Thursday 10/29 - Sonic Kid THE RETURN

Weird stuff seems to gravitate towards our store whenever I punch in. Today was no exception.

1. We had this kid call and immediately spout "how much can I get for sonicthissonicthatsonictheothersonicagainsonicfourteensonicfiftysonicmeetsmariosoniccriesatsegasgrave?" (He named off 9 games, 7 of which were sonic games). The employee who answered simply said "what? uh...one sec...one at a time", and being the good guy he is, took the time to give it all to the kid, who couldn't have been much older than eight.

Five minutes later the kid called again, this time on my pickup and said "do you have nppaworldchampionshippaintball2002forps2 and how much?" "uh...one second...".

Apparently the kid spaced it and forgot or lost what he wrote down, so he called again about ten minutes after that, this time passing the phone off to his friend or sibling who repeated "how much can I get for sonicthissonicthatsonictheothersonicagainsonicfourteensonicfiftysonicmeetsmariosoniccriesatsegasgrave?" Again, this cool employee went through and did it all again. Honestly I would have told him to come in the store.


The kid said he would be in shortly to trade in for the game. Instead he called in at 8 and asked what time we close, always a bad omen. Sure enough, the kid showed up five minutes to close with 9 games looking to trade. I am so happy they were in good condition, especially the game he bought.


2. This guy was insane. He came in and asked if we had used PS3 controllers. We were out and I told him so, so he asked what we had new. I pointed him to Sony's controllers, and the only third party controller we still carried. He asked me what I know about them. I told him they were twenty five dollars cheaper, but felt flimsy and uncomfortable, and that they were pretty unreliable (we have 2/3 come back for breaking within a day or two). He asked to see one and immediately started opening the box! He asked what our return policy was and I told him if he opened it he bought it, and that we have a 7 day return policy on new items if they are unopened or defective. "Well what if I just don't like it?" "Sales final other than those conditions" Meanwhile, he is juggling this thing in his hands, all the packaging everywhere. He tries to pack it up and instead tosses it in front of the register. He pays and stands there for a moment staring down this controller before leaving. I left a note on his account. "this guy is insane...-RQ"



3. We had someone call looking for Borderlands on the 360. I told him that we hadn't received any more shipments yet and were sold out. He answered with "I'll kill that fucking freak." "Wait..what? who?" "The freak who bought my Borderlands!" "No need to kill anybody...want me to wishlist one so we will call you when we get a copy in?" "Rather kill that guy..." and he hung up. I thought I should call the police...but I tend to get calls like this more often than I should...

4. For whatever reason, probably the fact that we keep our 360 well insulated and abused by customers, Forza 3 absolutely kills our Xbox. The Xbox always locks up after a few turns, sometimes before the race, at the start screen, whatever. The fan spins up, it smells like plastic is melting, and the whole thing either locks up, shuts down, or the screen goes black and the poor controller vibrates until the customer is shaking like an epileptic in an earthquake. It is bad enough that our employees take bets on how many corners a customer will drive before the xbox kills itself. I put a post-it note on the monitor for the demo that says "FORZA 3 TRACK RECORD! 5 Corners!" We had three customers try a couple times each to beat it. The xbox always won.


5. This last one a lot of people might think cute. I had some ten year old boys come in, one of them in a little dress shirt, tie, and slacks. He held a resume in his hands. I couldn't help but grin, the whole thing was pretty comical. He asked how old he had to be to work here, and how many hours per shift we got to play games, perks, etc. I explained that he had to be 18, and that we didn't usually get to play games at all. He looked like I just kicked him in the stomach so I asked if I could see his resume and keep it for our records when he was old enough. He gave me this sour look and said "I'm going to try Gamestop first." He and his little friends sat in the store for another hour, playing demos and asking how to do everything from pause to reverse...oh that was horrible...one of them tried racing in Forza 3, he succeeded in crushing his gorgeous Audi R8 into the wall and proceeded to try and ram his way through it...I heard the whine of the poor car for fifteen minutes straight "WREEEEEE EEEE EEE EEE WWHHRREEEEEEE" I thought they were finally going to leave after this, but got to relive the poor car's demise since he figured out how to restart the race... "WREEEEEE"