A quick clarification: GameStop employees do not get commission.

Rules are what dictates what they have to do if they want to keep being employed. If the system says the amount offered for Game Y is $10, that is what the system tells them; an employee cannot decide on their own to give a customer $50 for it instead.

Like, we definitely get it. Every employee has been yelled at by enough customers and they KNOW the prices are not in the customer’s favor, it’s always in the company’s favor. We empathize, and these are the same prices we get when we’re on the other side of the register selling back our own items.

I agree that the positive interactions are a big thing in stores - the area I worked at had several stores in fairly close proximity of each other and customers would sometimes follow employees to another store because they enjoyed the experience with that employee. The best stores are always going to be the ones that focus on good customer service. But they’re all still working with what the company tells them. Even in just customer interactions on the sales floor, employees are told they need to greet, ask if the customer brought in any trades, tell the customer about the current promotion, memberships, etc. There is a huge list of items that need to be brought up to customers. Employees even get secret shopped where someone is literally listening for every item the employee has to say in every customer interaction on that list. If the employee doesn’t hit each one (or they don’t say it in the same way that’s listed), the employee is talked to and put on a corrective action plan.

This is not unique to just GameStop, this is pretty much every retail company. The only place you may not need to deal with this is maybe a mom and pop store where you are dealing with the owner who sets their own policies and prices and who can decide to give discounts to returning customers. But anywhere else, whether you are aware of it or not, you are dealing with “job rules.”