GameStop fires manager after $5,000 PS5 robbery

He wasn’t even working when it happened

GameStop may be the internet’s favorite meme stock, but working there is seemingly getting worse and worse. Following the theft of $5,000 worth of PS5 consoles from a store in Easton, Pennsylvania, the company fired the store’s manager for undisclosed reasons. He had worked at GameStop for 13 years and wasn’t even on duty during the robbery, which was executed by two men who threatened the lone employee in the store to make him stand down.

Posing as customers and asking to buy a PS5, they made the employee open the storage room where the consoles are kept, following him in and then threatening him. One of the robbers then unloaded a bunch of consoles while his accomplice kept watch over the employee, who was locked into the storage room afterwards, according to the police as well as what is supposedly footage from surveillance cameras recording the incident, which landed on the net.

One and a half weeks after the event, GameStop suddenly fired the manager responsible for the store, who former colleagues say was the top performer in the entire district and was devoted to the company. Out of solidarity with him, most of the store’s other employees also quit.

Other former GameStop workers speculate that the firing might have to do with regulations that were violated during the robbery. Turns out that the thieves did not check out the consoles at the register. How that is anyone’s fault but the criminals’ is a mystery, which GameStop apparently did not want to comment on, according to Kotaku.

Ex-employees also say that the robbery was made much easier by the fact that GameStop has been cutting costs everywhere, since having more than one person present during a shift would act as a much greater deterrent against such acts.

GameStop has indeed laid off employees continuously in recent times, closing many stores and posting weak quarterly sales numbers regularly as it struggles to adapt to a time in which video games are sold in a digital manner more and more.