Vintage Stock

Pros:
Simple work: not rocket surgery here. Basic retail. If you can run a register and stock shelves you can work here.  Great work for a first-time job seeker or highschooler needing some work experience and/or someone looking to use their downtime for a touch of extra cash.

Like-Minded Colleagues: if you're a geek/nerd you will generally be working with others like you. You will likely make good friends here.

Fun Merchandise: If you like toys (retro or new), video games, movies, etc., you'll like the stuff in the store.

Employee Discount: You do get a discount but corporate has a history of chiseling away at it and reducing the discount or what it includes.

Cons:
ABYSMALLY-LOW PAY:  One can find better pay almost everywhere else across the board.  Associates will almost exclusively start at minimum wage.  Shift Supervisors/Keyholders tend to top out at just $1 more.  Store Managers are salaried which means they’re exempted from overtime pay – and they are REQUIRED to work what would otherwise be “overtime” every week: a minimum 45 hrs/week is required on paper but 50+ will often be necessary in-practice to keep things afloat.  Significant extra weekly hours beyond the normal minimum of 45 are also REQUIRED during the Thanksgiving/Christmas season (without any bonuses or pay increases).  This is all in addition to the fact that Store Manager salaries are also very low.  It varies by store but if converted to an hourly figure manager pay tends to be about $17/hr or less (assuming they work only the minimum 45hrs and no more).  This means that depending on the minimum wage, there are keyholders and even associates who in some instances will be making more money per hour (if/when they hit overtime hours) than the store manager by the end of the week.

What’s a raise?: Raises for any position are few and far between – its not unusual for employees to work for years without a raise that’s not part of a mandated-by-law minimum wage increase.

Poor benefits: no bonuses of any kind (not even at Christmas) for any in-store employees.  Insurance is only offered to Full-Time employees after 90 days.  No dedicated sick days – if you get sick you’re expected to use your PTO and stay home but you only get said Paid Time Off (PTO) if you are full-time and only after an entire year of full-time employment.  PTO for all but rare extremely long-time employees is only 5 days per year so you have to choose between actually taking time off or saving it in case you get sick.  Your PTO is also not paid out if you leave or are let go. 

Understaffed: the company wants every store to run on bare-bones staffing but also wants everything done while constantly dealing with stores full of customers daily.  Managers working 50+hr weeks get scolded when product sits unshelved but the district managers won't give you payroll hours for staff to shelve it.  Between daily deliveries of new product and the non-stop buying of customers’ used items it’s a grind to stay on top of it all.  The right DM might help you when they can but others will just stand there and point to stuff and scold you for not getting it put out.

Advice to company: pay your staff better, staff your stores better, recognize when enough product is enough and stop overwhelming your stores with projects, products, and unrealistic expectations.  

Typical work day varies. Some days are hard because they be dead get barely any customers. Other hard because it becomes so busy that there is no time to think.

I learned how to work with with the software of various game consoles and how to trouble shoot them to see if they are working properly. Also learned how to use a shrink wrap machine.

Management can be fun loving at one moment and devilish in the next. They are extremely disorganized. First off there is no real training process it very learn as you go. They're forgiving on small mistakes, but big ones they make you feel like the salt of the earth. You have one manager tell you one way to do a procedure but not even hours later get yelled at by another manager for doing it "wrong". They have no sense of accountability. Even if you do your best to safeguard your status, you'll be blamed for doing stuff wrong even if you didn't do what they accuse you of. They don't even care to hear your side of things. They assume too much rather than actually manage.

Other wise culture is a kind of feign family. They treat each other nicely but bully those they don't like in guise of friendly mischief.  Honestly I  would not say it is a safe work environment those with anxiety disorders like myself.

The hard part of the job is dealing with managements bad attitude and assumptive nature.  The best part if helping the customers and seeing a smile on their face. Seeing how many people have something in common with you. However, the costumers can be lackluster and inconsiderate at times.

A typical day at work would be me and my team scrambling to handle the current project AND train my employees while trying to handle the buybacks and special orders from other stores. Instead of just having the handle the store and sales, there was always something unimportant and unnecessary that needed to be done.

I learned a lot about managing people, my team was fantastic and I loved them all. I also learned about superiors hiring people, and how mine never checked in.

The culture of the workplace was amazing; at least IN the stores. It was always fun, entertaining, and cheerful. However I never really heard much positive about any of the District Managers.

Which leads to the hardest part of the job, the upper management. There is no communication, no full training, no assistance from anyone higher than the Store Manager. I was put somewhere without any help or real training, expected to contact other stores and bother them to fill the gaps in my training; which wasn't helpful when I needed to run a store. Especially taxing was the fact that I didn't know what I didn't know, so if I wasn't trained on it, I had no way of being aware things needed to be done, or that they needed to be done in a certain way. Added onto that, my store was opened days before the worst times of the year for retail and nothing about it was ready for the immense amount of customers.

The most enjoyable part was the customers and my employees. They made the job not only fun, but exciting.

Working at vintage stock is particularly easy once you understand how all the tech works. The store is a hobby store in short. They buy and sell products from movie DVDs to toys and video games. One has to learn and understand how to use the data interface and how to ring people up. Majority of the job is customer service and stocking the shelved with product. Customer service consists of buy ins from the normal public, product suggestions, and promotions of sales. Processing of product is also an important duty. Everything from resurfacing of discs and medial maintenance of the store. It is a nice job for one who is looking for a collage job. If you do not have alot of bills to pay then it is the ideal. Unless you want to go to full time, which is only after the first 90 days, that is the only way to make a decent living out of the pay. The hardest part of the job would be trying to do mandatory store projects while having to work with the influx of customers. They can definitely make your days longer. The most enjoyable point of the job would have to be the interesting people you meet from time to time as well as the other easy going employees. If you want to work in this job I do highly recommend being a geek or nerd of some pop culture.

Vintage Stock is a great first job/easy job. When working there you usually are given a specific section to work with, but I've noticed a lot of the stores are slowly becoming everyone knows everything kind of job. Super easy to find things with the system and a great job if you enjoy helping customers and customer interaction.  
The location I worked at I really enjoyed everything about it, yeah I've had my ups and downs with co-workers but any job you are going to find that.

I really wish one thing is that the manager didn't pick favorites so hard, it became a really uncomfortable almost daily interaction with a co-worker who never did their job, cursed, and constantly had friends hanging around the store when things needed to be done. 

The hardest part of the job is if you don't like someone. It quickly became a second home, and you never want someone you don't like in your house. That really comes with work though and I at the time was stupid and didn't know how to be the better person. 

The most enjoyable part of the job had to be helping customers and being able to easily jump into conversations about games, movies, comics, and as long as you got your work done and held your weight it was perfectly fine.

Started working here as a sales associate then eventually was promoted to part-time key holder, then finally to full time key holder. The raise and benefits weren’t great. I didn’t really even receive benefits because I was never given the proper paperwork to fill out and HR was impossible to get ahold of. 
The environment is usually pretty lax for the most part, it can get a little stressful during sales or the weekends but that’s just retail. 
I will say that it’s really hard to move up anywhere in the company and the pay is less than stellar. The coworkers are great but it definitely feels like upper management could care less about their employees. 
There used to be a pretty sweet employee discount but that was severely nerfed right before I left, which was disappointing because since the pay and benefits are low and almost nonexistent, that was one of the only pluses of working there. The free rentals were nice though.

I like my store and store manager. Local stores maintain a fair amount of control over the consistency of the schedule, but the hours allotted by corporate usually fall short of store needs (typical for retail these days). My store has an enjoyable atmosphere, great coworkers, and flexible hours, but your results may vary by location.

There's minimal benefits for part-time employees and barely enough to justify full-time. You cannot expect to receive anything near a living wage unless your store manager fights for it. Full time employees receive 5 days of paid time off total, including paid sick days. They guarantee minimal maternal leave and will strongly consider termination if you are gone for more than 2 weeks. You may get $10-$50 gift card bonuses for high performance during sales, but only store managers can receive cash bonuses. The health insurance is decidedly middle-of-the-road—neither awful nor great. Overall, the pay and benefits for shift leaders (Assistant Manager, Keyholder, etc.) are under the majority of comparable retail stores.

A typical day consists of buying/trading the things people bring in.  Customers are generally very happy, though there are always the few outliers. The company itself is run by seemingly intelligent people, store management is generally based on seniority and not talent though.  The days are typically only 7.5 hours.  The environment is fun if you enjoy "geeky" things and I got along great with all my coworkers.  Getting hired on, in my experience, was extremely competitive and the interview process was weird.  The interview was a group interview and I was asked things about "being a superhero" and which anime I liked the best, so it's a bit unorthodox.  I started as a part-time comic employee and within 4 months I was manager over Games, and after 2 months of that I also ran the comic department. Overall, I did love the experience, though the pay was not compatible to the work load.

The work day typically started out slow, with business picking up more in the early afternoon. There were always enough employees in the store to handle all the work, and always something to do. 
I learned a lot of my inventory skills at Vintage Stock, such as how to organize DVDs or video games in alphabetical order, how to locate and log items into inventory on the computer, and how to take things out of inventory. The management was laid back and polite, not overbearing or stressful. The workplace culture consisted mainly of many employees who had worked there for years and become friends over time, they worked well together and were quick to help each other. The hardest part of the job was learning the point of sale system, and their inventory system. The most enjoyable part of the job was that during the Christmas season ,they would play Christmas movies in the store all day long.

Honestly... if you are an adult living in your parents basement, playing video games, and D&D, and your parents say "You are an adult, you need to start buying your own underwear." This would be a great job for you. The pro's are, you never have to actually grow up. You get to be that werd older guy that still plays video games. And you can constantly live in the past without really having to face your future. And you can get paid (barely) to do it! Yay!
The cons are... well the same as the pros honestly. But add terrible corporate management. And never getting a raise.
The owners do this weird thing where they make you take these surveys because "they want your feedback to improve things", but then go through the survey results and gloss over anything that wasnt already part of their agenda.  There are literally 2 guys running the show, and neither one of them are creative, and all they seem to care about is their own financial gain. If this at all sounds appealing,  well, good news! This is the job for you!

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