great capacity to forment solutions whereas this 'taking your ball home' attitude of assuming dissent implicates snark and disagreements implicate being "shouted down" (especially when, as you've done earlier: presenting various whatabouts when there are people who are actively trying to understand this disease and bring about solutions are screaming "STOP THAT") is it self an alternative path I think many people prefer to avoid.
Good luck. Wash your hands.
Why are the statistics unconvincing? Where is your evidence?
A bad economy will hurt people. Millions dead will also hurt the economy, hurt people, and hurt our civilization for a long time.
Why do you think it's either the economy or a serious response to the virus? The economy is effed either way -- let's focus on preventing deaths now, then we can focus on money.
The actions not being taken now will have consequences which have only just begun.
That's a nice bit of mis-framing to accompany telling me to treat your ideas with more respect. The fact is, you are the one who agrees with the mob. Go to Florida. Enjoy Spring Break along with thousands of people who think the risk is negligible and are ignoring the actual researched science on epidemics and risk reduction.
The "mob" wants to go to work. The "mob" will line up elbow to elbow to get into bars that are open. The "mob" takes cruises. The "mob" squeezes into economy class on airplanes.
How about this for politeness?
PLEASE stop framing the world's response to a lethal global pandemic as some kind of panic that is not grounded in facts, expertise, or experience.
As I said before: decisions have consequences. Of course doctors will suggest the best medical solutions for medical problems. That is their job. But they aren't economists and they don't take into account bigger consequences of political actions. Long-term shut-down of the economy will result in more crime, more death, and lots of other bad unforeseen effects. Are these worse than the effects of the virus? I don't know, but it's certainly a conversation worth having.
It's not the doctors fault and I don't expect them to take this into account. What I do expect is the ability to have a rational conversation about the topic. Clearly, this is impossible in the current environment when people like you respond to any wrongthink with a personal attack.
Fine, suit yourself, here is my comment without the suggestion that you go to Florida:
---
Let me see if I get this right: You are describing the response that is backed by every epidemiologist, every doctor, every functioning government in the world, as a "mob?"
That's a nice bit of mis-framing to accompany telling me to treat your ideas with more respect. The fact is, you are the one who agrees with the mob.
The "mob" wants to go to work. The "mob" will line up elbow to elbow to get into bars that are open. The "mob" takes cruises. The "mob" squeezes into economy class on airplanes.
How about this for politeness?
PLEASE stop framing the world's response to a lethal global pandemic as some kind of panic that is not grounded in facts, expertise, or experience.
---
If you want to have a rational conversation, perhaps you should let go of suggesting that the response is that of a mob, as if the people who disagree with you are irrational and panicking.
Remember that you begun this discussion by bandying phrases like "witch hunt." And your tone has not become more rational and balanced. Ponder that when asking yourself why your ideas are not getting the respectful responses you believe they deserve.
If you want to begin again, my point at the top was that companies don't have a right to survival at any cost. That's what you suggested, and you have not spoken to it since.
Of course companies don't have a right to survival. I don't care about GameStop the company. I care about the people that work there and their livelihoods, many of which are minimum-wage retail workers. They can't easily get another job.
I chose to delay gratification in order to save other people's lives. Amazing, how things work when people behave like adults instead of toddlers who need their diapers changed.
Let that sink in if you ever revisit this thread.
p.s. No, we Canadians can't stop you from going to the store during a pandemic. But we can ask you to stay right where you are, and that's exactly what we did when we closed our border to non-essential traffic from the USA.
In stark contrast to “profits über alles”, which is perfectly A-OK. Here ya go, folks: if you want the voice of late-stage capitalism, it’s right there in print. The only thing missing is a nod to “job creators”.
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2020/03/18/toronto-employee...
Awful. You can just download Animal Crossing anyways...
TBH I don't quite understand the outlash against some business deciding to stay open. A GameStop doesn't take more than 1 or 2 people to run, especially right now, and transactions are pretty simple and inovlve minimal contact. And they have a point about selling products people may want during this time.
As far as I know, Walmart will still sell video games despite only being exempted because they sell food & essential supplies. It's probably more dangerous to have to go to a Walmart either food or video games compared to going to a GameStop given the # of people typically at Wallmart.
This might be a reasonable point, except that there's no reason to leave your house at all if the only thing you want to buy is a video game. (And of course, if you need food and video games, making an additional trip to Gamestop can only hurt compared to getting everything at Walmart.)
Frankly, this comes off as pathetic regardless, they can do what they want. But essential? I can’t download groceries, but name me a game platform that requires physical media.
This is factually incorrect. In the US, local athorities absolutely have the statutory authority to close nonessential businesses for the purpose of defending public health.
While of course I don't think GameStop really needs to be open. - I am more curious if people's attitudes will change in 2-4 weeks of self isolating. I think there's a certain excitement/anxiety to this at first especially among those where self isolating means working from home to semi-vaction. Eventually, I think a lot of people's commitment to self isolating/distancing will waver.
This is a numbers game. We want most stores closed to limit the number of people out and engaging with each other. There will be fuzzy edge cases such as large retailers like Walmart and Target being open and selling particular items, while the stores that specialize in those items are closed. That's fine. The goal is not some sort of retail fairness, but public health.
-------
Edit to reply to the comments below: A lot of good replies, thank you. I've largely been on the "doom and gloom" side of this COVID-19 debate, so I'm surprised by the other angrier replies, but here's my thinking:
- People that download games aren't going to GameStop anyway.
- As some comments pointed out, you can't download consoles. You also can't have anything shipped to you if you don't have a credit card.
- GameStop transactions don't require close personal contact (unlike e.g. tattoos or massages).
- GameStop must discourage congregation of groups in their stores. I imagine very low foot traffic.
- GameStop must provide staff with appropriate cleaning tools. If they can't, then they should not remain open.
- I do really like the idea to transform the store into a local delivery service, or to offer pick up only.
- I have no connection to GameStop nor have I been to one in over a decade.
And then other retailers like Target will remain open because they sell medicine and food — and physical video games.
There is no reason for GameStop to remain open.
it's absolutely not necessary for a physical store that sells games to stay open when you can download them or have them shipped, but it might be essential for people to have access to an indoor pastime they enjoy.
I do actually think entertainment is pretty important in a time like this, just to keep people sane in general, but also as a carrot to incentivize people to actually stay in their houses. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect them to wait for it to be delivered though.
You mean reckless.
> GameStop's essential items include webcams, microphones, mice, keyboard, monitors, chargers, audio equipment, and more.
There is no good reason to think that the social benefit of having a physical retail store open where customers are cheek-to-jowl with each other and with staff somehow outweighs the community transmission we will certainly experience.
Actually I think at this point there are more competitors in the digital space than physical...
In order to speed up this quarantine, we should ask for "herd immunity volunteers" who basically volunteer to get infected (healthy young adults only). They would go into their own quarantine until they are no longer infected in which case they can be released into society, and since they are now immune, may be suited for certain jobs that require contact with infected.
In the case of GameStop - mental health matters to people, and games are an important outlet especially if they live alone. The alternative is that they will violate guidance on gatherings. And GameStop also sells equipment you can use to work from home. I don’t think it’s just groceries or healthcare that should be allowed to operate. People who fear what’s coming next might want to shop camping/outdoors stores, or maybe they need to get their car fixed up if they need to leave, or whatever else. I understand the logic behind it, but I feel a blanket rule banning most businesses from operating isn’t the right move.
standard catch 22.
But then, this company is clearly on its way out. I'd be very suspicious at the moment that the execs are finding ways to funnel remaining funds to their golden parachutes before they declare bankruptcy.
And it listed the following:
Retail (e.g., retail centers and districts, shopping malls).[2]
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2020/03/18/toronto-employee...
Otherwise, I would argue that video games are necessary for the lockdown.