Quixote Wednesday Update! Shooting Peter In The Head To Pay Paul

Let’s zoom back for more of a nation focus on the Gamestop front, shall we?

This week’s lesson planner comes from a District Manager out of the south who’s still with the company. Now odds are that you’re not that familiar with company history, but Steve Morgan used to be the VP of Electronics Boutique. He stayed on with Gamestop until the spring of 2008, and the company explanation for his departure had some spin or other to do with him ‘pursuing a CEO position elsewhere’ because he couldn’t obtain one internally. With any large, faceless, soulless conglomerate, we’re never going to know the official reason behind his actual departure (or if he quit or got fired for that matter), but the District Manager who contacted me shed a bit more light on what really happened and the motives behind his leaving the company.

While Gamestop is more of a cult-like compound in terms of internal staff, EB Games always had a sales-based staff. Steve Morgan was the living embodiment of this. He was a hard-nosed, results-based leader who demanded a return on the bottom line. Once upon a time, this was important in the retail world. In many cases, driving profitability and improving profits and losses per stores was much more important than lobotomizing store managers and cooking stats to make your company seem more successful even though your yearly numbers were better because you opened a thousand more stores overseas instead of improving your store sales per each location. Call him kooky, but Steve Morgan had a knack for getting every store to improve their prior year goals or else. He was respected, revered and despised, but he was an effective VP.

Flash forward to 2006 when the merger went down and by fall of the same year, commissions for subscription sales and warranties were removed entirely. Any incentive at the store level was null and void. Steve Morgan stayed on and continued to tout the new Gamestop vision. Here’s where things get interesting…

After ‘black Tuesday’ (the top secret company term for the day in 2007 when scores of EB District Managers were fired for any reason that Gamestop could come up with to reduce adequate salaries for top-performers), Gamestop continued to implement a master plan to brush mass firings under the carpet and maintain their public standpoint of a happy merger versus a hostile buyout with mass firings. If you look at the big picture, mass firings were happening, but they were being phased on over the course of a three year period.

By January of 2008, Steve Morgan (grasping at straws to keep the right people in place at the store level) sent a directive out to all of the District Managers in the company. He had a turnover goal. In order to keep the company headed in the right direction, he ordered all District Managers to adhere to firing a MAXIMUM of one Store Manager for calendar year 2008. The funny thing is, by January of 2008, one particular Southern Region had already hit their goal of one manager per district.

A store district (in Gamestop terms) consists of 8-16 stores. The public stance in PR releases and merger terms withheld the vision of maintaining quality people and retaining all hard-working managers no matter what side they were on before the buyout. We all know how that turned out. In three years, more Electronics Boutique staffers have lost their jobs than Gamestop drones. After terminating legions of EB Dms in 2007, Gamestop started axing Store Managers. I’m not sure who’s plan this was, but it certainly wasn’t Steve Morgan’s. Shortly after his directive (by the First Business Quarter of 2008), Steve Morgan had ‘left the company’ to ‘pursue a CEO position’. What a crock of shit.

On the local front, Lisa (my former DM in one of the two Buffalo markets) terminated no less than four store managers in 2008 and they were all with either company for more than five years. That exceeded Steve Morgan’s goal by quite a bit. Yearly review increases are graded in some part by a Turnover ratio from the Regional level all the way down to a lowly Store Manager. That category is going to hurt like a son of a bitch come April or May when the whores who still managed to kiss enough ass to keep their jobs get their sit-down meetings with the higher ups.

If you look at the big picture, the Gamestop merger was never a merger. After borrowing a few hundred million dollars from their parent company (Barnes and Noble), they implemented the same game plan they’d used in previous buyouts. Check out Wikipedia for previous ‘mergers’. Gamestop pretended that they were joining two company visions when in fact they were saving money on forced retirements and multiple terminations by phasing them in and reducing yearly salaries by keeping original cult members in place and promoting staffers who were too stupid to realize just how underpaid they were compared to the supervisors they were replacing. In the span of three years, an Electronics Boutique employee is outnumbered by Gamestop moonies by three to one.

Steve Morgan made a desperate attempt to keep sales-driven Managers in place at the store level and he was either forced out of the company or terminated like most of the people on that end of the merger. Why pay people for results when you can promote some kid who doesn’t know any better into a store at $26,500 a year, open a few thousand new stores and pretend that the company is making more money overall (during stockholder conference calls) even though they’re losing money per store location due to incompetent leadership and poor direction?

This tactic makes no sense. It didn’t make any sense to Steve Morgan, it makes no sense to people with a head for business strategy and it looks downright asinine to me. Then again, though, I wouldn’t be stupid enough to take out a five year $150 million dollar loan from my parent company while buying up new stores and buying out additional European companies (while assuming their debts), either. I wonder who will be left from the EB side by 2011 when the loan money is due for one of the lowest paying Fortune 500 companies on the list?

 

Monday Big Words Update! Complete MOV/Tom Event Calendar (for now) For 2/09-5/09!

Tom's Atomic Poetry Kegger!

 

 

Oof!,

I’m still pretty beat, but I’m scaling back and taking it easy before the big MOV horse and pony show starts rolling again on Saturday, February 7^th at FYE and Don’s Atomic Comics! Early response for Tom’s Atomic Kegger at Don’s has been through the roof and it looks like we’re going to have a real hit on our hands!

My time is severely compromised today, so I’ll make this short and sweet. Grab the new issue of Night Life this week for the newest Big Words I Know By Heart print column. I’m pretty sure that (in light of recent events) it was a review of ‘Fun Home’ by Allison Bechdel, but I can’t view the original email I sent out with my January block of columns.

Also, I’ve been toiling away on the next two Big Words radio shows and they will definitely be up by the end of this week. Stay tuned to the site for details. And if you’re not a Myspace person, I posted a boatload of publicity photos up on Facebook for your enjoyment. And now, the Official Monsters Of Verse Calendar (so far!) for the next three months! There are a lot of other venues and appearances in the works, so this WILL be subject to change. The dates below are set in stone though, so start marking your calendars and JR Finlayson, myself and a lot of talented writer/poets will see you out on the road! Let the games begin! Talk to you all on Wednesday when the Quixote Update hits,

Tom Waters

 

Monsters Of Verse/Breathing Room Bookings Winter/Spring 09

Saturday, February 7^th, 1-4 p.m., FYE, Transit, Signing (Monsters Of Verse w/3^rd Monster Artist/Writer Kyle Kaczmarczyk)

Saturday, February 7^th, 6 p.m.-?, Don’s Atomic Comics!, Tom’s Atomic Poetry Kegger w/Monsters of Verse! Free beer for anyone with a poetry book by JR Finlayson or Tom Waters, 20% store discounts on comics and collectibles for everyone who brings a girl. Special Guest Comic Artist/Writer Kyle Kaczmarczyk (The Red Eye, Zombie Works Publishing).

Sunday, February 8^th, 2-4 p.m., Talking Leaves Elmwood, Signing (Monsters Of Verse w/3^rd rotating Monster TBD)

Friday, February 13^th, 7 p.m., Borders Books & Music, Hamburg, Signing (Monsters Of Verse w/3^rd poet Susan Marie)

Wednesday, February 25^th, 7 p.m., Big Words Studio Date with Guest Alexis Amore (adult film star); co-hosts Intentionally Bald Mike and Alie

Wednesday, March 4^th, Perry Nicholas reading, CFI 7 p.m. (attending, not reading)

Thursday, March 12^th, 7 p.m., Think Twice Radio (Five Minute Video Series taping, Tom only)

Saturday, March 14^th, 6:30 P.M., Chow Chocolat (Monsters Of Verse)

Wednesday, March 25^th, 7 p.m.,, Big Words Studio Date with Guest Sara Jay (adult film star); co-hosts Intentionally Bald Mike and Alie

Wednesday, April 1^st, 8 p.m., ‘April Foolfest 2!’, Desiderio’s on Broadway, Lancaster (Tom only with musical guests to be determined)

Saturday, April 25^th, Caz Coffee Café, 7-9 p.m., Reading (Monsters Of Verse w/3^rd rotating poet TBD)

Wednesday, May 6^th, 7 pm, Center For Inquiry (Monsters Of Verse w/3^rd poet Christina Wos Donnelly)

(Finn gone from February 9^th-19^th)

 

Essential Dykes To Look Out For (by Allison Bechdel); Oh, and here’s your Quixote Wednesday Update!

Some information is too valuable to dilute by adding other tidbits that have washed up on my doorstep where Gamestop is concerned, so I’m going to drop this bombshell all by itself because it deserves the whole showcase for this particular Wednesday. You’ve read some pretty explosive exposes and communiqués over the last three months regarding the evil, soulless conglomerate that saw fit to fire me and hundreds (if not thousands) of store managers who didn’t deserve to lose their jobs, but this honestly takes the cake over every single update I’ve done thus far combined. And the beauty of this update? It came from an outlandishly good source. I’m sure certain readers (from an internal company standpoint) would love to know if this was inside or outside information. Whelp, I’m not going to tell you that.

And before we get rolling, let me give the company an honest chance at an end to these updates. I’m only going to offer my terms once, so print this out at Human Resources or your legal department and feel free to contact me when you realize that you have no other recourse. Here are my demands:

1.) Stop fighting my unemployment benefits. I’ve made an outlandish amount of money for your company and the least you can do (the VERY least) is pay me what’s owed to me. I realize that we’ve had our, how should I say, differences in the last three months, but my vitriolic nature would have been quelled a long time ago had you given in and given me the benefits I’ve paid into week in and week out for the six years that I’ve worked with EB. The Department Of Labor hearing is coming up soon and unless you want this to become a larger fiasco for your three Buffalo markets, it’s in your best interests to back down and pay up. Once New York State hears that I signed off on a stock option grant/nondisclosure agreement LESS THAN a year ago and puts two and two together with my wrongful termination, your company is fucked as far as a leg to stand on in this case. Give up the ghost and do the right thing. You may forget how to take care of your employees early and often, but trust me, this can get a hell of a lot worse for your company if you don’t admit defeat when you’ve already been whipped a few dozen times. Admit defeat. Tuck your tails between your legs, turn your horns down, take your football and go home.

2.) Terminate Buffalo DM Lisa for spending her first two years with the company firing successful male managers and replacing them with young women and friends of the family. She is operating her district on a double standard based on gender and it’s making the entire company look bad every single day that she continues to sully her employment as a leader (or what passes for one). Just because she’s stopped firing men in the last month and started promoting males for the first time (instead of ignoring tenure over gender, which is what she’s done on multiple store levels for well over twenty months now) doesn’t mean that any number of departmental and government agencies won’t look at the big picture and slap the company with a massive, crippling fine. I am a journalist. Information comes to me and I share it with all of my readers through multiple media outlets. What Lisa has done to well over a dozen men who have since left the company (voluntarily and involuntarily) is wrong, and even a black-hearted group of money-hungry stock-whores such as yourselves should be able to see that by now. Give Lisa her walking papers. As God is my witness, for every week that she continues to collect a paycheck, I am going to keep writing these updates and keep exposing your corporation for their wide string of hypocrisies, greed-motivated business tactics and their complete ineptitude as far as taking care of the people who have built them into the successful conglomerate they are today. Terminate Lisa’s employment, pay me the benefits due to me, and these Wednesday updates go away.

Those are my only two conditions. Don’t view this as a threat, view it as a mini-manifesto. Longtime readers and fans know that I’m like a pitbull when I attack. I will latch on to an issue, a newspaper or an organization and I won’t let up until the other party involved is bruised, defeated and ashamed. Make up some copies for the three districts in Buffalo, Xerox a company directive at corporate, have a conference call with your legal team and come to the conclusion that my fan base reached years before I went to work for Electronics Boutique in October of 2002:

Tom ALWAYS wins. Plain and simple.

And now, your regularly scheduled Quixote Wednesday Update. Ooh, but this is good! Drum roll, please….

At the Thruway store, one of the fifteen assistant managers from the neighboring mall location (most stores are only allowed one, but the flagship mall location is allowed four or five or six since Kim is Lisa’s family pal and was hired into the company under those qualifications) was transferred over. Two of my remaining employees (one has left now after the holiday season and won‘t be shopping at the company ever again) were more than ready to take the position. They were both passed up because Todd (the new assistant) has obviously sold his soul and has a direct pipeline to Lisa. Colleen (the manager at my old store) can’t stand Todd. Last week, we discussed the fact that Todd is doing next to nothing because he realizes now that Lisa isn’t going to fire any males in light of her impending wrongful gender termination actions on a national level. All the men in Lisa’s district are bulletproof now, and Lisa even fired one of her own on a technicality (Charla) to try and refute two years of clipping guys because well, they were guys. I gathered some very interesting intel last week about Todd that’s going to piss off not only the three local store districts, but the entire goddamn company once word spreads. And you may not know this, but the internet is a great way to disseminate information and fact. Let me wind up for the pitch on this one with some cold, hard facts about the company since the merger:

-$10 an hour is the glass ceiling for an assistant manager with a great deal of experience and an award-winning resume when he comes to work for the company. It is a massive exception and by far nowhere near the standard. Generally, assistants start around $8 an hour.

-For the last fiscal year or so, Store Managers for Gamestop generally start their salaried (40 hours plus) positions with the company at $29,500 a year.

Now let’s bring it all back home to Todd. I have it on extremely good authority (from a source close to Todd who heard it from the man himself) that he makes THIS amount as an assistant manager:

-$15 an hour! That’s a fact. This works out to be about $30,000 a year.

Wow, huh? So knowing that you’re not going to get fired, not doing your job, and aggravating the manager you transferred over to is worth that much? I’m not sure what he’s doing for Lisa that he got transferred to another store for that amount, but obviously, he must be working harder than over half of the store managers in all three Buffalo Districts. That is truly astonishing. Boy, I hope that no one on the store management level or under in the Buffalo market somehow stumbles upon this information, huh? That could truly be disastrous for the company from a turnover standpoint (their reviews and bonuses are graded in some small part based on turnover), moral, and staffing in general. Damn.

I made a decent bit more than that (which is one of the sole reasons why I was wrongfully terminated so that the corporation could save money on their bottom line), but I wonder (knowing what I know) how other male STORE managers with years of experience might take this crippling news that a completely inept young gentleman who’s bringing nothing to the store he works for is making a great deal more than them after years of service and drone-like loyalty. Wow. I am so glad that I don’t work for Gamestop anymore. It’s a shame that most of the people working in the Buffalo/Rochester/Syracuse market are so blind and spineless that they don’t have the balls or the brains to find a real job when reality hit’s the fan, eh?

This all makes me wonder: what wrong move will Lisa make next? What delightful pieces of information haven’t I passed along to you, the consumer, because this week and last week were too good to crowd? Dozens of sources inform me that the company is tracking this web site from a local and national level, so I guess I’ll let you rotten fuckers do the guessing for me. Earn your $26,500 a year yourselves in the mean time and do some of the detective work on your own. While it’s obvious that Todd can’t do his job for the massive hourly amount that he’s making (which is head and shoulders above what most salaried managers make), maybe you can all do your jobs and find out what connection Todd has with Lisa that makes him unscrupulous enough to deserve a pay scale so far out of the ball park that it approaches the surreal.

Why beat a dead horse, though?   I’ll let this crippling blow to morale sink in for the next two or three days and let you all digest it and decide if you still want to work for a multinational beast with such an obvious penchant for staffing middle-management positions with people who have zero skill sets for doing so, paying the morality-free with more money than the hard-workers, or just employing the acolytes in favor of people who actually bring a profit in by beating their own profit and loss reports. It doesn’t make sense to me, but then again, I don’t have to rationalize or explain why my company is failing so badly to the American stockholder. Suck on that for a week, you bastards. Scroll up, read my demands again, and think about how far you want to take this and how much damage you’re willing to incur for my benefits and one flagrantly incompetent District Manager. The sooner you come to your senses, the sooner this crusade ends. Have a little conference call about it, talk to your lawyers, and then take action and spread the word. I’ve got ears and eyes all over the place and trust me, it’ll get back to me. As for you on the side of decent morality as well as going to sleep at night with a clear conscience, if you’re looking for someone to confess to regarding Gamestop, drop a dime or ten directly via email at:

  

 bigwordsmailbag@yahoo.com

 

Monday Big Words Update: Hitting The Wall…

Monday Big Words Update! Hitting The Wall…

After three months of pushing the envelope and burning the candle at both ends, I’m exhausted. It’s hitting home that Jeff Finlayson and I will be promoting like rabid maniacs for the next three months starting in February, so I’m actually forcing myself to relax a bit this week with the free time I have.

I spent most of last week working on setting up more engagements for the Monsters Of Verse and securing an ample amount of copies for Breathing Room I and II (so that I‘m not running out during events). I should have a calendar out to all of you (as well as up online) by the end of this week. Our readings and appearances were a lot of fun from October through December, but expect bigger and better for the first half of this year. After Jeff and I walk away from MOV in May, I’ll start working on the beginning engagements for Slapstick & Superego, which I’m coordinating the pre-production on with a small team.

I also recorded two shows with my brother David, who (as you may or may not know) is an extremely talented musician in his own right. Earlier in the week, JR Finlayson had an appearance at Clarence High School for Ms. Foster’s Poetry Club on Tuesday and brought the Edirol in tow for recording purposes. I’d like to have all three shows up online by week’s end. I’ll send an update out once they are up and online.

Slapstick has been in the works for almost four years now, and now that the book is done on my end (writing it), I’m going to leave the rest of the work details up to the professionals that are in place at Doubt It Publishing in-house. Since Breathing Room was (and continues to be) such a success, there’s no reason why I won’t continue to reinforce the name brand and branch out with my publishing house to find new and even more professional means to publish, produce and distribute locally and nationally. I’m really, really proud of the book, and I’m sure that the team I went with will bring their own talents into the fold successfully and within a timely manner. Batting for the home team we have:

Victoria Robinson-layout/interior graphic design

Ian Chrystal-cover art/exterior graphic design

Alycia Ripley-introduction

If my career (as far as the books go) is any indicator, I learn from my mistakes. My personal life is a bird of another color completely. Alycia did a phenomenal job on the intro and all signs point to incredible for Ian and Vicky so far. Between the actual book, the artwork and the layout, this essay collection is going to look light years better than the 11^th hour beauty of If They Can’t Take A Joke. I set the wheels in motion for this book two or three months ago, so the book should be done well before I have a date or a promotional appearance for it.

This is going to be the first book I’ve ever written and released that’s entirely made up of rants and essays (emphasis on rants). In many respects, this is the first real book that I’ve written, even though I’ve got seven other books under my belt. If They Can’t Take A Joke has turned into something of a calling card and Breathing Room has gone a long ways in showing the Buffalo Lit scene that I’m not just some erratic force of comedy trying to push his ideals on anyone who will listen. All signs point to a helluva great junket for Slapstick when it releases early this summer. My target window for promoting the book will be June through October or November. After that, I’ll be taking the entire holiday rock block off and concentrating on the scheduled release of the Buffalo Anthology Project. After that, Merry Prankster will be released.

It’s going to be a busy year and a half, not to mention the fact that I’ve got a radio show, the web sites, the book reviews and the five billion other things that corrode what little free time I’ve had since about May of last year. At this point in the game, I’d rather be busy and creative than lackadaisical and blocked. On to other matters…

The new issue of Night Life is out today with ’The Department Of Goofing Off’, my rant about the total ineptitude of the Department Of Labor. Even though everyone saw it here first, ‘Whatever Doesn’t Kill Me Is Going To Destroy You’ (the structured, two part Gamestop lambast) turned a lot of eyebrows in the pages of Night Life as well, and there’s not a goddamned thing Lisa (my former DM) or Gamestop can do about it. Getting back to the unemployment benefits owed to me, though: As of today (after filing for my weekly benefits), it has been:

3 MONTHS

-without a penny from the state of New York or Gamestop Inc. for my unemployment benefits.

I can’t BELIEVE that either company (and the Department Of Labor is a business, so don’t even try it) has gone this long without paying me for 19 years and 6 years of hard work, respectively. My buddy Curt (the one who got wrongfully terminated by Lisa and Gamestop the week before me) emailed last week to let me know that Gamestop is denying him his benefits now as well.

It would be really nice if anyone in a position of beaurocratic power would get off their ass and get something done. It really would. Anyone. I guess I have to do everything myself and take the bull by the horns with a cattle prod, don’t I?

As for Quixote Wednesdays, the weekly rants against Gamestop and anyone else who gets in the crosshairs are gathering a lot of mileage and momentum. I’ve got some OUTLANDISHLY good information I’ll be rolling out on the official web site first (and then four or five or six other sites later that day), so tune back in in less than 72 hours!

Keep coming back,

Tom Waters

Quixote Wednesday Update: Davey & The Gamestop Goliath

Welly well well!

When it rains, it pours, doesn’t it? I’ve got some GREAT intel for all of you to enjoy, dispense and disseminate this week and there’s so much of it, I’m saving some of it for next Wednesday. Perk up your ears because this is really, really good.

Ooh, but this is GOLD! Ha ha!

Anyway, for those of you joining the war (already in progress) against Gamestop Inc., some great battles have been validated and won in the last two weeks. Even though Lisa (my former boss) told me directly after she fired me for a technicality that Gamestop wouldn’t contest my unemployment benefits, I’ve gone four (count ‘em) FOUR months without unemployment benefits. For someone who’s worked non-stop since the age of 14, this is a crock of shit. Gamestop (surprise surprise) DID in fact contest my benefits alleging ‘gross misconduct’, which is one of those big gray area catch-all reasons for termination. Not filling out one report properly is now apparently grounds for being terminated under the nom de plume of ‘gross misconduct’. If they want gross misconduct post wrongful termination, they’re certainly going to get it.

Long story short, I’m contesting my right to unemployment. Not many people know this either, but when you apply for (and actually GET) unemployment benefits, said money comes out of your previous employer’s pockets. This is one of the reasons why I’ve been fighting tooth and nail to get it (aside from the fact that I’ve been paying into the system for so long). The Department Of Labor sent me a notice letting me know that a hearing date will be set soon, so trust me when I saw that when I get a firm date, ALL of you are invited to show up and support the cause. This isn’t just about yours truly, I’m fighting this battle for every man who’s been fired by a man-hating, misbehaving’ supervisor who’s taken it upon themselves to abuse what little power they have by firing men and replacing them with unqualified women with no sales skills. The fact that the entire District she’s been neglecting for the last two years has been dive-bombing into the toilet sales-wise should be proof positive of that. On to bigger fish, though. Did I mention fish after talking about men-haters? Hmph. Odd, that….

Let’s go local and talk about my old location in the Thruway Plaza in Cheektowaga, NY. In the time since I’ve left, no less than four out of the original eight or nine staffers that I was in charge of have quit or left the company. Brian (who followed me from the previous videogame company to Gamestop thanks in large part to his loyalty to my leadership) was taken off of the schedule and couldn’t be bothered to show up and find out what was going on because he refused to work for anyone else. Anthony was accused of theft because he had a supervisor ring out a standard defective return exchange, which is something that any random customer or employee is more than welcome to do. Colleen (the supposed store manager for the time being who was dropped into an award-winning location for more money than I made simply because of her gender) told the staff that Loss Prevention would be coming in to investigate the return/exchange after the holidays. Knowing these rotten pricks for over two years, this sounded to me like they were going to work the parties involved for the holidays (when they needed them the most) and then terminate their employment for unjust reasons when they were no longer crucial to driving daily business.

Lo and behold, the LP witch-hunt was called off surreptitiously. Lisa has backed herself into a corner and with a Turnover ranking that directly affects the Store Manager’s bonus, the District Manager’s bonus, and the Regional’s (Kiyeol) bonus, they’ve stepped on their own dicks for the fiscal year ending 2008 and the way things are going, well into 2009. Anthony was so incensed by the allegations that he put in his two week’s notice, writing that he didn’t appreciate being accused of theft by an employer that he put good time in with driving business. I can see why Anthony would be upset.

And then there’s Jill. Jill had worked at the store before I took it over and showed the location how they could be so successful that we’d beat the other 120 locations at Madden two years in a row. Jill was a hard worker. She was loyal. And then (as is so typical for the way Lisa runs the district and neglects things), she got passed up for a promotion after I was wrongfully terminated. Instead of promoting people already in place at the store, she dropped Todd into the hot seat as Assistant Manager. After promoting a backstabbing, pot-smoking racist (Lewis) into a new store out in Amherst, Lisa transferred Todd out from under Kim, her personal friend of the family whom she awarded a job to within the company as a store manager at one of the two largest stores in the District. The biggest mall in Buffalo. It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to crack the case on that one.

Jill put her notice in the day before Christmas and Colleen actually thought the sealed envelope was a Christmas card. Ha! Ha ha ha. Ain’t life grand? On to the pay dirt of the week, though….

Todd (the new assistant manager at my old store) was a waste of space before he got promoted. An awful figurehead who drove both staffs crazy. Since his promotion, it’s come to his attention that he won’t get fired. Why? We’ll get to that momentarily.

Colleen (the girl who was all too happy to get a higher yearly review score compared to mine even though I had better sales results and who was more than fine with taken my old store for a few thousand dollars more due to her gender) thought she was on easy street when she transferred to a higher volume location. When she was originally promoted to her first location as store manager, I literally had to fight to get her promoted because the DM at the time didn’t think she was capable. So I got her promoted. If you ask her former DM, he’ll tell you the same thing. Most people might feel indebted after such an act. Instead of backing me up, Colleen took my old store knowing full well how Lisa stuck it to me with no grounds for a real termination and this was a week after Curtis (our mutual mentor) was clipped on his seven year anniversary with the company. Moving on….

Colleen can’t stand Todd. She’s been trying to get rid of him since he was promoted and transferred into the store. The main problem? She’s not allowed to. And there’s the rub.

The District I was wrongfully terminated from is under DIRECT orders NOT to fire any males in supervisory positions. Why, you ask? Why? Because Lisa is trying like hell to shift her modus operandi in light of this impending discrimination charge based on gender. After two years of terminating males and replacing them with less qualified females or personal friends, she (and to a larger extent, Gamestop) honestly think that they’ll disprove the past by letting unqualified men keep their jobs for the time being. So instead of terminating Lisa, this company (in their vast and varied incompetence as a newly merged axis of evil) has told her not to fire men. Ha! Ha ha ha.

The problem is, Todd is well aware of this. Todd is going out of his way not to do anything at work and actually makes more work for his boss (Colleen) and the people who have to put up with him during his shifts. If you knew you weren’t going to get fired for any reason simply because you were born with a penis, wouldn’t you? I guess the girls in the District need to start looking through the help wanted section, eh? Charla (who got clipped a few months ago from the University location) firmly believes that she was let go to validate the new regime policy. She was fired as a woman in a sad attempt to reverse two years of firing men for the wrong reasons. Lisa is so lost as a DM at this point that it would take Amelia Earhardt to find any sense of decency or competence as a supervisor in her.

What a week. I wish I could tell you about a Southern District Manager’s information obtained this week. Or the employee discounts that the Eastern Hills Mall location has been administering to people who aren’t actually employees. I don’t want to bore you to tears, though. A company that runs under double standards? Hell yes. A District that is divebombing in terms of results? You betcha. A woman who didn’t deserve the position she was promoted into from outside the company by an incompetent Regional who was born into a position of power? Check and mate. I’m going to win this fucking Department Of Labor case and I’d like for all of you to have a front row seat at the proceedings on my behalf. I’ll have more phenomenal scoop for all of you next Wednesday. With the rumors flying directly at me for the last week, you can guarantee that. Have a wonderful week and here’s your stock report,

Tom Waters

1/10/09 $28.66 (+3.08) (+20.64)

1/12/09 $25.47 (-.66) (-2.53%)

1/13/09 $24.64 (-.83) (-3.26%)

Monday Big Words Update: Putting People In Their Place (one person at a time)

 

I saw two movies in theaters this summer: The Dark Knight and The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button. Since I’m busy writing books and making money from same, I can’t be bothered to see every film that comes out every week that it appears. Solid money would bet that both of movies that I paid money to see in a crowd setting will win one or multiple Oscars, so this is once again testament to the fact that I have good taste and that I don’t just wander aimlessly into a stadium setting to get away from my house. Dark Knight was the best superhero movie ever made and Heath will get some sort of pity Oscar due wholly to the fact that he’s dead now, but Button will garner more Oscars because it was released intentionally later in the year (Oscar has a short term memory) and it plays more Oscar cards than Dark Knight. Not to mention the fact that Fincher is long overdue.

And while it sunk my career with Buffalo Rising (and sunk Buffalo Rising as a credible publication, period), Batman: Gotham Knight was the best animated film I’ve seen this year. It’s got Batman, it comes in a metal case, and once again, it bridges the gap between Batman Begins and Dark Knight. What more do you need?

I’m not going to waste any more space blathering on about comic books or comic book movies on a Monday Update, so we’ll move on here since I’m capable of writing about more than simply reviewing what I have time to watch and since I’d rather create than rent and watch movies….

Since persons who are too cowardly to come at me head on have been launching slings and arrows (who read this site on a regular basis), the previous three paragraphs were for him. Let’s continue with this send-up and then we’ll get on to regular business….

Site hits. If you want to talk site hits, let’s talk real man numbers, shall we? I don’t have any major publications posting us on their home pages in every single township because they don’t have any more original contributors who aren’t on the union staff payroll, eh? Big Words is one man, one site, and a whole SHIT-LOAD of site hits. Cook all the stats you want, but here are some raw numbers (top site hit days among the average, which is around 75 unique site hits per day) you can take to the BANK for fiscal year 2008:

Week 31 2008: 604 Unique Hits Sold

Week 43 2008: 527 Unique Hits Sold

Week 50 2008: 763 Unique Hits Sold

Week 1 2009: 767 Unique Hits Sold

Lowest INDIVIDUAL site hits for Fiscal Year 2008 in a given week (drum roll, please):

Week 27 2008: 230 Views

Month Stats and Highs:

April, 2008: 1,924 Unique Hits

July, 2008: 1,981 Unique Hits

October, 2008: 1,723 Unique Hits

December, 2008: 2,163 Unique Hits

Harumph, I say. This is not even mentioning the 150,000 site hits that Think Twice Radio hits every month that I’ve had a show there that hasn’t been a holiday month. If all else fails and I develop an inferiority/self esteem complex, though, I suppose I could ask one of the five or six publications I write for to nominate me as their blogger of the year, though, but then again, I don’t have to battle those sort of esteem issues due largely to the fact that I have readers who support me and spend money!

Even without a flagship newspaper backing me and ordering me to write a few times a month as an added responsibility to my low-paying sales job, I still manage to draw a crowd that kicks the ass off of most online viewerships. Tumbleweeds are most definitely NOT rolling by this site and in addition to Gamestop corporate, most Gamestop employees and the majority of the informed Buffalo inernet public, I bring my own crowd to the party. Nintendo used to tilt stats in their favor and play around with pie charts to make it look like they weren’t getting killed during the Gamecube years, so bandy you bald ego all over your one tiny site all you want, pal. I’ve got five or six sites, one radio show and eight books by the middle of this year, so keep it up. Go seek therapy, because you don’t want to pick a fight with me.

As for Gamestop, I’ve got so much great intel for this Wednesday that they should probably batten the hatches in Grapevine Texas (the corporate headquarters) two days from now, drop their socks and grab the soap. Seriously, when it rains, it pours, and I’ve got enough scoop to last us all two weeks, so I may bleed some local info this week and corporate info the following week. Keep that scandalous freedom of information pouring in, company drones and otherwise! Feel free to email me with additional crippling stock information at:

bigwordsmailbag@yahoo.com

There are some loose ends I wanted to catch up on (since I have an ACTUAL audience instead of some random people who click on a company mandated banner and then click out of the box to find something interesting), but we’ll save them for another day. A few Monday bullet points:

-Calendar dates are lining up for the Monsters Of Verse and Breathing Room bookings for the next three months. I’ll have a full calendar for you by the end of this month. JR Finlayson will be holding a symposium for the Clarence High School Poetry Club TOMORROW and that episode should be up on Think Twice’s site by the end of the week.

-’Whatever Doesn’t Kill Me Is Going To Destroy You Part II (better known as the Gamestop skewering essay) is running all week for free in Night Life magazine. Scoop it up on stands everywhere in the greater Buffalo/Toronto area with over 90,000 copies currently in distribution every single week!

-’Pussy Magnet’ (an essay about our two cats) is up online this month at Acidlogic.com. Search it and click on the article on the home page. I’m having some issues listing direct links on this site so until I figure it out, you’ll have to flex your intraweb chops by typing phrases like Acidlogic.com in your browser window and figuring it out by yourself. If you’re too stupid to figure that out, odds are that you’re illiterate and you should walk away from your computer before you hurt yourself….

-In all seriousness, take two minutes and REGISTER at BuffaloMe.com! For a community/networking/blogging site in the Buffalo area, there is no equal. It’s quick, it’s user friendly, you can post songs, photos, blogs, meet new people in your area and register with the greatest of ease not to mention the fact that it’s the fastest growing LOCAL site in Buffalo! What else do you need? Support local! Myspace is all well and good, but do yourself a favor and pop over onto BuffaloMe.com. Great site, great people, zero censorship.

That’s all I’ve got for today. There are a lot of irons in the fire so check back daily throughout the week. Plenty of ground to cover. I should have another radio show by week’s end, too, but why spoil all the surprises? Quixote Wednesday I’ll be dropping an honest to god bombshell or ten directly in Gamestop’s direction. Tune in in two days and start loading your sawed-offs now,

Tom Waters

Wednesday Quixote Update: Cracks In The Seams…

Hrmmm…..

Not much to report this week on any front. The Department Of Labor (in their infinite incompetence) have rejected two weeks worth of unemployment insurance out of the 15 weeks and counting that I still haven’t seen a dime for because I’ve worked four days. Even though I filled out the online forms properly, the information got discombobulated on their end and I haven’t received one goddamned call regarding anything. I’m wondering when the hearing date will be called regarding Tom Waters vs. Gamestop. A few officials who are friends of mine have recommended that I start taking legal counsel from a private sector more seriously regarding Gamestop, my benefits, and the entire rigamarole. When I have more time (and ambition as far as these things are concerned), I’ll be doing just that.

There are two courses of action in this situation. Pro bono lawyers don’t really exist if you look at the post-victory payout versus up front costs or departmentally appointed mediators, but that doesn’t matter. Justice is more important to me (for myself and the gaggle of other managers, assistants and keyholders that Gamestop has wronged) than a dime of what’s owed to me from unemployment insurance out of Gamestop’s pockets. So if I don’t get some satisfaction (or the courtesy of a phone call) by the end of this month, I’ll be looking into contacting the right government officials over the heads of the clowns I’ve been dealing with (far, FAR over) or I’ll be polling the local legal pool to see who wants the case (or, if it’s a class action situation, nationally) the most.

As far as Lisa’s (my former District Manger)‘s job being gone, consider that like a slow cancer. I made a prediction a while back based on some paperwork that a certain agency sent me and I’m sure it’s reached corporate hands by now. Gamestop (being the spineless, money grubbing jellyfishes that they are) are most likely grooming a replacement before they fire Lisa (the same way that Starbucks, her previous employer did when they fired her for the same shenanigans) or they’re waiting until the end of the fiscal year to clip her stupid ass. Either way, her job is toast and I’m the melted honey butter on top of it. Ha…ha…ha.

And a shout goes out to Jill for putting in her two week’s notice and joining the ranks of my disintegrating former staff. Every manager dreams that a store will disintegrate after they’re gone and in most cases, this doesn’t happen. I’ve lost count of how many staffers have quit, put in notice or just not showed up to work in the three months since I’ve left, but to Jill and the rest of the old team that I could trust, thanks for making that dream come true. I’m sure Lisa and Colleen (who was more than happy to take my position for a few thousand more after being a friend and colleague for years) thought that taking me out of the picture wouldn’t make a difference to their bottom line. This is where the Gamestop mentality fails time and again. Great sales aren’t about pie charts and corporate catch phrases. Successful stores are about the people who run them and the team that they inspire. It’s too late for that store and, in all likelihood, too late for Gamestop.

I’ll keep this update brief. Thanks for throwing in the towel, Jill. You’re better than that job, anyway. Let the lemmings go down with the ship without you because at this point, whoever’s left is either too stupid or too lazy to find a decent job where they’re respected elsewhere. I haven’t had much time to check the stock, but it’s up…slightly.  Sort of like the strap-on that Lisa uses on her life partner.

 

Talk to you all soon,

Tom Waters

Monday Big Words Update (severely tardy to the party): Fincher & an avalanche of PORN!

Yesterday was severely busy and the rest of this week isn’t looking too hot, either, so I apologize for not dropping the Monday update as scheduled.

You may have noticed that December was not my best month for Gusto Club Watch interviews. Rest assured that there are 3 finished reviews on three different bars and they should start popping in any week now.

The new issue of Night Life hits this week with part 1 of ‘Whatever Doesn’t Kill Me Is Going To Destroy You’, the Gamestop assault that you all saw right here back in November. I figured that a good majority of Night Life readers who don’t have internet access shouldn’t be left in the lurch, so we’d bring them into the loop too.

As for David Fincher, I jumped back into my bio piece with both feet this weekend and started putting some hard research into the back end of Benjamin Button along with all new relevant reviews, interviews and biographical information that the new promotional junket has to offer. I continue to be fascinated with the director, and while I can’t make any promises as to when the piece will be finished, all I can say is that it will be done when it’s done. The bio articles are the only creative writing projects that I don’t rush, and with 11 completed pages done and another 9 pages of categorized notes tabbed by personal info, movie information in chronological order and a quotes section, the article is going to be well over 30 pages. At the rate I’m going, this could be a book by itself, but I’m not going to turn a blind eye to all the new info from Fincher’s latest masterpiece, which is earmarked to be an Oscar dandy in a few month’s time.

Moving on, you can thank Intentionally Bald Mike for the next two or three Big Words Radio Hour in-studio shows, because I’ve got NO LESS than two brand name adult film stars slated for phone interviews. I’d rather not give their names up yet, but trust me, these girls are gonna be GREAT! I’m ironing out the details on a third, but I’m pretty pleased with the first two and if it weren’t for Intentionally Bald Mike’s $50 bet, I wouldn’t have put so much effort into making contacts in that industry again.

As for other radio shows, I’m taking the week off. I’ll be focusing what free time I have on setting up calendar dates from February through May for Breathing Room promotions as well as Monsters Of Verse appearances. I’m also making some headway on two ArtVoice features at the same time, so I’ll be clocking in on those particular details this week, too.

That’s all the time I have for today. I’ll pop in for a Quixote Wednesday update on time for your regularly scheduled broadcast. Take care, webslingers,

Tom Waters

Big Words One Man Mobile Unit Episode 27 (at long last): Suckerpunch!

Yup,

 

    Much like the Kevin McCarthy two-banger, Suckerpunch was kind enough to record two separate hours (one interview hour, one concert hour) weeks ago from our Lancaster grotto.  And in the same respect, it took me about three weeks to get the episodes up online.  This band was absolutely incredible, and they were unlike any other musical act I’ve had on so far in that they were hardcore with some bite!  If you like rock with some teeth (i.e. Metallica, Marilyn Manson, and Disturbed), then you are absolutely going to LOVE these two shows!  Join Suckerpunch, co-host Alie (Desiderio’s) and myself for two solid hours of boot-stomping, head-banging, Wild Turkey-swilling radio gold!  Here’s the official synopsis:

 

Big Words One Man Mobile Unit Episode 27: A Suckerpunch To The Nuts! (pt.I of II)
   Tom makes the grave error of a) inviting Buffalo Music Award winning hard rock band Suckerpunch into his home and his heart, b) letting co-host Alie (Desiderio’s) bartend with only Wild Turkey as a hard liquor and c) trying to host a cohesive interview show throughout. Total bedlam ensues as Tom, Alie and the band gear up for a ‘parter of two’ that will rock your f-ing socks off!

    The boys were a bit difficult to herd in for a group session interview wise, but that was part of the fun.  A big thanks goes out to the entire band for lugging about half a million dollars worth of equipment into my home for the full metal experience, Alie for her top notch bartending and co-hosting skills, Phil from Macaroon’s for helping to put me in touch with the boys, and the rest of my apartment building for not calling the cops and hauling us off while Suckerpunch obliterated every eardrum within a five mile radius.  Truly a landmark show.  Listen for yourselves over at:

 

http://www.thinktwiceradio.com/tom-waters/tom-waters.html

Quixote Wednesdays (A Few Minutes Into Thursday, 2009): Read It And Weep, Gamestop!

With last week’s holiday decathlon (and the bankrupt notion of peace on earth etc.), I decided to let things slide with Gamestop since they had enough to keep them busy what with the declining holiday traffic they’ve been enjoying all year long as well as the pressures of working a six day week (except for Colleen, who was apparently allowed to take a personal day on Christmas Eve, since Store Managers don‘t really need to be around for one of the biggest days of the year). Before I expound too much, let’s take a look at the recent GME stock activity at the beginning of the post rather than the end of the post compliments of thestreet.com:

12/22/08 $23.14 (-1.46) (-5.94%)

12/23/08 $22.18 (-.96) (-4.15%)

12/29/09 $21.95 (-1.19) (-5.14%)

12/30/08 $22.14 (+.19) (+.87%)

YEAR TO DATE: -64.66%!!!!!

That year to date number is CRUSHING considering that they’ve opened so many new locations and taking into consideration that they bought an entire French videogame company and assumed their debt as part of the buyout. Now I may not be an expert on business strategy, or even profits and losses, but it doesn’t make sense to me to keep scooping up new acquisitions and opening new stores when you’re getting your ass kicked all over the stock market.

And here’s another talking point that I haven’t gotten around to: A close pal pointed out to me that Gamestock’s stockholder reports (the same stocks I got screwed out of conveniently three months after I signed off on them) may be a bit skewed. They keep proclaiming that they’re making more money on the whole as a company, but if you take into account the fact that they’re making more money because they keep opening new stores, odds are that they’re losing money on the whole. I don’t know who appointed the spendaholics who keep rampaging across a dying retail terrain buying locations up like an 8 year old in the first few laps of Monopoly, but this is bound to catch up with them.

On the local front, reports tell me that Lewis (the brown noser who got his own store for costing me my job during my honeymoon) is doing horribly at his new store. The location apparently isn’t selling much on the border of Clarence and Amherst, and if you can’t blow through product this time of year, you obviously don’t know jack and/or shit about retail. Yet another great promotional decision in a long line of stupid ideas from my previous District Manager Lisa.

As far as the rest of the region, I got some fascinating scoop about the new neighboring District Manager (promoted into his own District, which flies in the face of every company policy in place for the last twenty years), who previously had a store out in the Orchard Park/Hamburg area. One of my buddies ran into a high school student who used to work for him and this student let the dime drop that the newly promoted DM’s teenage daughter is a total slut. I guess this bald jackass was too busy getting other people fired over the years to notice that he was neglecting one (if not all) of his three kids. I hope your new promotion pays well, because you may have to fund a teen pregnancy, baldy!

And it must have been something I said, but apparently, Gamestop is not happy with me. While a few of my peers have already received unemployment insurance for being terminated under ridiculous circumstances, my benefits have been denied under the heading of ‘Misconduct’. That’s a nice little grab bag with wide reaching implications, isn’t it? Since when did having a penis constitute misconduct, I wonder? I’m not done with this battle by a long shot. 2009 will hark the starting bell to Round 2 against these stupid bastards. I’ll see your soulless, gelatinous asses in court when I contest the ruling. Again, if you thought this would destroy my world, then you never knew me as an employee or a human being in the first place.

No matter what sort of circus this hearing may turn out to be, I honestly can’t see a mediator favoring a corporation with a local bent for replacing their consistently successful male managers with newly minted young women who coincidentally just started with the company during Lisa’s reign of terror. Filling one report out improperly after six years with the company turning no less than four problem stores around (with a handful of prestigious sales awards on my shelf for trouncing the other 120 stores in my District, mind you) should not be grounds for immediate termination with any company. I’m curious to see who shows up for that shit-show, but rest assured, I’ll be giving each and every one of you an invite for the festivities so that you can grab a front row seat and watch the ballgame unfold in person. The wheels of justice may be slow, but the Department Of Labor can’t be that incompetent. I still trust in the basic good of our nation and its agencies, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed and implementing contingency plans in the mean time.

In closing, I’d like to wish all of you who have followed these Wednesday communiqués a wonderful and prosperous New Year. If you didn’t keep encouraging these blogs, I would have stopped writing them a long time ago. Fortunately, you can’t get enough of them and I love writing them. Like many parting employees past, present and future have told me, ’Keep up the good work.’ I’m not the only one the company has screwed over locally or nationally, so keep those positive emails rolling and if you know something I don’t (whether you want anonymity or fleeting celebrity), feel free to drop me a line anytime at:

bigwordsmailbag@yahoo.com