Them’s Fightin’ Words, Apparent-Wii

Back in 2007, when I was in my early twenties, I worked for a large video game chain. This was shortly after the Nintendo Wii came out, and we were always sold out. Every morning, we would have a line of customers waiting around for our daily deliveries to see if we had any new Wiis coming in.

One evening, I was working a fairly slow shift, and these two kids came in and started chatting with my coworker and me. Both of them were probably around fourteen years old and came around frequently. One of the kids started talking about how great and wonderful the Nintendo Wii was.

Kid: “What do you think?”

Me: “It’s a good console, but I’m not a fan of the idea of motion controls. I don’t want to get one. I’m more a fan of the PlayStation.”

He started to lose his mind over this. Well, I should say that he pretended to lose his mind over this. I could tell that he wasn’t really upset that I didn’t like the Wii and that he just wanted to mess with me.

Kid: “Say the Wii is the greatest! Say there’s no other, better console!”

To be honest, it was getting to be a bit much. I just stood my ground and continued to say that the Wii was not something that I liked.

The kid started getting really frustrated because I would not say what he wanted me to say. At that point, I think he was starting to get upset for real instead of just messing with me. He then pulled out the manager card.

Kid: “I know the district manager! If you don’t say that the Wii is the best console out there, I’m going to report you!”

Anyone who works in retail has probably heard that line before, so I brushed it off and kept my position. The kid and his friend eventually stomped off, and I thought that was the end of it. I was wrong.

This kid actually knew the district manager. He ended up going to [District Manager] and came up with some lie about how I was extremely rude and an overall jerk to him. [District Manager] immediately wrote me up. She did not talk to my store manager or [Coworker] who was there that night before putting in the paperwork.

After writing me up, [District Manager] called [Store Manager] to go over the write-up. [Store Manager] was shocked. She immediately defended me saying that there was no way I would treat a customer that way. At that point, [District Manager] realized that she may have been a little rash in her decision to write me up and asked [Store Manager] to investigate the event.

[Coworker] and I arrived that afternoon and sat down with [Store Manager]. She told me that I had been written up because I was rude to some kid. I told her my side of the story, and [Coworker] told her what he’d seen, as well.

[Store Manager] went back to [District Manager] and told my side of the story as well as my coworker’s version. [District Manager] ended up going back to the kid and figured out that he had lied to her.

The next time I had to work, I got a face-to-face visit from [District Manager].

District Manager: “I want to apologize to you for writing you up without even looking into the event in question. But I cannot undo the write-up; once the paperwork goes through, it cannot be undone.”

I’ve always wondered if she could have reversed the write-up but said that she couldn’t in order to save her own skin.

As for the kid, he was forced to give me an apology. [Store Manager] let me decide whether he would be banned from the store for a while. I was even given the option to permanently ban him, but I didn’t want him bitter over a stupid mistake. I ended up making the ban for something like three months. I never did see that kid after he got banned, even after the ban had been lifted. I kind of wonder if he was too embarrassed to show up while I worked.

Nowadays, I actually prefer Nintendo over Playstation, but I am still not that big of a fan of the Wii.