GameStop already made one good call during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, with the company deciding to cancel all midnight launch events at their stores for some time. Various AAA and other releases have been impacted by this policy shift, but there are still some major issues. According to internal memos and testimony from anonymous employees, the GameStop corporate bureaucracy has made some major oversights that could endanger customers and staff.
Retailers and other businesses across the globe have been closed or opted to close in response to quarantine measures to prevent further spread of the malicious virus in 2020. This has had a major negative effect on the global economy in a variety of areas. The US federal government OK’d trillions of dollars in stimulus to counter this negative effect, and the few retailers which remain open have reported a weird trend. GameStop is in that latter category. COVID-19 and GameStop has caused a strange and potentially lethal bit of oversight.
The company issued a statement that said they had formed an internal task force to deal with COVID-19 and GameStop, and have begun providing stores with disinfectant. A message on the GameStop website says that stores have also been given a variety of policy directives to disinfect stores and reduce the potential for infections surfaces.
Employees are a little less than nonplussed by these plans. “We’ve had the best sales days we’ve seen in months, so of course corporate wants us to stay open,” says one Redditor. Going into further detail, employees at some stores say that they’ve gotten none of the necessary supplies like disinfectant. “The stores are a literal petri dish of high touch surfaces and many stores haven’t received any kind of sanitizer,” says an anonymous GameStop employee.
Also, some employees say that the management is making it hard to take time off, posing other risks of infection. “I asked to use my PTO because my mom has 2 pre-existing conditions and I was told I was selfish and I would not be getting it.”
