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.
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