GameStop made a TikTok contest for employees where the prize is more hours to work

By wazup on November 4, 2020 Comments Closed / 89 views

GameStop made a TikTok contest for employees where the prize is more hours to work

GameStop holds an annual conference for its employees, and this year’s event includes a rather unnerving TikTok challenge: make the best dance video, and your store can win the privilege of letting employees work for extra hours during Black Friday.

The contest, spotted by TheGamer, has since been pulled from GameStop’s website after the promotion received media attention and press inquiries. GameStop did not respond to The Verge’s requests for comment or clarification.

For the contest, GameStop asked employees to upload a video to TikTok showing them dancing to a brief song. The contest is meant for “store leaders,” and the company encourages them to get other employees to help. “Be creative, rope in your team, and have fun with it!” the page read before it was removed.

GameStop wanted teams to record themselves to a song and dance that was already blowing up on TikTok. The one they picked, the #redwinechallenge, has more than 32.3 million views. Here’s GameStop’s event team showing how the dance is done:

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It sounds as though there was only meant to be a single winner. They would have received two Amazon Echo devices, a $100 Visa gift card, and “10 additional labor hours” for use during the week of Black Friday. GameStop doesn’t clarify what “labor hours” are, but Kotaku explains that it’s basically budget for the store to have someone work extra hours during what’s certain to be a very busy week.

“Imagine what you could do with all those prizes!” the GameStop page read.

Companies holding deeply embarrassing internal events is nothing to be surprised by, but GameStop’s offer of “labor hours” as a prize puts a fairly dark twist on the contest — the company was asking people to dance for the chance at winning the ability to get paid to do more work. It’s not a great look, and a better option would certainly be to properly staff stores on Black Friday so that extra “labor hours” isn’t an appealing perk in the first place.