GameStop employees have enough to deal with in their day-to-day activities, from unruly customers to the threat of closures and restructuring as the parent company embarks on new, unsuccessful ventures and deals with the fallout from a volatile stock market. As Kotaku first reported, some of them have another unexpected – and potentially illegal – duty to contend with as well: minding other people’s children. Parents are leaving their kids unattended in GameStop stores with such regularity that one employee posted a request for help on the GameStop Reddit page, asking others for their advice on how to handle the issue.
“What do you guys do when kids randomly walk in while their parents are shopping elsewhere?” Reddit user CptPeebles wrote. “Or when parents just drop their kids off? Are we even ALLOWED to do anything?”
Responses ranged from telling the kids they needed a parent present to just letting them play with the demo systems and hoping for the best. Others joked that it was the ideal opportunity to sign up new members for GameStop’s Power Up Pro membership plan, since employees have a set number of sign-ups they’re supposed to reach each month.
“One time my DM was in my store, and a kid bought a Roblox mystery box,” CptPeebles wrote in response to another comment. “It was $6, and the kid only had $10 on him (I could see into his wallet from my perspective). He leaves the store and my DM asked me why I didn’t sell him a pro membership. 1: he had $10. 2) he’s 9.”
Humor aside, most commenters recognized how serious the problem could be, even if the parents don’t.
“If your kid gets taken, it’s in no way shape or form my fault,” one user wrote. “These parents are so irresponsible, what if I was a creep? They just don’t think things through. Don’t pawn them off on a 20-year-old retail worker.”
Compounding the issue is that GameStop reportedly has no policy in place for dealing with unattended children, so managers and team members just have to improvise every time it happens.
Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF
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