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So whats your opinion on GW staff? I've heard of the ones who are really bad, and the great ones, but I want to see overall how good they are.

Excellent. Its a pity they all work for Warlord Games now.

Depends entirely on the person in question.

GW have stopped hiring hobbyists and tend to hire people with a sales based background these days.
The little red book or whatever the equivalent is these days has created a team of robots.
I get very little additional value from going into a GW these days so tend to buy at discount from flgs or online.
If I have to buy from a GW I keep my visits short and professional, which is exactly that they want.

Never a bad experience. And Matt in Deer Grove runs a shop good enough to actually give me a REASON to look forward to visiting my in-laws.

Very substandard, I have yet to meet one that is anything else than a robotic like wage slave.

Is there an "untrained monkey" choice?

My local shop (Oxford) are a realy enthusiastic bunch, never too pushy, happy to help and always trying to foster a community around the shop. I think they do a realy good job and put far more in than most retail employees. My only criticism of them is that they always have to have a slightly forced conversion about what you are buying and asking what you are working, even when you don't want to, but it's no worse than the shops that try and sell you tat off the counter. At least they aren't trying to upsell.

 snurl wrote:
Excellent. Its a pity they all work for Warlord Games now.

Bam!

But seriously, I'm assuming you're referring to the one-man store operators, yes? I think they have a tricky job, effectively functioning as a car salesman with an overhead team that has completely unrealistic expectations. I hear about how the quotas for the stores in different areas are the same despite demographics of said areas, and it paints the picture of a bunch of angry monkeys bearing down on these managers for not hitting their buzzers (and having no flippin concept of why it doesn't happen at times).

As such, I feel a number of them are very heavily pressured to sell-sell-sell, and that has impacted interactions with customers. The ones who I've met who were particularly good end up leaving, since there is no upward mobility. So the job is just very much like being an enthusiastic Walgreens employee, always pushing those candy bars when you get up to the register so they can achieve some idiotic quota for people who don't really care unless they fail. And so often, the person at the counter is different every six months.

I think 6 months is about the average life expectancy, has been for years..

Snurl wrote:Excellent. Its a pity they all work for Warlord Games now.

Not true!

.. Some are at Battlefront, Mantic..

Couldn't the title thread just as easily be "What's your opinion on humanity?"

Not a frequent patron of the local, but out of three staff that have been there in the time I've been going in, two were decent guys who loved the hobby, and one was impossible to converse with unless it was about what you were about to buy from him.

Guess which one got promoted?!

It depends entirely on the person. My experiences have always been pretty good, but that doesn't mean that bad experiences don't happen. As Azreael said, you might as well ask peoples' opinion on humanity.

Back in mid 2000's, there was a battle bunker near Richmond. The staff there were amazing! Seriously, their love for the hobby drew me in even further and I bought a whole lot more than I've ever bought. Great guys.
Then they were closed down.
Now the few GW stores I've been to have been depressing. If GW had continued to support such awesome 'community centers' I'd probably still be playing 40k.

Attitude counts more than gaming experience.
This is how GW hires its staff. Says all.

-

 Azreal13 wrote:
Couldn't the title thread just as easily be "What's your opinion on humanity?"

This. The question posed covers such a broad group of people as to be meaningless.


My opinion of GW staff is that they are people. Some will be better at their jobs than others.

I hated going into the local GW in my area (it's gone now, because it was in a high traffic mall and GW apparently decided a high traffic location is bad for business or something). Every time I went in they would immediately try to get into my pants. I would have to say "I'm just looking" at least three times before they would back off.

 insaniak wrote:
My opinion of GW staff is that they are people. Some will be better at their jobs than others.

But that's why there are Commissars. To make your front line fall in line, and to trigger those detonator collars on the ones that perform their duties poorly as an abject lesson to their peers.



I have, incidentally, gone to quite a few GW stores in my travels. Some, staff have been stellar; others, where I have heard the most bizarre advice ever -- like telling a customer a who asked about priming in humid weather that one solution was to simply not prime the model. Whuhhhh?

I've also heard good answers to, "Why is 40k so expensive?!", citing prices of reasonably comparative models from other games, and offering low-model count gaming alternatives like Kill Team. Then I've heard really, really bad answers, like, "Well, EVERYTHING is expensive now!" and my favorite, "It says GAMES WORKSHOP outside, not EVERYTHING IS CHEAP on the door!"

 Talys wrote:
... like telling a customer a who asked about priming in humid weather that one solution was to simply not prime the model. Whuhhhh?

That's not particularly bizarre. At least with plastic models, a primer really isn't required if you're using any decent quality acrylic paint, as acrylics bond well with plastic.

On my few incursions to Chelmsford GW the fella was stellar, and by that I mean he looks at me and he is able to understand that an old fart like me does not require help and wants to be left alone.
My shopping habits are a bit like once a month I go there with my kid, then he approaches me and politely asks if I need help, I say no thanks... Then I pick something for me and my kid and move away... usually 10 minutes tops. Im happy with that.

Some like the one nearest are good reasonable people who don't push you into buying anything you dont want too and are fun to talk to and will answer your questions.

Others like the one near the last place I lived pounce on you the moment you walk in the door and and linger around like a bad smell making it utterly unpleasant to shop there.

Once upon a time I used to strike off GWs as I visited them. I've been to loads as I used to pop into which one was in the town I was visiting. But then they opened a lot more and many have changed location so I don't know if they count on my list any more.

I've not been to one in some years now but I grew wearisome of the staff as the hard sell became more obvious and I seemed to know more about the history of the product than the staff Becayse I'd been in the hobby a lot longer. Yeah, I guess that was the turning point, when even the managers were younger than me. I recall a time I went in and got pounced and asked what I was working on. I told him I'd was an old set of Chaos Squats I'd been saving for a bit. He recoiled in bewilderment and disappeared elsewhere.

I noticed that the nicest staff didn't last long. One chap I met on a visit mid week led to a conversation on Call of Cthulhu among other things, eventually it got around to Steel Legion and he found me a box of old stock, and then I bought other stuff too as I was in a good mood. It was one of the most positive GW experiences I've had. I never saw him again.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
Yeah, I guess that was the turning point, when even the managers were younger than me.

Eh, that's just called growing old.

I remember how it felt when I discovered that I was ten years older than one of my players' mom.... (I was running games at a summer program. Uhhmmm fifteen years ago....)

The Auld Grump - I have miniatures that were older than that woman.....

Generally they are decent guys.

I've been to a few, and they've all be wildly different. The Canterbury one was full of nice guys (this was a few years ago though, so they've probably been sacked), the Ashford on still has one lovely but weary chap there (I still occasionally buy single models to paint largely because he's a nice guy and I'd rather he wasn't sacked), and the Bluewater store was one of the pushiest places I've ever been to (that store has since closed).

The ground staff tend to be a bit all over the shop so far as personalities are, but of late, I've found that even the nicer guys have become a bit more in your face. Maybe the Dear Leader finally noticed something was up…

While I have seen some great staff members in my time I voted negatively. The battle bunker in the city used to have some great staff in it, but last time I was there I think I spent about 15 minutes looking at stuff on the shelves without being approached by staff. I know people usually have the opposite problem but... that's not how retail works. Pushy staff are bad but being ignored is pretty gakky too.

The local shoebox store only went in a few years ago and has had 3 staff in that time.
The first was awful. Total in your face hard sales approach. Any option on a new model that wasn't 'it's their best yet!' was met with "you're crazy, I think it's their best yet!". Same for horribly outdated stuff too. Seriously, old negash and the (at the time brand new) DA speeder thing with the DJ on the back and the guy missing his legs at the front. Both were simultaneously the best models GW ever released. He also got really passive aggressive when I tried to return obviously defective finecrap ("Fur has a natural texture to it anyway, if anything the bubbles add to the model"). I was glad to see the guy go, until I learnt he went up to the battle bunker.

The guy following him was great, monthly painting comps got me in the store, talking with people, even *gasp* buying things from GW direct. I could actually talk about what projects I had on the go without self censoring and got genuinely interest about them.

The newest guy, who just took over when the higher ups sent the last one somewhere else. So far I feel like he's failing because GW have given him no tool, no training and tied one hand behind his back. I also dislike that he swapped the painting comp for a conversion comp last month and when only 4 people entered he decided to expand it into this month as well instead of drop it. He's at least trying to get a community going, but were we once had lots of facebook notifications for events and the like we're now expected to walk in and pick up a flier to know what's going on (which is a damn hassle for those of us living half an hour away).

Most of the GW red-shirts I run into are:
Helpful,
Usually not pushy,
Gamers,
Long-term employees.

We get them at local club tournaments occasionally. As expected, they usually win
Good people, crappy job.

So, if the new batch are worse, I've managed to avoid them so far.

The last one we had here in Lincoln was really good, friendly and not pushy. Nice guy as well. Since he left, a decent FLGS has opened so not really spoke to the new lass. Although I heard she went to the local club where she got nasty comments, because of who she was.

It's a pretty thankless job at the end of the day.

I assume we are talking about the shop staff here?

In all my travels I've never really understood why people gripe about GW staff as much as they do. I've been to all the GW stores in Melbourne over the past 20 years as well as several in the USA over the past few years.

Obviously they've been trained to ask any person who walks in "So what brings you in today?" "Have you heard of the game before?" "What army do you collect?" but I don't understand why people have such disdain for being asked a few basic introductory questions when they walk in to a store

Mostly I've found GW staff fine. Over the years I've become friends with some of the ones at my local GW. The guy currently running the local GW is a decent bloke and I can't really complain. When he first started he was a bit awkward to talk to, seems like he'd never worked in customer service before, but these days he's much more comfortable and seems to be a decent honest sort of guy.

I've come across a few who didn't appear to know much and were probably hired for attitude rather than aptitude, but you get that in all businesses so I don't think there's any point in making a big deal about it.

I haven't voted because the poll mostly seems useless, as Azreal said:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Couldn't the title thread just as easily be "What's your opinion on humanity?"

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I assume we are talking about the shop staff here?

In all my travels I've never really understood why people gripe about GW staff as much as they do. I've been to all the GW stores in Melbourne over the past 20 years as well as several in the USA over the past few years.

Obviously they've been trained to ask any person who walks in "So what brings you in today?" "Have you heard of the game before?" "What army do you collect?" but I don't understand why people have such disdain for being asked a few basic introductory questions when they walk in to a store

Mostly I've found GW staff fine. Over the years I've become friends with some of the ones at my local GW. The guy currently running the local GW is a decent bloke and I can't really complain. When he first started he was a bit awkward to talk to, seems like he'd never worked in customer service before, but these days he's much more comfortable and seems to be a decent honest sort of guy.

I've come across a few who didn't appear to know much and were probably hired for attitude rather than aptitude, but you get that in all businesses so I don't think there's any point in making a big deal about it.

I haven't voted because the poll mostly seems useless, as Azreal said:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Couldn't the title thread just as easily be "What's your opinion on humanity?"

I think it would be less of a problem if much of the time when you say "Just browsing thanks" they dont left you to look around alone and try the hard sell.

My local GW is great for that. When you come in he says "If there is anything I can help you with let me know" and then kinda leaves you to it. So he is showing you that he is approachable and there to help but not forcing you to seek his guidance.

Now I don't blame the individual staff for this, they get forced to do that by the higher ups in the same way that staff at GAME are forced to try to upsell. But I will decide to not to shop at a place with overly pushy staff.