My X E-Commerce Job at Sega.com
The
Names of the people involved have been changed...the story
is all true.
After many, many months of being unemployed I interviewed
and got a job at Sega.com a spin-off of the SOA company before
the Christmas season in October of 2000. I can't tell you
how many hours of game cartridges, arcade games I played growing
up with the Sega logo stamped on them. Going to work in the
morning and seeing that giant Sega logo on the outside of
the building felt so familiar and good.
In my first and only interview I entered a room
with incredible looking Japanese Anime game sketches all over
the walls. Stacy Robenesky is a pretty woman of about 23 with
a great haircut. She interviews me for an hour or two about
silly stuff and I realize she has a good sense of humor.
After numerous phone calls and e-mails I finagle my way into
the job of E-Commerce Coordinator. On my first day I get a free
Dreamcast game system and a television in my cubicle. The only
game Stacy lets me borrow is Virtual Tennis which I suck at,
but am told to "keep busy with it" for the next three days.
I tried to make friends at my new workplace, but I think it
takes people awhile to warm up to my personality/humor. In the
first couple of days I did find out that some company named
March First suckered them out of $10 million dollars to build
their original crummy ass website. The content was good, but
the architecture underneath (the system) sucked.
My first all staff meeting at Sega.com is a week or two after
I'm there. A blonde haired woman with a perfect haircut who
is VP in charge of everything leads and finishes the meeting
in about 10 minutes with a quick check in. She asks no inquisitive
or specific questions and gives the impression that no one dare
speak out against her. I think this is the moment in time
that I realize Sega.com is headed for serious trouble. In the
weeks that follow Ms. VP is out sick with a botched hemorrhoid
operation. When she returns she complains loudly about how her
butt won't stop bleeding. If she's not talking about her bleeding
butt she's usually talking about how annoyed she is with her
boyfriend. I ask myself how would anyone hire a crazy woman
like this to be a VP of a company?
One of my first duties as E-Commerce Coordinator is a "purchase
requisition" for an enormous amount of games to sell on the
Sega.com Store. I try to make friends with Ms. VP of everything's
assistant so he can help me out, but he's a skinny twenty something
gay guy who seems thoroughly annoyed with having to help a fat,
uncool thirty something gay guy. If I remember right the requisition
is for $40 - 50 thousand dollars of games created by publishers
other than Sega (aka 3rd party) . Most of them never make
it "live" onto the site.
I'm also put in charge of some lame things like Fraud checking
(calling customers when the amount of the purchase is over $200).
You'd be surprised at the hundreds of teenagers out there using
stolen credit card numbers to make video game purchases.
I'm given passwords to get into the orders section of the Sega.com
store. I don't personally know the people who designed the system
but they should be slapped across the face numerous times. We
had problems with our new releases never shipping or transmitting
properly. Most of the orders sat in electronic purgatory waiting
to make it to fulfillment heaven. I tried to fix some of the
problems myself, and e-mailed my manager about it, but after
a week of working at Sega.com she started ignoring me except
for the occasional AOL Instant Message. We never had an official
"one on one" meeting about projects.
I take that back Stacy did sit me down once to reprimand me.
Someone at Sega.com told her that I was spreading a rumor that
we were an item. Why would I spread a rumor like that? I'm gay!
It was all very embarrassing! I did once jokingly state when
someone asked where Stacy was, "That her apartment had caught
on fire and that she'd be late getting into the office because
her curling iron had melted." I immediately confessed to the
joke, but I'm assuming that person went directly to Stacy and
snitched on me.
During my second week of working at Sega.com I was informed
via e-mail that I was now in charge of Customer Service/Order
issues. So after 2 weeks on the job I am theoretically made
Customer Service Manager of E-Commerce. The thing about E-Commerce
is that a lot of it is contracted out for financial reasons.
Our Customer Service phone reps were in Texas and the fulfillment
warehouse was in Minnesota. From a logistical standpoint keeping
an eye on everything is a nightmare. Since they originally didn't
want the two contractors talking to each other I became the
middleman. I was E-mailing/calling Texas to hear complaints
and contacting Minnesota to make sure problem orders were corrected.
We sometimes got hundreds of complaints a day about the E-Commerce
Store so it began to take up a major portion of my day. My contact
people in Texas and Minnesota were hard working, down to Earth
women who I enjoyed working/being friends with a lot more than
the people at Sega.com.
At around that time I began to be micromanaged by a Marcia Burns
who had a contract with the call center in Texas for Sega of
America. Sega.com had a similar contract she was involved in
and it was set-up so that she made a percentage of the profits
of all sales made through the call center. I think she may have
had a secret wish to close the E-Commerce Store to the public
forcing people to order everything from the call center.
An employee who worked for Sega.com, but reported to her at
Sega of America was Doug Smarte. You couldn't ask for a nicer
guy and the two of us worked together through the Christmas
of 2000 trying to make the screwed up E-Commerce store work.
About November the upper management were laid off from Sega.com
including Ms. Hemorrhoid VP of everything. I think Stacy
knew things were going from bad to worse because about a week
or two later she jumped ship for a job in England. From the
time she hired me to the day she quit was a total of about 2
months.
I did start to know more of the members of the Sega.com staff.
To be honest the design/web development people tended to be
the most interesting and friendly. There was Rocky, a crazy,
fun loving, married Filipino guy everyone loved and was the
king of databases (sort of like Scotty the Engineer from Star
Trek) of the website/store system. Katrina, a moody 40 year
old with a great design style who got angry at me because of
my negative communication style. When I first met her I thought
she was way cool because of the Metropolis (I LOVE that movie)
poster in her cubicle. Overall, once she got pass my odd sense
of humor she always said hello & had great stories about
when she worked in a zoo. Jack Kruner was a balding 30 something
fun, knowledgeable guy who also knew a lot about unusual movies.
Ally, the friendly main editor/manager of
the writer's group was always nice to me. I think I had a
slight crush on her. She's the sort of well read, interesting
person you'd want to have as your girlfriend or lifetime partner.
A witty guy named Doug Catskill had a weird sense of humor
which I loved, and always went out of his way to interact/ask
how I was doing. Then there was Doug Totoersky, a handsome
guy from Minnesota who had a way of motivating people to do
great things. Honorable mention goes to one of the designers
who made everything in Flash. He came up with the most incredible
and interactive websites.
The rest I attempted to make friends with
but failed miserably. One in particular Matt (who everyone
else in the place seemed to love) went off the deep end one
day, escorting me to an empty room where he began pounding
his fist on a table and yelling, "I'm gonna get your ass fired
because we don't need people like you working for Sega.com."
I did have a big mouth & had said something to the new
President of Sega.com at a party the night before. The executive
didn't seem annoyed, but obviously I hit a nerve with Matt
& his anger simmered all night until the next morning
where it exploded. I had never experience that kind of unleashed
violence in the workplace before especially by a person who
wasn't my manager. This one event more then anything shook
me to the core. I really am an easy going guy and it hurt.
I still liked working for Sega.com so I tried my best to keep
a positive attitude and be friendly, but I became more cautious
of my co-workers.
After Stacy took off I was left to run the E-Commerce Store.
Of course I make a good coordinator, but I suck at being a
manager. The head Accountant Jason Chong began asking me for
monthly reports of how the store was doing. Stacy sort of
showed me how to get to the information so I compiled a few
things. We sold about $50,000 - $100,000 worth of stuff each
month, but it was never enough to make a profit. The customer
service & warehouse contractors cost a lot more then any
profit we were attempting to make.
To help me out they brought in a female producer to manage
the store. She pretended to be nice in the beginning, but
became progressively more evil and angry. At first she had
meetings with me once a week, but after awhile she stopped
talking to me. I think the last straw was when we got a brand
new release title & I accidentally told our webdev group
the wrong price. It sold $10 dollars cheaper in the E-Commerce
store for a weekend. I think she caught a lot of crap for
it and decided I was a complete idiot.
She had this ugly bull ring piercing through her nose that
I couldn't help but stare at when she talked to me. She is
an angry, moody, controlling person and I could never figure
out why they ever picked her to take over the store duties.
She made my life a living hell for about the 3-5 weeks she
was in control.
After the first management team was fired Sega.com bought
a Start-up Company called Familywonder.com. They're management
team took over the newly opened executive jobs at Sega.com.
The Family Wonder people seemed cool/nice. I met the new Director
of E-Commerce Katrine Bogchett at a "cocktail mixer" party
& liked her immediately. I knew she had to be dedicated
to getting the store on the right track because she listened
to me babble on endlessly at a more personal meeting late
on a Friday night about how fucked up the Sega.com store was.
Katrine began to take charge (Thank God) and had me report
to a new Merchandising Manager named Sunrise Rodin. I became
her assistant & I liked Sunrise VERY, VERY much. She is
a great, hard working person. Sunrise & the whole FamilyWonder
E-Commerce team were a breath of fresh air after dealing with
some of the stale, evil, back stabbing, self-serving personalities
at Sega.com.
The sad thing is that just as things started to look promising,
and I regained renewed hope in Sega.com with Katrine, Sunrise,
and the new E-Commerce Department. A key executive at Sega
of Japan who financially supported (we never made a profit)
Sega.com died. After that we heard all kinds of terrible rumors
that they were going to close down Sega.com. When Family Wonder
and Sega.com came together, our new president/CEO a strange
kind of slacker/disheveled looking guy with a voice an octave
lower then Kermit the frog inspired us into thinking we might
become a profitable company. About a month after Familywonder
took over thousands of dollars were spent on rearranging cubicles,
formulating a new business plan, giving us "stay" bonuses,
and bringing over all of the FamilyWonder people to the Sega
building. When most of that was finished the new president
was forced to resign. A week later half of the workforce of
Sega.com/FamilyWonder was herded like cattle into conference
rooms and told that effective immediately you're all laid
off. Make sure you get your stuff out of here by 2 PM.
Thus, ending my dream job at Sega.com.
Fast forward to nearly a year later. I'm still unemployed,
and oddly enough I recently received bankruptcy papers from
Sega.com/Family Wonder. I've heard that they rolled the website
back under Sega of America. They probably filed bankruptcy
to save money & to clear creditors off of their backs.
Random Thoughts:
-
Although they stopped making the Dreamcast
it still is a kick ass system. It currently sells for
$50 bucks and has over 250
titles you can purchase. If you don't own one go buy
it now! It still rocks! Online play of titles such as
Phantasy Star Online are incredible. For the low price
you get a powerful system.
-
Weird misperception about playing online
with the Dreamcast. You DON'T have to be a member of Seganet.
You can use your own ISP to dial in or even surf the web.
-
Sega of America ran differently from Sega.com
and everyone upstairs (they were on the 6th floor we were
on the 5th) seemed so damn serious & stuffy!
-
The Sega lobby were the receptionist sits
(6th floor, 650 Townsend, SF) is really cool! Go check
it out sometime! You can even play a free video game or
two.
-
Many of the top executives of Sega of
America have all glass offices. Similar to an aquarium
or a glass coffin.
-
Other fantasy dream jobs: Working for
the original Atari, Amiga, Sony, or Apple companies, other
software companies, or working for Sega of America in
any capacity.
-
The day I got laid off I spent about $400
buying drinks, outing myself, and acting like a complete
fool in front of other members of the Sega.com team from
about the hours of 2 PM to 11 PM. Oddly enough I had one
of the best times ever compared with the hours spent in
a "working" relationship, and yes I did throw up numerous
times in a BART trash can on the way home.
-
The Sega.com site has been rebuilt "in
house" and it looks GREAT! The E-Commerce Store is closed
& Sega now sells their games through Amazon.com.
Get
Skinny
MAME32
Rules
Send
me an E-mail
|
