That was certainly interesting and in line with his other intelligence and rumors, not to mention common sense. Yep, the streaming was where the money was.
He sidled closer to her. “Really?”
“Oh, yeah. I mean, look around. No other customers are even in here. You said you were at other GameShacks this morning. Was there anybody else in those stores?”
“Come to think of it, no,” he said as if he had just thought of it instead of having measured his time in each to give himself better data about exactly how unoccupied they were.
“Quite honestly, the thing that sells best is the memorabilia. We received a box of five statuettes from a video game based on a twenty-year-old comic book, so we held an auction for them. That auction was the only reason this store was in the black last month, but I imagine it’s going to hemorrhage cash again this month without something like that.”
“Who thought of the auction?” Tristan asked her.
She shrugged. “I said it first, but anybody with half a brain should know to auction off collectibles like that. I thought we should put them up on eBay or at least stream the auction for national exposure because GameShack has streaming infrastructure, but we just held it in the store. Twenty people showed up and bid. One guy also bought an orange Xbox controller. That was it.”
Huh. Interesting. “Is it the management?” Tristan asked her.
Colleen shrugged. “It’s the business model. They should either redesign their business plan for the stores or just close them down and concentrate on the streaming service.”
Tristan loved how chatty this little Colleen was. The last time he’d met an employee this chatty, he’d made millions. “What do you think they should do with the stores?”
Colleen looked around the space like she was thinking, turning and giving Tristan an excellent view of her sumptuous figure. He could have stood there regarding her curvy little ass and thighs for another ten minutes or so, but she looked back up at him and Tristan snapped his eyes back to her gaze. Caught.
She raised one eyebrow at him and frowned with the other, clearly understanding that she’d caught him checking her out, and she said, “There’s just really no call for selling hard copies of games when everyone downloads them digitally. All those racks on that side of the store are just wasted space. I seriously don’t remember the last time we sold one, and most of the videogame publishers aren’t even burning CDs at all anymore. Those are all ancient.”
“Yes, excellent point,” he said, trying to make up for ogling her.
“As far as the consoles are concerned,” she continued, “we can’t compete with the big box retailers’ purchasing power, so our prices are all significantly higher than if you just went to Best Buy or ordered them online. I’d scrap the whole business model. I’d sell off the merchandise at a loss just to stop throwing good money after bad and do something entirely different with the storefronts, or maybe I’d just break the leases and walk away. A lot of them have pretty good real estate for some sort of service-oriented business.”
A door clanged in the rear of the store.
Colleen glanced toward the point-of-sale counter and swore very softly and creatively under her breath, which was as adorable as a hamster squeaking motherfucker, and then she glanced up to see whether Tristan had heard her.
And that’s why Tristan was laughing his butt off when her manager walked into the store.
The older guy shuffled past the retail counter, wearing plaid golf pants and a white, soft-collared golf shirt. He walked like he’d tripped and was stumbling forward while trying to catch himself, and he walked like that the whole length of the store as he stomped toward them. Five strands of white hair were combed all the way across his balding pink scalp. He yelled, “Colleen! Why aren’t those damn boxes unloaded?”
The perky little brunette called back at the manager, “I’ve been working on it all day. Sylvie didn’t come in this morning. I think that’s her letter of resignation on your desk.”
Employees quitting? That was another sign of an unhealthy business. Tristan pretended to look at a black box of something to disguise his eavesdropping.
The manager grumbled, “Another one of you guys quit? Goddamn, your generation is lazy. Nobody wants to work anymore. I said I wanted those damned boxes unloaded.”
Colleen gestured toward Tristan, who was flexing his fingers and repressing an odd urge to punch this guy he’d never met before. She said, “I’m with a customer, Mr. Miller.”
“You’ve been clocked in for six goddamned hours. Why aren’t the damned boxes unloaded?”
“Sylvie was supposed to be here with me, so I’ve been fielding the phone and the help-desk tech-support chat while I tried to get the unpacking done, too. I shelved eight of them.”
“Not good enough. That is absolutely not good enough. I don’t know what the hell you’ve been doing here all day.”
Tristan took a step back, repulsed by this sick excuse for a manager. He ought to be sacked.
Colleen’s shoulders rounded forward. “I’ve been working as hard as I can, and I’ll get those boxes unloaded at my first opportunity. I’ll stay after closing if I need to.”
The manager sneered, “Are you trying to hoodwink me for overtime? Payroll in this store is goddamn ridiculous.”
“No, no, I didn’t mean it like that. I’ll finish it off the clock,” she sighed.
Tristan scowled at the white-haired old man. “She will not finish it off the clock. It sounds like she’s been doing the work of two people here all day. You should be thanking her, not yelling at her like this.”
