Maneki Neko (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} mneko) wrote,@ 2005-08-15 03:27:00 |
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The sneaky sniper what snipes at midnight...
Well, actually, more like 3:30PM, but that's beside the point. Earlier today, I went into the local GameStop to pick up my reserved copy of Graffiti Kingdom. After getting it, I decided to look around a bit, and caught the following conversation between a GameStop employee and some teenager who looked like Napoleon Dynamite's stunt double...
"Hey, I've got this XBox here, and I want to sell it, but it's not reading discs."
"Hmm. Well, I could give you ten dollars for it, but I'd need you to bring in a controller first."
Ten dollars? That's a gigantic rip-off, even for an XBox with disc read errors. I sensed an opportunity. I wandered around the store a little while, checking on Napoleon from time to time to see if he was about to leave. When he walked to the counter to pick up the credit for the XBox games he traded in, I walked out the door and waited for him to follow my lead.
I made my move when the guy left the GameStop and walked to his car with the XBox in tow. "Hey, you thinking of selling that system?", I inquired. "Yeah, but it doesn't read discs," he replied in an apathetic, almost clueless tone that made him sound as much like the star of Napoleon Dynamite as he looked.
"I'm aware of that," I responded, "but I could use it anyway. I'll give you... hmm, twenty five bucks for it." He looked down at the system without even the slightest bit of emotional attachment and replied, "Uh, sure." From the way he reacted, he probably would have been happy to take a cheeseburger and a half-smoked doobie for his broken XBox, but unlike GameStop, I would have felt guilty if I hadn't given him SOMETHING of value for the system.
So he took my twenty five dollars, and I took home a spare XBox. On my way back home, I picked up a can of compressed air at Staples, hoping to get the system back in working shape. A few sprays inside the DVD drive tray seems to have done the trick... I tested the system with three different games afterward and they all worked perfectly.
If anything ever happens to my first XBox, I've got a spare handy... and it cost less than the average XBox game! Oh yeah, I think I did pretty well for myself in this deal. I just hope the folks at GameStop haven't caught on!
JR
Well, actually, more like 3:30PM, but that's beside the point. Earlier today, I went into the local GameStop to pick up my reserved copy of Graffiti Kingdom. After getting it, I decided to look around a bit, and caught the following conversation between a GameStop employee and some teenager who looked like Napoleon Dynamite's stunt double...
"Hey, I've got this XBox here, and I want to sell it, but it's not reading discs."
"Hmm. Well, I could give you ten dollars for it, but I'd need you to bring in a controller first."
Ten dollars? That's a gigantic rip-off, even for an XBox with disc read errors. I sensed an opportunity. I wandered around the store a little while, checking on Napoleon from time to time to see if he was about to leave. When he walked to the counter to pick up the credit for the XBox games he traded in, I walked out the door and waited for him to follow my lead.
I made my move when the guy left the GameStop and walked to his car with the XBox in tow. "Hey, you thinking of selling that system?", I inquired. "Yeah, but it doesn't read discs," he replied in an apathetic, almost clueless tone that made him sound as much like the star of Napoleon Dynamite as he looked.
"I'm aware of that," I responded, "but I could use it anyway. I'll give you... hmm, twenty five bucks for it." He looked down at the system without even the slightest bit of emotional attachment and replied, "Uh, sure." From the way he reacted, he probably would have been happy to take a cheeseburger and a half-smoked doobie for his broken XBox, but unlike GameStop, I would have felt guilty if I hadn't given him SOMETHING of value for the system.
So he took my twenty five dollars, and I took home a spare XBox. On my way back home, I picked up a can of compressed air at Staples, hoping to get the system back in working shape. A few sprays inside the DVD drive tray seems to have done the trick... I tested the system with three different games afterward and they all worked perfectly.
If anything ever happens to my first XBox, I've got a spare handy... and it cost less than the average XBox game! Oh yeah, I think I did pretty well for myself in this deal. I just hope the folks at GameStop haven't caught on!
JR
