I was a retired (non-professional) gamer until Sunday, June 10. For the past few months, I have been toying with the idea of getting back into gaming. At an early age, video games were apart of my life. I started at the arcades playing my favorite Atari games as a child: Pac-Man, Pole Position, and Asteroids. I moved away from the arcades once my dad bought me my first video game system: an Atari 2600. As Atari faded, I gravitated towards the Nintendo (the NES, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64), Sega (Genesis), and the Sony Playstation (first generation console). I stopped playing video games, inexplicably, after I dropped out of college. It’s not that I stopped liking them. I just had other things going on and didn’t have time for video games. Other than an occasional game of retro Atari games that I played on my computer, I haven’t touched a video game controller in several years. It wasn’t until the Nintendo Wii came out along with Gears of War for XBox 360 that I started getting the urge to pick up a controller. I finally satisfied that need…after going through hell to get there.

I woke up Sunday morning and decided to go ahead and jump back into gaming. While I liked the Wii, I wanted to go with an XBox, figuring I could always play my brother’s Wii. Plus, I really wanted Gears of War and wanted to try out Halo. Since I don’t shop at Wal-Mart unless absolutely forced to, I went to my nearest Target store. I found the games I wanted, but they didn’t have any XBox (or Wii) consoles. I walked away empty handed and decided to try Wal-Mart since it was nearby. Again, I walked away empty handed. I returned home and called around. The other Target store and Best Buy had sold out. I called around to another Wal-Mart and was told this response:

Wal-Mart Rep: Yes, we do have XBoxes in stock, but the store is not allowing us to sell them right now.

Me: Why?

Wal-Mart Rep: Because they’re holding them for a big Father’s Day sale. We can’t sell them until next Sunday.

Me: Thank you. [click]

Needless to say, that was the dumbest response I’ve ever heard. Here I was, willing to buy one today that’s not on sale, but this Wal-Mart can’t sell it to me because they’re holding the consoles for Father’s Day. Call me crazy, but isn’t a business’ goal is to make money? They could have made money off of me that day but lost out on a sale.

I called the only K-Mart store in town, thinking that they might have an XBox because not many people shop there, at least in my city. They had two in stock. I asked the sales rep to hold one console for me, and I would head right over to pick it up. I arrived to the store with my brother in tow. I waited, somewhat impatiently, for some service at the Electronics section of the store; they only had one rep working the counter, and he was busy helping another costumer pick out the perfect vacuum cleaner. Thirty minutes later, the rep rung me up for my brand new XBox. Since my K-Mart store didn’t have the games I wanted, I drove over to ToysRUs and purchased two games for my console. I was planning an afternoon of gaming and was feeling the excitement that was sure to come. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

I opened my brand new XBox only to find that I didn’t have an XBox console inside. In fact, I didn’t have anything close to an XBox or any gaming console whatsoever. In place of my new gaming system, I found the following items:

• Two college books
• One copy of Muscle & Fitness magazine
• Two to three small K-Mart ceramic pots

I am seriously not kidding, either! I’m absolutely sure the look on my face was priceless: a mixture of stunned disbelief, anger, and shock. I don’t even remember the words that came out of my mouth, but I was just in total disbelief over the contents of my XBox box. I dashed over to my cell phone and keyed the “Talk” button to re-dial K-Mart and asked for a manager. Surprisingly, I was calmer than expected once I explained what happened. I was angry but not furious enough to be blatantly rude; however, I was very firm and “nice nasty.” I sped to the store like Speed Racer, ready for K-Mart management to attempt to screw me. I dropped the box on the Customer Service desk and explained I was the caller who’d complained about purchasing an XBox that wasn’t. I told the manager that they had two options: give me my money back or give me another XBox with a discount for my trouble. One of the managers at the Customer Service asked me when I purchased the console. I gave him a dagger-filled look that said “don’t think about testing me” and informed him that I purchased it an hour earlier. He said nothing. Instead, the two managers had this look of non-surprise on their faces as they emptied the contents of the box; I’ll get to that in a moment. Now, when I called earlier, the rep told me they had two left, so I expected to just get the last, remaining XBox. After checking their stock, I was told they didn’t have any. Unless someone came in and purchased the last XBox an hour after I got mine, something tells me that that XBox walked out the door along with the one I supposedly purchased. There’s a reason why I think that. When I was purchasing my XBox, my brother and I read a sign at the Electronics counter that stated:

Due to circumstances beyond our control, we do not carry, in stock, the Nintendo Wii game system.

We both thought that was odd considering we’d seen Wii games while looking for XBox games in the glass cases. My brother and I wondered why they didn’t stock the Wii, and a possible reason came to us after my little incident: perhaps some store employees were [allegedly] stealing those, too. Of course, I have no proof of this, but it makes sense in light of my XBox mishap. It’s obvious that the theft of the XBox I purchased was an inside job by a college student. Since the K-Mart managers seemed unsurprised and had this expression that could almost be “not again,” my guess is that they have a problem with theft, and that might be why they don’t stock the Wii. It is, after all, the game system to have.

With my money in hand, I was running out of options. It was Sunday evening, five hours after my first foray in my attempt to buy an XBox. The stores that I knew carried it either had sold out or were closed. Then I remembered Circuit City. I quickly sped over to their store, thanking my lucky stars that they were open. I asked if they had any XBoxes, and I finally heard music to my ears: “Yes, we do.” Not only was I fortunate enough to chase down one of the few remaining XBoxes in the city - and at a store that was willing to sell me one - but they had a sale in which I received a free XBox controller. After purchasing it and explaining my horrendous ordeal to the store clerk, I opened the box and found what I should have had from K-Mart: an XBox console. After nearly six hours, I finally had what I wanted, and it felt like I’d just discovered buried treasure at the bottom of the ocean.

I went through what seemed like mental torture to get my hands back on a gaming console - my first since the first generation Playstation. One Wal-Mart store wouldn’t sell me one. Our only, remaining K-Mart sold me an XBox box full of books. Needless to say, I needed to de-stress. After hooking my console up, I did so by shooting people in Gears of War…and it was awesome.

Interesting Side Notes

• In my quest to find an XBox, I noticed that none of the stores had any Wii consoles (and a dwindling supply of XBoxes) but plenty of PlayStation 3s.
• I plan to write the corporate offices of K-Mart to complain about my latest (and last) experience shopping in one of their stores.
• I’m thinking of crafting a letter to Wal-Mart to tell them how stupid they are for losing a sale because they wanted to wait until Father’s Day for a big sale.
• Thank God for Circuit City; they rock!

Posted on Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 at 6:55 pm in the category:Life, Play, The Machine. Comment RSS 2.0 feed. Comment it , or trackback this post.