So it has now been exactly 1 year, well... at 10:15 PM tonight it will have been one year, since I lost my job. This is a document I have been working on for about 6-8 months now, slowly adding more and more information to it as I sorted my thoughts out. And... Yeah. This is the big thing I have been talking about on nearly every single social, chat, email, whatever for months now. Hopefully now with this out of my system I can move on, but I doubt it. I am sure I repeated myself several times, but... Whatever, it's done, it's posted.

Everything below this point is simply copy pasted from my saved document:





I want to preface this post by saying I was prepared to just walk away from this mess had my now ex-employer simply paid out my health insurance as they said they would. Instead of doing that they decided to lie to the US government, refused to pay out my insurance, called me a liar about what I now owe for my insurance (will come back to this), and even went and slandered my name to several companies, and while I cannot prove it i suspect they might have tanked a job interview I had after I told the new potential employer I was unable to discuss my previous job in detail due to an NDA. The amount they needed to pay out was originally estimated to be $1702, however after contacted the insurance company and getting some more information that amount was revealed to only be $1136. My ex-employer was more willing to throw me under the bus and risk this situation then pay out $1136. Let's begin.

This is regarding the Corporation known as Game Kastle, and more specifically one location known as Game Kastle College Park (GKCP for short), which is owned and operated by one Boyd Stephenson, who runs the GKCP under another company named Hobby Games of Suburban Maryland, and another company which I think goes by the name Phantasmagoria of Unicorns, or possible just Phantasmagoria, I was never involved with that specific company but it is relevant to note that Boyd set up his company with so many layers that peeling them back to see which company I need to address is nearly impossible at this point. So for the sake of keeping things as clear as possible I will only be talking about GKCP and Boyd, with minor mentions of the Game Kastle Corporation. I had this job for approximately 1 year, being officially hired in August of 2021, and being threatened (yes, THREATENED, this is important for later context of why I was fired) with termination if I did not quit on August 10th 2022.

In late June/early July of 2021 I applied for a job listing on Indeed for a store manager for Game Kastle (https://www.indeed.com/job/store-ma.....ee2fd279?vjs=3) located in College Park Maryland. After a series of interviews I was selected out of the two final potential candidates for the position on or before August 19th 2021, this is based on an email I received asking me to sign up for a Game Kastle Corporate email using a one time use link (so the date is a little fuzzy). This was, to be blunt, the absolute happiest moment of my life. People were commenting about how happy I suddenly looked, how I seemed to be almost glowing, how I seemed giddy and more friendly then usual.

This is when red flags started to pop up, and I ignored them completely because I was happy to have my dream job. The first red flag was being asked to sit in on a series of corporate calls with the Game Kastle Corporate team, without pay. This was minor, and I did have the option to not sit in on them, if I was busy with my current job of course. The next red flag was the lack of proper dates for the opening of the store itself. I had been lead to believe over a series of emails, texts, and calls that the store was just about ready to open, and the final steps was hiring a manager (me) and hiring general staff. I was sent a 5 page document outlining everything Boyd wanted to do for the opening of the store itself, much of which seemed to outlandish and excessive, however I more or less bit my tongue and assumed he already had this all worked out, after all... I was in another state, 21 hours away.

I moved to College Park Maryland late September, arriving somewhere around the 24th-26th, and did not officially start working until October 1st. That is when the second set of red flags happened, which I again ignored completely. There was no store. There was a big empty building, which we did go into and looked around, but there was no store. No product. No signs, no shelves, nothing. Turns out Boyd had fudged the truth about the store just a little bit, and was waiting on permits form the city to begin construction on the building, tearing down the old walls and pulling up the floor, and replacing it all with brand new wood flooring, new paint job on the walls, and many other things. During this time we were not legally allowed to be inside the building, but Boyd decided that because he had already paid the deposit he could do whatever he wanted, and we did in fact set up a very small temporary office type space. During the next couple weeks I underwent a lot of Game Kastle Corporate training, remember this as it will be important later, I also had to sign the previously mentioned NDA. As such I can't really reveal much of the inner workings of the GK corporate structure, however this is also a morally legally grey area as... I do not have a copy of the NDA, I asked my now ex-employer to send me a copy and they outright refused, stating giving me a copy of the NDA would... Be in violation of the NDA. In other words, I am not allowed to know what I am not allowed to talk about.

During our illegal squatting sessions, which were between 6-12 hours a day for 2-4 weeks, we spent the time ordering product, my training, and starting the process of hiring staff. And by we I mean me, Boyd trained me as was required by the GK corporate office, and then made me do all the actual work while he went out of his way to try and find the cheapest construction crew he could for the work he wanted done. This is important because the floor would later become severely damaged, but more on that later. I spent every day, arriving on time while Boyd was frequently late and would result in me being locked out of the building until he arrived thus wasting my time, ordering product.

I need to break for a moment to let everyone know that in an official response to me contacting the GK corporate office about my firing and not having my insurance covered the GK corporate office's lawyer who worked closely with our store said they have no control over their owners and can't enforce them to do anything. This is... False, a lie. GK corporate was able to do all of the following during the 8 months I was employed: Dictated wall colour, tell us what fonts to use in advertising, have direct remote control over our cameras and told us what cameras and service to use so they could use them as a secondary phone line, tell us what events to run, what products to carry, how much of each product to carry, what PoS to use, how many staff we had to hire and/or fire, which distributors we could use (including one we had to use as our primary distributor which was OWNED BY THE GUY WHO OWNS GK CORPORATE), what brand of soda we had to carry, they had direct access to our social medias including discord, Facebook, and YouTube channel... And so, so much more. In other words the GK corporate office COULD have told Boyd to pay out my insurance, and CHOSE not to. Alright back to what I was talking about before:

We had no internet, so had to use his phone as a wi-fi hotspot, which was incredibly unreliable. We also did not have proper work computers yet, and had to use his personal laptop for ordering. During this period of ordering GK corporate gave us a list of all products we had to carry, what brands, and how many of each item. I did my best to order everything, but found that because Boyd had not bothered to even BEGIN paperwork with distributors only about half of them would even let me order, and every single day I had to listen to Boyd complain that I was spending too much, and demanded that he double check every single order before I pushed it through, he would take orders of $10,000 and cut them down to $2000, this will be important so remember this. One day he took me aside and... Not threatened, but raised his voice at me for going over his set budget, and made it clear that if I didn't stop over ordering I would lose my job.

So I stopped ordering, just stopped. I monitored all current orders, and Boyd got a crew in to work on construction. At which point Boyd realized his poor planning skills were biting us in the ass. We had no storage in the building, and couldn't just leave thousands of dollars in products sitting around while construction workers tore the building apart. So Boyd rushed out and rented a storefront 2 doors down so we could work, a thing he SHOULD have done before we had thousands of dollars in product piling up literally getting pelted with rails and slat racking by workers who didn't care. We had to rush everything we had received out of the building and into the temporary "office" space. But, things were finally on track at least. We had product, we had a crew doing the work we needed, we even had work computers now! We would spent the next few weeks receiving product, getting everything into the PoS, pricing it all, doing interviews for other staff... And by we, I mean me, again. Boyd would often bail in the early afternoon, between 2-4pm, and I would stay late between 6-10pm to get the actual work done. One night I literally stayed until 10pm for interviews while Boyd went out drinking. The good news, was we now had staff, sorta. See Boyd didn't want to PAY anyone yet, he was paying me of course, after he literally forgot to pay out my first paycheck, another red flag, and had to be reminded of it.
Out of all the staff I ended up hiring was Ken, my assistant manager. Ken is (was) a great guy, hard worker, very passionate about the store, he, like me, ended up doing 10+ hour days because he wanted the store to succeed just as much as I did. I also hired some general staff, a college student, three women of colour, I am only stating they were women of colour because... Boyd made me fire two of them and worked the third one to the point she straight quit. I will cover that shortly, don't worry. And finally, Bobby, Boyd's personal friend, who I was told I had to hire and had no choice in the matter by Boyd. At this point the construction was done, I ended up spending several hours cleaning and hanging grid-wall, because Boyd couldn't be bothered to have the construction crew do either of those things while he was paying them, the staff all worker together to assemble shelving units, we went to Ikea and got a work desk to use for events, things were finally moving, which was good because Boyd had my first Day be October 1st, and he wanted the store open by November 1st. The date WAS pushed, but only to November 20th, the store WAS open, but not officially yet. We had plans to do a soft open, followed by a proper grand opening later in the week, however... Remember when I mentioned Boyd getting angry at me for going over budget during ordering?
GK corporate got in contact with us after the construction was done and as we were getting product on shelves finally, and our shelves looked SAD, we only had 4 rows of shelving and two and a half outer walls were covered in grid-wall, and even stretching out all the product as far as we could we only managed to fill about... 45% of the total space. When GK corporate contacted us they notified Boyd that he was NOT allowed to open his store without a MINIMUM of $180,000 in inventory. And if I recall we only had $80,000. This is when the next red flag happened, Boyd took me aside and blamed ME for not ordering enough, after blaming me for over ordering. He told me, and I quote, "You need to start ordering like a drunken sailor."

So my next few days were literally 12 hour days of just ordering. I would wake up, hope to my PC and start ordering for an hour, then shower and leave for work, grabbing breakfast at Starbucks because I didn't have time to stop and make anything at home, then get to work and order for 8 more hours, then go home and order for several more hours until bed time. for anyone not familiar with how ordering works and are wondering why it would take so long, it isn't as simple as just going to a distributor and asking for a product. You need to find the products you can sell, we were a hobby games store (not video games, board games, card games, tabletop games, etc), so I had to sort out games from toys, make sure games I was ordering were games that would sell, make sure they were in stock, make sure I wasn't ordering something out of print or outdated, make sure I wasn't ordering anything multiple times and not ordering cases when I wanted single copies, make sure nothing was a pre or back order, and so on and so forth. I also had to adhere to the GK corporate list of approved items, so certain games wouldn't be allowed due to the "values" of the corporation, while others were required. AND I had to deal with multiple distributors refusing to sell to us for not being a store yet, thanks to Boyd's lack of preparation.

During this time I also had to deal with staffing, making the schedule, handling absent workers, etc. During this period before opening is when Boyd forced me to fire the first girl. She had been in some kind of car accident and was experiencing a family emergency because of it, she couldn't work because of a dislocated shoulder, and I did my best to schedule around her. However Boyd straight up told me to take her off the schedule and fire her, saying that if she couldn't show up for more then half of one shift she didn't need the job that badly. I was then instructed to ignore all messages from her, and I got a lot of them over text and discord of her begging for her job.

Next was the grand opening. I did a full 16 hour day that day. Due to our lost staff member, and Boyd constantly blowing off his own store I had no choice but to be an hour early to do last minute preparations for the grand opening, followed by doing a 4 hour shift (the extra hour was NOT paid), then I was in the awkward situation of not being able to leave because I had to close that night, but leaving meant only having an hour or two before having to turn around and return to the store for my final half shift. So instead I just... Stayed. I stayed during my off hours and despite being "off" the clock I ended up working those 4 hours, then clocked back in during the final 4 hours. Remember the 5 page document I mentioned earlier of all the things Boyd wanted to do for the grand opening? Well almost none of it happened. Boyd didn't do any of it, some things he was told he couldn't do such as bringing in a food truck, others were things he had to personally handle and just... Didn't. So our grand opening which was to consist of food trucks, a marching band, a local cosplay group, a series of raffle and door prizes, all day long events, a bunch of banners and fliers, a press release, a visit from the governor, having UMD have their local hobby groups come in as well as staff, something called the "fifth trooper" podcast, an orchestra (separate form the marching band), fantasy flight games reps, a local big name MTG group that hosts professional level events, extra life, MAGfest, and a dozen other things not even worth listing... ended up being a couple banners, some door prizes, and I think maybe the governor was there? I don't remember, I was busting my ass helping customers while Boyd spent his entire day having fun, eating cake, and meeting the press. Yes, I am bitter that I did 90% of the work and got 0% of the credit for it.

I now have to address Bobby, Boyd's personal friend. During the door prize drawings most of what we gave away was... Just stuff, playmats, dice, a couple small games. One specific item however was head and shoulders above the rest. A first edition, kickstarter exclusive, sealed box of Metazoo Cryptid nation. At the time of the drawing the estimated value on the LOW end for the box was over $900+ on the higher end around $1600. Guess, with one attempt each, who won that box. That's right, Boyd's personal friend Bobby, a staff member. There was... Backlash, not that Boyd ever saw any of it. Boyd handed off the box and disappeared, -I- had to handle the backlash, I calmed down angry customers, I made sure Boyd never even heard about the complaints. Boyd, so far as I know, never ever knew that people were pissed off an employee and his personal friend won the most valuable single item in our giveaways. Bobby would later change his own schedule to only work one day every other week, I had no control over it. And even then he would sometimes not show up. That's all I have to say about Bobby, interesting how I was never asked, told, to fire Bobby like I was with the first girl for the same reasons I was told to fire her.

The first rest of the month went fairly smoothly. Outside of a couple minor issues where Boyd got on my back about budgeting issues and forced me to scale back staff hours to maintain the budget, which did result in me often doing 10-12 hour days to handle pallet loads of stock so i wasn't leaving whoever else was working alone to handle the massive workload. The store made over $20,000 in the first month, and we set a record for the highest earning grand opening of any GK store at the time. You are welcome Boyd, I worked very hard for you to reap the rewards. After a couple weeks several red flags happened back to back, again, I ignored them all. First Boyd had begun to track hours, one of the girls I had hired had been showing up late, 5-15 minutes late. This wasn't the end of the world though, as the time she was arriving had someone else on, and was set for 30 minutes before the store even opened. So she was late to being 30 minutes early. This lasted about a month after we opened, at which time Boyd told me to again take her off the schedule without warning, and ignore all of her messages. This would be the second girl of colour that Boyd made this demand about. The other red flag was complaints about not pulling in enough business. Most small businesses do not turn a profit for something like 5+ years after opening, but Boyd was mad I wasn't turning a profit a MONTH after opening. During our first quarterly managers meeting Boyd made it very, very clear to me that if I did not starting making him money I would not have a job, and that is how I became extremely paranoid overnight. I started checking on daily sales every day, then every few hours, then after every sale. I started mathing out our budget, figuring out the daily average sales I had to make for the store to just break even, I even started spending a shitload of money out of my own pocket to make up the difference in sales. Over the course of the store being open from November 20th 2021 to August 2022 I made 253 purchases, that is 253 purchases in 263 days, for a total purchase amount of $6936.85. That is an average of $27.41 a purchase or $26.37 a day (and that excludes lunches I had to buy while at work, which is several thousand more as we were not provided proper work accommodations for storing food). Call me irresponsible, but I didn't want to lose my job, and did what I had to to keep it.

Things still did not improve for me however. Boyd noticed I was putting in 10-12 hour days, and one day pulled me aside and said he was changing me from hourly to salaried, and said to only schedule myself for 4 days at the store because I was spending too much time there between my 10-12 hour days and coming into the store on off days for hobbying (I play MTG and 40k, or... Played, it's hard to keep up with hobbies these days without money). I don't remember what day or even month this was, however I do remember what happened in December. Insurance.

As part of my hiring Boyd had agreed to pay for my health insurance, I have a number of medical issues including a history of cancer, lung infection, slowly going blind, a history of mental issues namely depression, and thanks to covid... Covid, for which I am still suffering side effects of long covid despite being covid free since July of 2022. Boyd was made aware of what he needed ot be aware of, but never really got my insurance going despite being asked several times after the store was officially opened. I also stopped asking after the quarterly meeting and fearing for my job. I simply decided going without insurance would be better then not having a job. During December however Boyd told me he had spoken to a lawyer and that lawyer told him a solution. simply have me purchase a plan off the Maryland Marketplace, pay out of pocket, then send him the bill for reimbursement. So in a roundabout way he would, technically, be paying for my insurance. However he also had to approve my plan before I signed it. So I applied, got sent a list of plans, I gave this list to Boyd, and he approved one. I didn't really think to question it at the time, but the plan had a monthly cost of $214.xx a month, I paid $1.76 out of pocket, $142 was paid via a tax credit, and the remaining $70.xx was paid via the state. THIS is what this entire post is about. You see the $142 tax credit is essentially a loan, from the US government, in which I don't need to pay that $142 out of pocket and they cover it and take it out of my taxes later. I now owe the IRS $1136 for this tax credit, which after docking it out of my taxes means I still owe them another $445.

I sent an email notifying GKCP about this, Boyd responded asking for proof. So I sent him links to the insurance companies website and the governments own website both discussing the tax credit, and gave him 8 months of bills to show the credit. He denied me owing that money, claiming I just did my taxes wrong. So I got a letter from the insurance company stating I owe it. He still denied owing me. So I got my 1095-A and sent it to him. He denied owing me. I sent him my literal tax return showing I owe them $445 after they docked the $1136 from my taxes. He denied owing me. I called the IRS, spoke to a lawyer, and spoke to TWO attorney generals offices in TWO states, who ALL confirm he owes me... But he still denied owing me, and has stated he will not respond to any more attempts to contact him.

So that is the insurance situation.

Let's talk more about my experience working at GKCP. Well first the third girl was pressured into quitting when Boyd decided to overwork her. She was unfamiliar with the hobby games industry, and everyone I had hired had a niche interest, which is why they had been hired. My main hobby game was MTG, with my secondary being warhammer 40k. Ken was 40k first and D&D second. Bobby was Bloodbowl first, Boyd was Pathfinder first, and so on. This girl however, knew nothing. Myself and Ken were slowly easing her into hobby gaming, I showed her how to play MTG and got her set up with some beginner products, Ken taught her 40k, we both worked to slowly introduce her at a reasonable pace. Then one day Boyd came in and gave her a stack of D&D books, demanding she have them read before her next shift the following week. He also said she was going to be put in charge of a Catan tournament our store was going to be hosting and began to put a lot of pressure on her every day, bugging her on discord and and night about it to make sure she was working on it, yes... Off the clock AND on the clock. Then one day a week or two before the Catan event she didn't show up for her shift. We messaged her on discord and she didn't respond. Ken got a text from her where she said she didn't feel like the store was for her, and she quit to work at gamestop instead.

Boyd literally worked her to the point of quitting.

Then I hired another girl name Josi. Which is when things went south. During our second quarterly meeting Boyd decided to reneg on a quarterly bonus plan he had put into place. During a meeting between myself and Boyd he gave me a folder with information about a bonus plan, in which if I met set sales goals within each quarter I would get a bonus, the quarterly sales numbers were: Q1 - $52,500 (or $17,000 a month) Q2 - $87,500 (29,167 a month), Q3 - $87,000 (29,167 a month), Q4 - $122,500 (40,833 a month).

I met, and EXCEEDED the Q1, Q2, and Q3 sales in Q1. so Boyd moved the goalpost. Instead of having a flat rate total in sales, he changed it to be a % increase over the previous quarter, and a % decrease in overall cost. He changed it to 3% cost reduction with a 2% increase in sales because I literally did a better job running his store then he thought. For clarity on this, our sales in December of 2021 were around $20,000 (our first official month), in our second quarterly meeting in April 2022 our sales had exceeded $40,000 a month, and on August 10th 2022 when I was fired our sales had already hit over $20,000, and the month ended at over $80,000.

In other words, I took his business, for which he was extremely absent, and took it from $20k a month profit to $80k profit in just 9 months.

So let's talk about Josi. She was a very stubborn girl, who refused to listen to me, constantly got into fights with me, and then was one of two people who got me fired. Josi was a board game enthusiast, but also someone who refused to lose. She was the type to find some vague obscure rule to support her actions in a game to win. She would always have to be the center of attention, and always played the victim. During a commander legends baldurs gate MTG draft we butt heads. She made a play and misrepresented what was happening in it. Causing me to almost lose the game, I was playing for the store so it wasn't that big of a deal, but I did try to explain how she wasn't allowed to do what she did and attempted to walk back the turn (what a judge would do in a similar situation) to before the misrepresented board state. She refused to let me, claiming it wasn't her fault I didn't read her cards, even though when I asked her what they did she didn't read them off for the table. Both myself and Josi made it into the final round, which is when things got extremely heated. Josi was angry over my telling her she was wrong in the previous game, and tried to make the entire table kill me first, which they did, but during the game she was yelling, and causing a scene. I was attempting to use political maneuvering to not get knocked out, offering to remove certain threats in exchange for not being attacked and removed. 3 out of the 5 players in the game agreed (myself and two others) but Josi and the player I was going to knock out disagreed, so Josi attacked me and killed me, then decided to be snarky in the final moments and ask if I was going to follow through on my threat to remove the other player. I told her, no, you all had to agree not to attack me. Josi was knocked out the turn after me and threw a fit.
Post game she went around to everyone who would listen to complain, making up stories about how I was manipulating everyone, and being an ass in game, most people tried to ignore her but she got VERY in their faces about it. Finally when she tried to get someone not even part of the game to listen I told her "Josi, drop it." To which she ignored me, so I followed it up with, "Josi, as your BOSS, I am telling you to drop it." And then she snapped at me, claiming she could say and do WHATEVER she wanted off the clock and I had NO authority to tell her otherwise. I had to bite my tongue to not simply fire her on the spot at that moment, and instead reported the incident to Boyd, because I knew she would so it was smarter to just get it over with. Boyd set up a meeting between myself, Josi, himself, and Ken in which Ken acted as a mediator while we all told our sides of the story and Boyd told a story about how it didn't matter who was right or wrong, but what was best for the store and whoever was in charge (him). Josi would also enter into every single store giveaway and drawing, and would win a suspicious amount, often getting larger $60-80 board games for free. I don't want to imply she was cheating in any way, but it was very suspicious.

Cut to about 2 months later, I had just gotten over having covid for a week, and had another issue with a customer. In short the customer (Fedor), who was also our MTG events organizer, wanted to use our store to run official events that were in violation of the WPN polity, WPN being the Wizards Play Network for MTG, and who decides the rules for stores and events. I had a very, very long conversation with this Fedor explaining why not only could he not do that, but his custom MTG rules didn't even make sense and were conflicting with actual MTG rules in a way that made the game unplayable, and that his rules were unenforceable. I don't want to write out 3 paragraphs explaining his dumb rules but will explain in the comments if people really want to know. The conversation ended with me telling Fedor that if he tried to go ahead with his custom rules at an official WPN sanctioned event it he would regret it. That is the official reason I was fired.

Boyd took the statement "You will regret it" said in response to someone breaking a corporate policy as me threatening them. The way he literally threatened not to pay me if I did not resign quietly and he had to fire me. He literally threatened to NOT pay me if I did not quit.

So I had to leave. Since October 2022, after Boyd accused me of reporting his story to the WPN on an official department of labor document, Fedor has not spoke a single word in the public discord, nor have I seen him in ANY photos posted to the GKCP Facebook page. I believe that someone ELSE reported Fedor and GKCP, and that report caused Boyd to realize he was wrong and give Fedor the boot. However he couldn't announce this publicly, otherwise I would know and have legal right to pursue legal action agaisnt him and his business.


Now let's talk about Boyd. The two faced bastard who owns the store, took all the credit for my work, and then gave me the boot. As mentioned before, he would often bail early, especially during the early weeks of the store, going out for drinks with friends, and leaving me to handle all the actual work. He also stalked me online both during my time at GKCP and after. I know this because he docked $550 from my final paycheck for an airline flight he purchased, WITH REWARD POINTS. I reported it to the department of labor, and his response was the absolute most insane thing I have ever seen. He has internet archive links to social media posts from MONTHS before I was hired, private chat logs from discord and telegram, him claiming he overpaid me on my final check AND paid out my insurance AND PTO. He had private chat logs form employees on it, as well as claiming I reported his store to the WPN after leaving, despite all the evidence pointing to someone else.

Boyd also made no effort at all to make accommodations for employees outside of a mini fridge and broken microwave (and a coffee maker that NO ONE, not even him, used for the ENTIRE time I worked for him). And was CONSTANTLY on my ass about the budget, day and night, even though as I said I exceeded his sales figures for 3 quarters in ONE quarter. Because the man does not know how to run a business. He is/was just a rich kid with a ton of money and no brains. I once saw his house when we were waiting for an uber to take us to the airport so we could attend GAMA, and his house LOOKS nice, until you look too closely. His floorboards were rotting, his walls and floor were dirty, he had bags of trash piling up behind his house. but everything he owned, TV, appliances, furniture... All shiny and new. He would leave his TV on 24 hours a day to random streamers, and had money just... Laying on tables. When we went on our flight to GAMA I was in coach, but he went first class. We arrived 30 minutes before takeoff and he walked right through security, but I had to go through the lines. I made my flight with SECONDS to spare, meanwhile he was already seated with a drink in hand.

Boyd didn't like the fact that CK corporate had oversight on his social media posts, so told me to make batches of posts for per-approval, hoping that if we proved we could handle simple daily posts GK corporate would ease off and let us post without oversight, so I would spend one full day a month making DOZENS of posts, 1 for every single event the day of, at least 1 per week leading up to each event, 2 lead up posts for MTG events the week of, 1 thank you post the day after every event with pictures OF the event (which would sometimes not happen because staff couldn't take pics, which would be blamed on me for not providing staff with a camera... like... what?), 1 post for weekly sales the week of and week before, a post for EVERY new product or product line we had... Every single day of the week needed at LEAST 3+ posts in it. And I had to do every single one, in addition to doing all the ordering, all the scheduling, working regular work hours at the store as general staff (because Boyd made me fire two people, pressured on to quit, made me hire his unreliable friend, and wouldn't let me hire anyone because of the budget AND wouldn't work more then 1 day a week himself and he would often leave early anyways), as well as monitor our social media, make YouTube videos for new products and product openings and previews, be a mod on the discord and Facebook groups, and just so many other little jobs...
And that's STILL not even remotely close to everything. Boyd would cut orders and claim we didn't need certain products, only to demand to know why a special order wasn't in days later... Not realizing HE cut the special order items out of the orders. I preordered $8,000 in MTG and another $8,000 in pokemon products, and Boyd slashed them down to $2,000 or less each, and we had to TURN PEOPLE AWAY from events for not having enough product. We had to cancel paid preorders because Boyd just... DECIDED that 2 cases of pokemon was enough. We had to straight up cancel an entire MTG commander event because Boyd cut my order from 10 cases, to 5 cases, then the distributor halved that down to 2 cases and we SOLD OUT THE DAY OF RELEASE AND DID NOT HAVE ENOUGH TO RUN THE EVENT. And I KNOW how much he orders now. I still have SOME connections to occasionally they are willing to share tidbits of info about his store, nothing damning, but he now orders $8,000+ in MTG and pokemon several times a month. Because it took customers getting mad AT HIM DIRECTLY (a thing I was covering/protecting him from) for him to fucking GET IT.
Boyd literally said to just hand out MTG promo cards however we wanted, in violation of the WPN, I have the discord logs to prove it and me saying "No, we can't do that, here is the link to HOW we are supposed to give these out" and then as part of his department of labor response he LITERALLY SAYS I WAS MISUSING PROMOS. I HAVE CHAT LOGS TO PROVE HE WAS MISUSING THEM, BUT HE BLAMED ME FOR IT!!!!!

Remember when I talked about the damaged floor? I noticed bubbling in the floor about 4-5 months in, and it rapidly went from minor bubbling that caused creaking when people walked, to the floor LITERALLY EXPLODING!!! I have pictures of the floorboards splitting apart and erupting, but Boyd refused to fix it for MONTHS, stating if I wanted it fixed to stop ordering product we NEEDED to sell. Boyd put the store's profit over customer safety for MONTHS. Boyd also allowed an absolute racist lunatic to be in the store every week, a guy who would come in and drop the N-word when talking to people, say extremely offensive things about trans and LGBTQ people, and just be a general asshole by taking things off the shelf and opening them as well as just take snacks and tell us to just charge him later... Because the guy would spend a lot of money, between $300-600 a month. so to Boyd money was more important then a good environment.

I have mentioned several times about Boyd harping on about the budget, that would ALWAYS be in private. In public Boyd would sell customers items for discount, often 10%-30% off, and would literally bribe people with gift cards to remove negative reviews from google and yelp, that's why his store has almost no negative reviews despite there being over a dozen during my time there (always because of something Boyd did). And after bribing them or giving a discounted sale Boyd would pull me aside and tell me to make up that loss in sales or else. And, funny story, Boyd literally told me to forge a fake receipt for a pizza party that never happened so he didn't have to pay taxes on the tip jar in the PoS. Boyd told me to commit a crime so he didn't have to pay taxes. And on the subject of taxes... Boyd once gave someone a tax free sale with no identification because they CLAIMED to be a diplomat, that is how dumb Boyd is.

Boyd Stephenson is NOT fit to run a store. The sad part is, that doesn't matter. I busted my ass for him, I quadrupled his sales in less then a year, I hired Ken who was just as passionate as I was and has likely continued to run the store amazingly with that passion. I went to certain groups I was part of, went on Facebook and joined dozens of groups, and asked everyone I could to come in and check out the store... Many of those people were people I directly asked to support the store and they did, for me. But likely kept going after I left because of how nice it was and how great of a job I did getting the store to where it was.

Since leaving I have had to deal with the IRS and the insurance issue, the department of labor refusing to do anything because Boyd lied to them and I can't PROVE he lied and it's on me to prove it, so it's my word vs his, and to the world he looks like a respectable business owner and I look like a disgruntled ex-employee. I 100% believe that he tanked an interview I had for another Game store manager position because I told them I could not talk about my previous job in detail and only gave vague answers, and I suspect that because I foolishly put my time at GKCP on my resume he simply... Called GKCP and Boyd tanked it for me.



Everything below this point was written on a different day, hopefully I'm not repeating myself.
Some other things of note:
I was docked $550 for an airline ticket Boyd had purchased using reward points, so I filed a wage theft claim with the department of labor. He responded with a massive 13+ page document in which he admits to stalking me online like a fucking lunatic, even going so far as to use internet archive links to social media posts I had long deleted, to prove he shouldn't pay me out. He also literally supplied private chat logs between myself and him, himself and his other employees, AND dragged my now ex-roommate into the situation, declaring I had stolen all of his furniture and kitchen appliances when I moved out, and thus he shouldn't have to pay me. A fun fact about those claims... They are all lies. My ex-roommate and I had split the cost of furniture 50/50, and I took 1 single coffee table. The other furniture left behind included a couch, which the roommate threw away after I left claiming I had "soiled it" even though 1. It was a bit of cat drool and 2. I had cleaned it up anyways and he kept the couch covered by a blanket so there was no visible stains regardless. There were also two end tables, his personal bed, his desk, and his shelving unit that all got left behind. As for kitchen appliances, literally EVERYTHING, appliances, dishes, silverware, cookware, even the ziplock baggies were ALL mine before he had even moved in. In addition to THAT 75% of the food in the kitchen belonged to me because my roommate was incapable of being a functional adult, he did not do dishes, and he only did grocery shopping with me when I cooked meals for him, then would be a passive aggressive c*nt and sarcastically say "thanks for the ride ken' or 'hey thanks for buying groceries ken" or some other backhanded remark.

So aside from ANYTHING between myself and my roommate not being at all relevant to the case, Boyd lied about it. I know this, because as part of the chat logs he gave to the department of labor is a screenshot of my roommate STRAIGHT UP SAYING HE WOULDN'T HAVE SAID I WAS STEALING ANYTHING. Because he knows I didn't, he knows that the $50 ikea coffee table I took wasn't worth a fraction of what I left behind, and KNOWS he didn't own a single thing in the kitchen. Boyd lied. I can prove he lied using the document he used to claim he didn't owe me.

Boyd also says in his document he paid out my vacation time, which he didn't. The agreement between us when he fired me was he would pay me out for the month, vacation time was never mentioned. The total amount he stiffed me was $1702.xx for the insurance, another $1600.xx for vacation time, $550 for the airline ticket (which I will remind AGAIN, was bought with fucking reward points), for a grand total of over $3800. The department of labor however can't/won't do anything about any of it because they can ONLY handle situations in which I was not paid for worked hours, any agreements, vacation time, insurance payments, anything not hourly... They can't/won't deal with. I also spoke to the IRS who won't charge my insurance tax credit to GKCP, boyd, or hobby games of suburban Maryland, and I spoke to the attorney generals offices in TWO states and both told me that I either need to take it up with the IRS, or handle it in civil court as they ALSO only handle hourly wage theft cases.

I previously mentioned Boyd's insane stalker-ish behavior online, well... This leaves me with an interesting situation. You see I have a history of mental illness, namely depression. This is pretty well known to anyone who knows me even like... a tiny bit. It's also something that I have mentioned online SEVERAL times in VERY public places. Like reddit, and Boyd used internet archive to pull up a ton of old reddit posts. One of my most recent "I need help" posts I made on reddit occurred WHILE I was working for Boyd, to find those old posts he would have had to have seen it, meaning he would have had to have known that I was struggling, and he still made the choice to fire me. He also knew I was having issues because he literally talked to his other staff, namely Ken, about me. Ken was my roommate, and Ken told Boyd I had gotten reclusive at home and wasn't talking to him outside of work even ignoring him completely when he asked me to play a game of warhammer or MTG. Boyd... KNEW I was struggling with my mental health, and put his knowledge of my mental health in the response to my wage theft claim. Boyd, KNOWINGLY fired someone struggling with mental health with a history of suicidal depression. While that may not be illegal it tells you just how much of an absolute scumbag he is.




4/29/23 Update.

I sorta put this off for a bit, but have some more information to add to this now. At risk of violating my NDA with Boyd/Game Kastle (which I will remind everyone he WILL NOT GIVE ME A COPY OF, as just giving me a copy violates it, which I think calls it's legality into question), I did some reading into the WPN policies and have discovered that the method by which the Game Kastle franchise runs it's events is in violation of the policy. for reference here is the documentation as put out by Wotc: https://wpn.wizards.com/en/terms-and-conditions

So what is Game Kastle violating specifically? Article 5, section D, "Events. You may not schedule, run or report fraudulent Events. Your Events must be conducted by you or your Staff."

Game Kastle, at least the one I was working for, inflated our numbers artificially to get prerelease kits. This is particularly heinous as we actually had to cancel events for not having enough product to run them. So rather then ensure we had enough product on hand to run these events my boss cut my orders as I mentioned before, then faked the numbers for the WPN for the purposes of increasing our future allocations, rather then simply invest in product. Also, our events were not run by our staff. THIS was a policy put into place by Game Kastle corporate, they strictly forbade the store staff from hosting events, instead opting to have an outside party handle it, then pay them a fraction of what actual store staff would get, in the form of store credit. However this only seemed to apply for certain parties, Myself and Ken were not allowed to host events, but Josi was absolutely allowed to, and she was allowed to enter into event drawings and walk out with hundreds of dollars of product meant for customers.

What else did we violate? Article 5, section G, "Retail Store. A Retail Store is a legitimate physical retail store with any and all authorizations and/or licenses required by the local law and/or administrative resolutions, for the regular operation of a commercial establishment in the Territory that is regularly and consistently open to the public for business multiple days of the week and sells sealed Wizards’ product on-site to consumers. A Retail Store must have permanently affixed signage, a dedicated store phone line, internet service, a valid email address, reasonably comfortable seating, nearby restrooms and an accepting and appropriate atmosphere for patrons of any age. As a WPN Member, you will ensure your Retail Store is clean, safe, adequately lit, reasonably climate controlled, and in compliance with all relevant safety, fire, building and health codes, and local regulations."

As mentioned, Boyd ignored the damaged floor for months. I won't rehash that.

Next, Article 5, section J, "Proxy Cards. Retail Stores may only allow “proxy” cards in your Events as described in the current official Magic Tournament Rules. A proxy card is a card issued by a judge at an Event to replace a card that has become damaged during the course of play in such Event and may only be used for the duration of that Event."

Boyd ignored my warnings about allowing the use of proxy cards during sanctioned events, or more specifically, any events using the event link program. Basically either a judge can issue a temporary proxy for cards damaged during an event, OR, players may use proxies in a non-official capacity. Boyd however, did not care. He allowed the use of proxies in events, namely large commander nights, in an attempt to pump the numbers up, this occurred AFTER faking the numbers to begin with. This then also factors into Article 5, section K, which discusses counterfeit cards. I handled most of the single purchases, and to my knowledge only ever had one incident of someone attempting to sneak in a fake card, it was a semi-convicing fake dual land, tropical island I believe, I did a light test on it and the light went right through pure white, not the blue-ish hue from real MTG cards, and it had an issue with the back not having the proper pixalization that older cards had. I have strong reason to believe Boyd purchased the card after the fact regardless, I have no proof of it, but I do believe he did.

Article 5, Section N, "Login Credentials. You will not disclose to anyone or permit another person to use your login credentials, and you will notify Wizards immediately if you know or suspect any unauthorized use of your login credentials. You will be fully responsible and liable for all activities conducted through your login credentials."

Basically Boyd gave our login to at least 6 different people, he gave it to me, as store manager I would need it as he wouldn't be present (ever). However he also gave it to Ken, Josi, at least 2 other staff members, and 2 different event organizers. Even if I excuse Ken as the assistant manager, the other staff and organizers DIDN'T need it as myself OR Ken ALWAYS worked. I ALWAYS made sure one of us was in the building every day.

Article 5, section Q, "On Sale Dates. You will not offer any Wizards’ products to consumers prior to such products’ first on-sale date as published by Wizards. "

He would allow "certain people" to have product days ahead of street date, so long as those people didn't tell anyone. Those people absolutely told people, in some cases even posting pictures to the public discord. However after inspecting the discord it looks as thought Boyd removed all proof of this after he accused me of reporting him, so again I can't prove it.

Article 8, Section D, "Player Data. The WER may only be used for scheduling, registration, pairing matches, reporting conduct and reporting Events and for ordering Event and promotional support material. For this limited purpose, you will have limited access to personal data of players as necessary to facilitate Events including first name, last name and country/territory of origin. Your access to and use of this personal data is for the sole purpose of facilitating Events. You expressly acknowledge and agree that you will not access or use this personal data for any other purpose than facilitating Events and that you will not copy, transfer, sell, share, post, transmit or otherwise disclose any such personal information to any third party."

Boyd kept a record of all players, names, emails, phone numbers, in some rare cases street addresses. Wotc accounts were linked to discord names, Boyd would be able to track down players from events in the discord OR via other social media sites. Aside from me working for him and witnessing this, if it were possible to track down the person who did our orientation and they could remember our conversations, Boyd SPECIFICALLY asked if Wotc recorded player data, and if he could have a copy of it. When he was told no they don't, and even if they did record it no he couldn't have it for privacy reasons Boyd made a point to mute the call and say to me he WOULD be getting that information for vague "community building" reasons. As for how I can prove he did it? Remember when I mentioned the reddit stuff? He was able to find and talk to every single person who responded to my thread who came into our store, he literally used private information to hunt down people to talk to them in person. That is more proof os his insane cyber stalker behavior. He stalked CUSTOMERS online to talk to them in person.

There are still more, but I don't want to do a breakdown of every single individual rule broken, and as I said some rules being broken are a direct result of the GK corporate policies, which directly conflict with the WPN policies. AND, this is just ONE game, we also hosted board game nights, warhammer 40k, warhammer age of sigmar, D&D, pathfinder, conquest, and dozens upon dozens of other games and events and I am 100% sure Boyd violated various policies for ALL of them.

7/1/23 update:
With a recent update, not done by Boyd, but done by the distributor I am no longer able to access Boyd's account to PHD. Probably for the best, it stops me from being tempted to do anything stupid. And with me no longer having any access to any of his online accounts (By his I mean GKCP) I am 100% cut off from being able to access anything of the store's and can no longer see what stupid thing he is doing now. I could take the time to make a dummy discord account for access, but really I feel that is just wasted effort on my part. there are a few things I could do from a legal standpoint to cause mild disruptions, such as report the videos I made for him as mine, since... I recorded them, and claim he no longer has permission to use any content (videos, photos, etc) with me in them. That would cause a small issue, particularity since all his best photos have me in them, including his facebook banner photo. but I don't really see the point in wasting my time with it. I hope this post is the end of it for me, like... Getting this out of my system, and I can finally move on. But I doubt it, because every so often I stumble onto a photo I took still on my phone or computer of my time there, and some photos I don't want to let go of such as the one of myself with Andy Looney, creator of Flux and a host of other great games. Or photos of myself with friends I lost because of Boyd.

8/3/23 Update:
One week before the anniversary of when I was fired and it was on my mind today. Looking at my last update I never really expanded on the loss of friends thing. So Boyd said I wasn't banned from the store when he fired me, but Boyd also submitted some private discord chats to the department of labor as evidence and they sent those logs to me. Boyd DID ask all his staff to watch me in the store if I ever came in, and when I was in the store dropping off my apartment key for my roommate Ken, Ken told Boyd I was there alone (Ken was not present in the store at the time) and Boyd made a huge deal about it. Meaning Boyd DIDN'T want me in the store at all anymore. That combined with the fact I had to literally move out of state because I couldn't find a job and therefore could not pay rent anymore, and of course the mentioned theft of wages and massive debt to the IRS, AND the banning of me from the store discord meant that MOST of the people I had become friends with lost touch with me and I had no means to contact them again. Boyd literally ripped away friends from me, and forced me to leave. Like a god damn monster. Out of everyone I met only one person managed to stay in touch. the irony being they also no longer go to the store. And I don't remember if I mentioned this already, but Fedor left the store, he literally stopped showing up after he got me fired. Boyd fired me over a non-threat that he assumed to be a threat, because someone who DIDN'T EVEN GO TO HIS STORE ANYMORE accused me of.

Boyd Stephenson is an absolute fuck, and I hope his store fails. It won't, because hobby gaming stores are like casinos designed to make money no matter what and while boyd is dumb, he isn't trump and therefore will make money no matter what. Boyd knows this, I set him up to succeed, but he will NEVER admit to it. NEVER. I am nothing to him. I was just there to prop up his future.