I've got a neat paycheck story. After GameFan was 6-7 issues old, the ad money wasn't paying the bills and the investor who had bankrolled GameClub and the start of GameFan, Andy Fell, was getting tired of throwing away his money. So Halverson started looking for more investors. He hit up everyone, including employees and employee's families. From my speaking to them, I gather he got at least three of them to invest somewhere around 50-60k between them. He also found a lady who owned a beauty salon who was interested in investing. Her name was Elaine Shings. I heard rumors that she put in around 70k but I don't know if that was all of it or if that was accurate. To make sure her money was invested wisely, though, Elaine insisted on becoming the office manager and being in charge of the payroll and expense account, which she did. We were all pretty happy about this because the pay was never steady, but there always seemed to be enough money in the tills to pay for neon signs, custom embroidered jackets and lots of other expensive, unnecessary stuff like that. So we figured with Elaine in charge of the checkbook, we could rest assured that everything would be on the up and up.
Well, no more than 2 or 3 weeks after Elaine started working in the office, Jay came round to tell everyone not to cash their paychecks quite yet. He said that Halverson had broken into Elaine's desk, taken the checkbook, and bought a 3' Sonic the Hedgehog statue with the payroll money, so we should wait until Elaine said it was okay to cash checks.
It was at this point that I got the sinking feeling that Halverson was the devil himself and I had better tie up some loose ends that had gone unresolved for far too long. That leads into the story of how I left GameFan, which I'll leave untold for now.
I know none of the employees ever saw a penny of their investments returned, but I hope at least Elaine stuck in long enough that she got some money back when Metropolis took over. I was gone by then so I don't know.
Good lord, there really are a lot more interesting things to tell about GameFan.
Bookmarks