While I was at work today the phone rang, as it regularly does. After all, I work in a video game sales and repair store — people are always calling wondering what we have, how much a service costs, or just wanting some advice on something. It’s a fun job, for the most part, and one I’m actually incredibly thankful to have, given how unique it is.
Still, it has its problems and, like many jobs, in this case the problem is most often simply the people. Of course I must stress it’s not everyone — far from it, many people whom I interact with day in, day out, are awesome and some have become good friends. It’s the other portion of the clientele that just drives me up the wall.
I had an experience with one of these types of people today. Let me set the stage — right now trade-ins on gaming hardware and software are down. People are keeping stuff, and anything that’s ready to sell tends to go quickly. We get calls constantly from people asking if we have a PS4 or Xbox One in, and the answer stays “no, we don’t.” They often ask “well when are you going to get some in” to which I have to explain we are a used game store — someone will have to sell one to us — their reaction seems like this is their first time ever being exposed to this concept, which confuses me — when I was 10 I knew what a used game store was and how it worked; how can these people who are now in their 20’s and 30’s not at least have a clue on this?
One of those calls came in today, and seemed like it would be fine. I answered, they asked if we had any systems available. I told him what we had, just a few older systems which, honestly, I expected him to get excited about since it seemed like he was ready to buy anything that may have caught his eye, rather than hunting for a specific system — he did ask just what we had available in general.
No, instead of any excitement or even an “oh, okay, thank you” He replied with 3 words and then hung up.
“What the fuck?” *click*
That’s it. With the feel of trying to use sandpaper to wipe your ass, he ended the conversation in a reaction that would be fitting if I told him “we ain’t got shit, dumbass” rather than my ever-present friendly tone which came as a response to his.
The profanity obviously doesn’t bother me — he could have said anything else in a more friendly way and I’d have empathized with him: “Fuck, that’s all ya’ll got?” or “Oh shit that’s it?” Anything would have worked, but no — he chose the child’s route to deal with frustration at not being able to purchase a system he may have wanted.
If this was an isolated thing it wouldn’t phase me, but you have to understand that something of this nature happens constantly in this job — maybe not this exact event, but this reaction from people — full grown adults behaving like spoiled children.
For example, people being upset when they drop off a repair that it won’t be ready later that day when we have easily 50+ man hours of repairs waiting in the back in the form of at least 20 or 30 drop offs in the past two weeks.
Or, for another repair example, those who break their HDMI port and have it fixed only to days later come back demanding warranty repair because they broke it again — one time, I shit you not, the person in question who made such a demand brought the system in with the HDMI cable still plugged in andwrapped around the system in the exact way that is why all these HDMI ports keep getting broken — this being something I wrote about a few years ago that no one online paid attention to (but hey, keep going to that fucking PlayStation Classic article, since that matters… I’ll never get the gaming scene online, but that’s another story .)
They demand we fix it for free when it wasn’t a problem with our repair job — far from it, the work we do is stronger than what Sony originally put on the damned things. No, they broke it again by immediately doing what we told them they shouldn’t do, and yet somehow we’re at fault, because they can’t take care of this $300 piece of gaming hardware they purchase and can’t live without.
That’s another thing, not being able to live, it seems, without the system. They can’t wait patiently for it to be repaired, oh no, within days, after you told them at drop off it would be easily a week or more before we even had a chance to look at it and that “we would call them” they begin to call the store constantly asking for updates that have never happened, sometimes growing aggressively impatient.
I get it, you want to be playing your PlayStation. So do the 40 people who brought theirs in in the weeks before you dropped yours off and have been waiting patiently for us to get to theirs as we were working on the ones brought in before they dropped theirs off!
First come first served. It’s only fair and right and while quick repairs will get pushed ahead where they can be done more quickly, longer repairs have to wait their turn — it’s not fair for us to do your HDMI port that you dropped off today when we have 7 ahead of you. They aren’t “quick fixes” either, not when done right and that’s presuming what the system is brought in for is even the only thing wrong with it — about 1/4th of the time there is something else critically wrong with the system that we need to repair or, at the very least, inquire about, that they don’t tell us about at drop off, thus slowing things down even more as we play phone tag with them to eventually get answers on what they want us to do and if they are willing to pay for the additional fix.
This leads to the “surprise” factor. It happens all the time, in a common case like this: A system is in for “overheating” and we figure it’s just a blow out since, you know, the PlayStation 4 designs are terrible and clog with dust trivially. We open it up and, instead of typical dust the system is clogged with the filthiest cigarette smoke you can imagine and the fan has seized up due to the tar buildup! Suddenly it’s no longer a quick blowout, it’s now a total teardown with them needing a new fan! That means, guess what? More phone tag, and the hell of having to tear down the system. I have major allergies to most anything, and another co-worker who does repairs with me has Asthma; We don’t need to be exposed to that shit, and yet here we are, breathing in filth to fix your PlayStation that you love so much but can’t even try to take care of… that you have to have right now, because you have nothing else going on in your adult life that you can do or enjoy and, because we have to put in hours of work to get it back to functioning, once we can even get to it since we have a nice number of systems ahead of yours it’s our fault you have to wait and can’t “play your game.”
We aren’t the ones who broke it — you are. Live with it. If you care for things, as the instruction manuals say (not a damn person actually turns their PS4 off before they take it somewhere… even though the damn thing constantly tells you to do exactly that every time you start it up after failing to do so) or common sense would suggest you would have it to enjoy. You wouldn’t need to pay more money on top of what you already spent on the system to get it fixed by professionals. You wouldn’t be waiting on it to be able to be picked up because it would never have needed to be dropped off to begin with!
Again, I must stress, this is not everyone I deal with, but it’s a non-trivial number of people. Sure, things do break and it’s no ones fault — I’ve seen perfectly cared for systems just up and die for no discernible reason. It happens, but when full grown adults (yes, I have to keep stressing it) behave like children, unable to go a few weeks without their game system which they are only without because they couldn’t take care of it to begin with, well, it gets old.
To not understand these things.. caring for things you own, or, with the “what the fuck example” not having enough tact or grace to at least not be an asshole like that (seriously, no one knows how to use phones, but that’s another rant) and to treat those of us you rely on for help as if we’re a problem… that’s just not right.
You should be grateful that there are those of us out there who go through the effort, even if it is part of a business proper, to repair your broken gaming hardware — to offer the best refurbished used gaming hardware and software available to you where we can get it — to give the best value for trade ins and the best prices on items we sell, so that you keep having a reason to come back, and to do the aforementioned repair jobs at prices equal to or lower than competition who won’t even do half as good a job… well, I’m not trying to say we’re anything special but one should consider just what all is beyond our control and how much we do manage to do for you, and everyone.
You aren’t the center of the universe. You will live without your PlayStation. If you love games so much, why don’t you have an older system to play? If you’re a mature adult, why would you get so mad if a store is out of systems when every other store you’ve called is as well, and we’re in the middle of both tax season, coming off another Stimulus, and we’re a year into a global Pandemic? You would do well to learn some patience and consider that you, most often, only have yourself to blame for the situation.
Just think for a moment. Take care of what you supposedly love. Be considerate of the efforts of others, and try to learn something about how things work, be it the game systems or the game stores you rely on, when you interact with the things and people that make up the gaming hobby.
This has been a long overdue rant. Thank you for reading. Again, I’m not explicitly complaining — I’m just expressing the state of things as it is experienced at times so that those of you who know nothing of this may gain some perspective.
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