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"For my health I had to leave," Frank Maurer, the store's recently promoted manager, told Kotaku in a phone interview. The stress and anxiety were so bad he had trouble sleeping and wasn't even enjoying games anymore. He said he only started working there in late 2021, and while at first it was fun, it quickly turned into a nightmare between the lack of resources and management's strict quotas. To put up with it Maurer said he was paid $17 an hour, just $2 over the entry level rate at the nearby Target, while those under him made only $9, Nebraska's minimum wage.

He also claimed he was never properly trained by the company on any of the new responsibilities he was given as manager, nor given the resources and time to train others at the store. At one point he said he had to work over two weeks straight with no days off just to keep the store functioning.

"When I asked for support I was met with silence," Maurer said.

A similar walkout sign taped to Lincoln, Nebraska's other GameStop earlier this year also blamed the district manager for the mass resignation. "There have actually been four walkouts since august 2021 because of him," wrote one former employee on Facebook. "Two at each location. The first ones were kept pretty quiet though."

When asked about the prospect of unionizing amid huge labor pushes at Starbucks, Amazon, and Apple, as well as recent efforts in the larger gaming industry, Maurer said he can't see it ever happening. Like every other current and former GameStop employee I've spoken with in the past year, he feels turnover is too high and management too ruthless for anything like that to ever get off the ground.

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