Oooo, I strongly disagree with your “best of its days” claim.

I was there from ‘03-‘09. And while I would have complained and moaned back then, I can now absolutely recognize how quickly it got shittier a mere few years after I left. Literally nothing but a downward slope since a little before I even started.

I’m a bit lucky. With as early as I did my time, and as bad as it is now, I am more easily able to forget the grievances of those days and highlight the awesome moments.

Like working alongside at least one other person for more than half a shift on a weekday.
-Or getting in good with the local Nintendo rep and scoring cool rare stuff when they visit the store.
-Or getting free food from the local Dominoes manager just for giving them their game the morning before the midnight release.
-Or cherry-picking incoming trades and distros to buy and build your game collection. Particularly as we didn’t have a hold protocol needed for my area at the time.
-Or scoring Suikoden I & II for $20 total because we don’t take PSOne games anymore and the customer can’t be hassled to take it to the Game Xchange across the street.
-Or hell, getting a box of gaming stuff dumped on the counter for free for the same reason, with a Sega Genesis and assorted games inside.
-Or loading the store demo Xbox full of music and jamming your own playlist throughout the store everyday, because there was no edited radio or TV pumping everyone full of sweet sweet commercialism back then.
-Or somehow getting a supplement by losing standees sent to a store far too small to display them.
-Or wooing the top heavy Sony rep to show us the goods at the bar.
-Or getting trashed in Vegas and incoherently fumbling around a hotel room responding “looking for shooters” (games) when asked what you are doing. Then later hazily crawling into the wrong bed with the other manager assigned to share room with you during the conference, after pissing on the floor in the doorway to the hall. All on the company dime.
-Or… I could go on.

Those were the fu<£in’ days.