More like Game-Reluctantly-Stop...

"I still haven't recovered
from how scathing it was!"

-this stock photo person

Well, it looks like I shamed them into it. Huh? Who? Why GameStop. You might recall that last week I wrote a scathing indictment of the company's reckless insistence that used video games and Monster Energy drinks constituted essential goods and services and that they were therefore not required to shut down during this pandemic. Well, now they've relented and the only conclusion I can draw is that it was because I took them to task. You're welcome. Of course increasingly stringent health department orders from state and local officials as well as the universal condemnation on social media probably didn't hurt.

They're simply not paid enough to come
in contact with customers. No one is.

The company has announced that they are cutting back to just fulfilling online orders and offering a service they're calling a "contactless delivery service" which I guess is like curbside service but without customer/clerk contact which...I mean, I don't know about you, but all customer/clerk interactions should be contactless right?  Anyway, they're also offering two weeks of paid leave to employees who might not otherwise have vacation time to help bridge the gap between shelter in place and normalcy, whenever that is.

Pictured: a typical GameStop customer
getting his face all over the demo unit.

And that's cool. Retail businesses that rely on foot traffic, even chains, need to survive this, so I get why they're trying to operate in an at least reduced capacity throughout this crisis. But they don't get a cookie. I mean that metaphorically. And literally I suppose, as there's no cookie-awarding body that hands out baked goods to responsible corporations. My point is that it shouldn't have taken this long for the company to-only reluctantly-agree that their hourly employees are entitled to not risk their lives and/or heavy fines for a crappy job at GameStop.

Between the hands-on in-store demo's crawling with germs on a good, non-pandemic day to the parents who drop off their kids like the store is a daycare, it should have been an easy move-a no brainer, if you will, to close the doors to the public. It's like, how many kids have to get eaten by Jaws before that idiot Mayor closes the beach?

Again, I mean, that metaphorically, although for real, the Governor of Florida
waited until to today, literally today to do exactly that so, here we are I guess.