Where to begin? Don't expect to be treated well if you're a woman or other marginalized gender (and if you are, expect a 1950s-era written dress code). You may be told arbitrary things by upper management, such as "If you raise the volume of this game, we'll fire you" -- even when it's a game that requires sound for customers to play it. Departments may have petty disputes that prevent the entire store from working well together. High turnover rate for employees. Shifts where you are running the entire store by yourself because your employees just quit, skipped out on you, or don't have transportation to get to work. Employees who can't follow basic directions and almost get you killed while you are fixing bowling lanes. Customers fed up with technical problems throwing game cards in your face. Having to break up fights (between customers and/or employees) on your own on the arcade floor because security guards are literally asleep on the job or playing games. Customers causing property damage and ruining hundreds of dollars in equipment just for the fun of it. Upper management members in Japan do not give a crap about you or your employees, and only become concerned if your store lights on fire, because the U.S. stores are simply money funnels and it doesn't matter how well the store is actually doing from day-to-day. Do not expect any support, help, or emotion at all, even when your family is in a life-threatening emergency. Many snakes, thieves, backstabbers, and fake-polite people. Everyone cheats on their reports, and you'll be treated like an absolute idiot for asking questions about them to try and do it right. You'll probably have to handle emergencies such as fires, floods, customer assaults or missing persons cases on your own (things get wild here). You can definitely work your way up the chain, but you'll have to sell your soul to do it. You're not even allowed to play games on your breaks, you're not supposed to play at all on the weekends, and you can't play new games for at least a month. You will hear the same top-40 pop/rap/R&B songs all day, every day, until they are permanently etched into your brain. Be prepared to work overnight inventory shifts and sacrifice your sleep to dangerously low levels. Many, many, MANY more things. Highly traumatic. Absolute psychopaths here. Rating 2 stars because if you are the kind of person who can make it here, there is decent pay and upwards mobility. They often send managers to work or live in different states to try and help out stores with the highest turnover rates/staffing problems (sometimes for months longer than promised), so don't expect to stay in the place you're hired at. Also, when you're promised per diem pay while traveling, they don't actually intend to pay you while you're gone (you get it when you return). Hope you have plenty of travel money set aside so you're not starving to death and stranded in a different part of the country!
