Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Sorry to hear that op. One day GW will wake up, and everyone involved in the hobby - including them - will be better for it.

Bit late to the party but I'd imagine they were annoyed because there were no products on those painted walls, I imagine GW wants us to play at home and buy stuff at the stores because it costs them lease money for us to play and we might not even buy anything.

 slowthar wrote:

 inquisitorlewis wrote:
Maybe the store is about to shut down. Our local GW (Bear, Delaware) just announced they are closing at the end of August.

That store was boned the minute they picked that location. It's awful and Bear is an absolute hole. The store should've been in Newark, Hockessin, or the Christina mall. There's been a chain of decent managers in and out of there who start enthusiastically and eventually realize they're being asked to do the impossible. Pretty sure the only reason it lasted this long is because they signed a 5 year lease.

You mean the lease that they just resigned in January of this year?

Edited: My above statement may not be true. It might have just been the business license for that particular store that was renewed in January.

Sorry to hear OP. Similar events lead to my local gaming store folding. Not had a regular gaming place since due to my location. Hopefully as others said, he will pop up again somewhere doing a store in future.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 crazyfoxdemon wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 crazyfoxdemon wrote:

It wasn't an investigation. He was just showing up as a walk around. He was scheduled to visit more stores after.

Considering GW purportedly no longer has regional managers, I can think of absolutely no reason for a manager's "boss" to be showing up just to have a walkaround.

Uhmm. Yes they do. And he (Josh Wimberly) was doing rounds of all the local stores.

Even a cursory glance of Google says that Josh Wimberly is "head of retail recruitment", not a "regional manager".

Hey Kanluwen, sometimes one should take more than a cursory glance of google...

I get it, you put in his name and what popped out as the top result was probably:

Josh Wimberly | LinkedIn
www.linkedin.com/pub/josh-wimberly/46/402/90b
Head of Retail Recruitment at Games … · Retail · 4 connections · Cordova, Tennessee
View Josh Wimberly's professional profile on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the world's largest business network, helping professionals like Josh Wimberly discover inside ...

But anyone who bothers to take a peek...

Josh Wimberly's Experience

Head of Retail Recruitment
Games Workshop
Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; GAW; Retail industry
June 2010 – Present (4 years 3 months)
.
Area Manager
Games Workshop
Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; GAW; Retail industry
June 2008 – Present (6 years 3 months)


Regional Manager
Games Workshop
Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; GAW; Retail industry
2001 – Present (13 years)

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/josh-wimberly/46/402/90b

Not picking a fight, just nitpicking like I have a habit of doing.

 crazyfoxdemon wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 crazyfoxdemon wrote:

It wasn't an investigation. He was just showing up as a walk around. He was scheduled to visit more stores after.

Considering GW purportedly no longer has regional managers, I can think of absolutely no reason for a manager's "boss" to be showing up just to have a walkaround.

Uhmm. Yes they do. And he (Josh Wimberly) was doing rounds of all the local stores.

Wait, Josh Wimberly was involved?

I've known Josh on a personal level for the last almost 8 years. Josh has got to be the most laid back and store manager-friendly middle managers I've ever met in ANY company, bar none.

If Josh was there to have a talk with that manager, that manager was massively screwing up to start with. Josh doesn't just show up unannounced at your store, you know damn well in advance when he's showing up and most importantly WHY. There's more to this story than meets the eye so far, I almost guarantee it, now knowing Josh was involved. If he was there, then this guy was well on his way to being fired and I'll bet it had nothing to do with that art in the back room, as I know for a fact other stores have been given permission to do similar things in the past with no trouble at all, and at the full expense of the company to get them done. I'm also calling bull on Josh traveling from TN to SC just to walk around each on the stores in the area. I can only think of one time Josh did that since he moved to TN and that was for the Chicago area a few years back, and even then while he was there, it was to handle some specific business at one particular store. The rest of time, he spent most of his "walkarounds" at the Bunker BS-ing with us, Tim Lison, and a few others and painting the army he brought with him on the trip.

I'm not buying this for one second. I call shenanigans.

The thing to remember is that Josh isn't a middle manager anymore. He's now literally the only guy and reports directly to the board of directors. It's in the latest annual report.

There's no chain of middle management to filter down the policies from the top. It's Kirby to Josh to your local manager. That's it.

There's no more room for him to be laid back and easy going. Every single one of his middle management co-workers on the North American retail side of things has lost there job through lay offs. Check the annual report.

 frozenwastes wrote:
The thing to remember is that Josh isn't a middle manager anymore. He's now literally the only guy and reports directly to the board of directors. It's in the latest annual report.

There's no chain of middle management to filter down the policies from the top. It's Kirby to Josh to your local manager. That's it.

There's no more room for him to be laid back and easy going. Every single one of his middle management co-workers on the North American retail side of things has lost there job through lay offs. Check the annual report.

Bull, Josh hasn't changed in the 7+ years I've known him, and I still talk to him and the rest of the Chicago to Memphis crew fairly regularly as friends, as well as most of the former employees of the Chicago GW's. I don't care what some report says. I'm telling you from personal experience Josh ain't like that.

If Josh shows up at your doorstep, you've been screwing around, doing something you shouldn't have been in the first place and knew damn good and well from the beginning you shouldn't have.

I don't think that's incompatible with the manager doing things that aren't fitting with GW's retail plan. The guy can be laid back and a straight shooter but still have to enforce the CEO's plan and if the local manager lost his **** during the conversation and quit rather than complied, that's not saying anything negative about Josh. The manager of my local GW speaks highly of Josh as well.

 frozenwastes wrote:
I don't think that's incompatible with the manager doing things that aren't fitting with GW's retail plan. The guy can be laid back and a straight shooter but still have to enforce the CEO's plan and if the local manager lost his **** during the conversation and quit rather than complied, that's not saying anything negative about Josh.

Ok, agreed. The post I originally responded to made it sound like Josh was the bad guy here, and that sure as hell isn't the Josh I know.

The guy is also in a stressful position right now. 23 North American stores have been closed over the last year and sales volumes and profits are down for the whole region. You never know how people who had an enjoyable job for years get when everything goes sour and their co-workers are all fired and you get the whole responsibility for an entire retail operation for the continent put on the shoulders of one man.

I'm very happy to say my local GW isn't run like that. Our manager just bought us the new realm of battle table for the store and myself along with the other regulars are painting it together. While I was in there helping out today, I spent $75 I wouldn't have spent otherwise. It is driving sales, keeping the players engaged in the game, and giving us all a great place to play. Hopefully our manager doesn't get canned for doing that for us...

 Brothererekose wrote:
@carzyfoxdemon

Is this all about the Forrest Dr store, in Columbia, SC?

Hah! I was just about to finally go check that place out tomorrow! I live down in Augusta. I was going to either go up there or go down to Gigabites Cafe down near Atlanta.

Also, this Josh... He happen to be a former Officer in the Army? Someone ask him sometime. Ask him if he was stationed at Fort Campbell, KY.

Edit again: Nevermind, I just looked him up. Wrong Josh.

Toofast wrote:
I'm very happy to say my local GW isn't run like that. Our manager just bought us the new realm of battle table for the store and myself along with the other regulars are painting it together. While I was in there helping out today, I spent $75 I wouldn't have spent otherwise. It is driving sales, keeping the players engaged in the game, and giving us all a great place to play. Hopefully our manager doesn't get canned for doing that for us...

Sounds like how our store was.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

busby wrote:

 Brothererekose wrote:
@carzyfoxdemon

Is this all about the Forrest Dr store, in Columbia, SC?

Hah! I was just about to finally go check that place out tomorrow! I live down in Augusta. I was going to either go up there or go down to Gigabites Cafe down near Atlanta.

If you're willing to make the drive up to Columbia tomorrow, check out That Computer Store. We're having a tag team tournament there tomorrow.

I might. I've been to Firefly before. Didn't see That Computer Store on the Gaming Stores list.

Toofast wrote:I'm very happy to say my local GW isn't run like that. Our manager just bought us the new realm of battle table for the store and myself along with the other regulars are painting it together. While I was in there helping out today, I spent $75 I wouldn't have spent otherwise. It is driving sales, keeping the players engaged in the game, and giving us all a great place to play. Hopefully our manager doesn't get canned for doing that for us...

He shouldn't, as that's one thing GW tends to stress is to use their products in their stores. A good number of Chicago GW's have Realms of Battle as their tables, and a few of us helped paint them (it was around 50+ realms of battle IIRC at the time that had to be painted, along with enough terrain for all of them) when the Bunker moved from it's long time corner to the redesigned space next door and there was never a problem with us doing that for GW.

There shouldn't be a problem with it, in my experience.

Damn, GW does love to feth itself over dosnt it?

I hope you either get him back or he turns up with his own FLGS, and doing even better than he did at GW.

I'm just posting to inform people that the manager has found a new job at a FLGS.

Good to know. So hard to find a job. Even harder to find a job that you are passionate about.

 crazyfoxdemon wrote:
I'm just posting to inform people that the manager has found a new job at a FLGS.

May his beard grow long, and his belly fat!

The Auld Grump

GW's newest financial report openly states that their main "enemy" are more or less lower management and staff. The war against the competitor failed, the war against the consumer failed, so now it is time for a war against the employee. Kirby even uses some weird Clausewitz analogy to talk about crushing them, though in his defense he was probably drunk. But why anyone would want to work for a company that openly is at war with you is beyond me.

busby wrote:

 Brothererekose wrote:
@carzyfoxdemon

Is this all about the Forrest Dr store, in Columbia, SC?

Hah! I was just about to finally go check that place out tomorrow! I live down in Augusta. I was going to either go up there or go down to Gigabites Cafe down near Atlanta.

Also, this Josh... He happen to be a former Officer in the Army? Someone ask him sometime. Ask him if he was stationed at Fort Campbell, KY.

Edit again: Nevermind, I just looked him up. Wrong Josh.

Come to Giga-bites. You won't be disappointed. New space has around 3,000 square feet of gaming space. Very regular tournament scene. Here's a link to the next 40K tournament forum page:

http://gigabitescafe.com/forum/index.php?topic=11817.0

 crazyfoxdemon wrote:
I'm just posting to inform people that the manager has found a new job at a FLGS.

Excellent news! My local FLGS was started by people who used to work at a big GW store. (From back before the one man thing.) It was an amazing the place and this new store is just as good. (FTW Games in VA.)