20 years ago, I got fired from a game store because my friend was good at Madden and I was dumb

I’ve told this story 100 times, so I’ll get to the heart of it. It’s the week after Thanksgiving in 2003. I’m in college and I’ve been working at an EB Games (later acquired by GameStop) for about a year. The workplace is a fun, laid back environment. My co-workers and I became genuine friends and we’d hang out and go to movies on weekends. Other friends would stop by the store to test play new games on the display consoles. So did regular customers. It was a great, social setting.

My one co-worker/friend was excellent at Madden. He would drive to New York and Chicago to play in major tournaments. He’d regularly finish in the top 10 and win cash prizes. I’d never beaten him.

So he and I are working the closing shift one weeknight. It’s slow, so he challenges me to a game of Madden. He normally smokes me, but I’m having the game of my life against him. Every few minutes, the score is either tied or I’m down by 1 TD. It’s like a heavyweight fight. It’s Rocky vs. Apollo.

A grandfather comes in to buy an Xbox for his grandson. We pause the game to help him out. The consoles are kept in the back storeroom, so I prop open the door to grab the Xbox. I ring grandpa up at the register and he’s on his way. Back to my Madden game of destiny.

My buddy and I are back at it. More touchdowns. More lead changes. Endless taunting. Another customer comes in, a middle-aged guy in a suit. Looks like he just got done work. We ask if he needs help and he shakes his head. He peruses the new games on the wall and we get back to Madden. Suit Guy hangs out for a bit while we play and then leaves. Ultimately, I had the closest game against my buddy, but I lose. It’s 9pm and we close down the store and take off.

The next morning, I’m between classes at school and I have a voicemail from another co-worker/friend. He’s working the day shift at the store and is wondering why the inventory count is off. I get another VM from him an hour later. He checked the security footage. His message on the VM: “ohh, you guys are screwed.”

It turns out, the night before when I was having the GAME OF MY LIFE against my buddy, mild mannered Suit Guy secretly noticed how engaged we were, skulked his way towards the storeroom door I stupidly propped open and shoved a bunch of Game Boy SPs in the shopping bag he had. At $100 each, he stole about $1,000 worth of merchandise.

This gets reported and my buddy and I are certain we’re getting fired. The district manager has to come and review the footage to make it official. We get called in individually to review the security footage with the pudgy district manager. I’m sweating bullets.

From the camera, you can see my buddy playing Madden clear as day, but my entire body is obscured by a promotional banner hanging from the ceiling. A reprieve? Maybe! I might get to keep my job if there’s no footage of me being an incompetent fool. But then —there I am. Apparently, I hopped into the camera’s frame every time I scored a TD and celebrated. I’m dancing around like an idiot. We were both summarily fired.

It sucked, but we both quickly landed other jobs. The best part? Months later, a manager friend of ours tells us that he just got back from the EB Games manager conference in Vegas. They played our security footage there as a lesson in what not to do 😆.