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ok, so at my local GW store we have the manager as a pretty good friend, he is a nice guy and we all like him, most of the time anyway. the only problem is every time i come back from boarding school to say hi to him and my friends while playing a few games or paining some stuff, there seem to be three or four new 'store rules' that are gradually becoming more and more problematic for the regulars (most of whom are around 14-16, myself included). it started off being fairly reasonable, things like 'no eating in store, but small sweets are fine if you share with the staff if they ask.' the kind of stuff that you understand when there are loads of little kids with sandwiches leaving crumbs on the gaming boards. then it went to, 'if you aren't doing anything, and it's busy, please leave' which kind bothered us, but we understood.

a few weeks ago, it became 'no drinks, food, or anything (apart from bottled water) and if you aren't doing anything, you must leave.' which we didn't really get, because if you are going to spill or trip over a bottle of coke, you will be just as likely to do it to a bottle of water. the real thing that was beginning to irritate us was that all of these rules were being implemented because of the faults of one kid, who has yet to be banned. the manager also seems to be focusing on the small problems like sweet wrappers and crumbs, while ignoring the bigger issues like the fact that this kid is ruining it for everyone and it would solve everything to ban him; and the one older gentleman, i'm talking 50+, who comes in every now and again for the larger events, but during these events he seems to unleash his very short fuse/weird streak, which has resulted in him nearly choking out a 14yr old, and sticking his tongue down the ear of one of my friends while saying "i want to suck your blood" during a conversation with him about vampires.

yesterday was the tipping point however, when we were told that every day, if we wanted to come into the shop, we were to phone ahead and ask if there were any events going on. if there are no events that we can participate in, we are not allowed in the shop, if we do enter the shop, we are banned for a day. also we must book our tables for casual games in advance, as well as our painting time on one of the two paining stations, we are also only allowed one one hour painting slot per day. he has also told us, despite our behavior in the shop being immaculate (with the single problem child being the issue), that if our behavior does not improve our parents will be called, and we will be banned for a week.

it seems that he is ignoring this kids faults purely because he spends well over £1000 a year in the shop, note he's only 12, and is basically the padding for the stores bottom line. the manager is ignoring the people that have been at the store twice as long as him, whilst being half his age. and we aren't quite sure what to do about it, as there are no other gaming stores in our county, and all the other GW stores are much too far away

Well, there is one thing you can do: Rat the little bastard out

Go find out who your local manager is. Tell him that the GW in your area is being run unfairly, and give reasons and explanations. If that fails, then go for the route of building a table and playing at home. It's what I did for nigh on three years.

Chowderhead wrote:If that fails, then go for the route of building a table and playing at home. It's what I did for nigh on three years.

This.

You obviously have a group of friends who play. Find one person in the group who would have the best place for group games, and stockpile some terrain and maybe make a board at his house. This is far more perferable, at least to me, than playing in a store where you have people interrupting you all the time, or, as you seem to have, staff with annoying rules and other annoying customers.

Playing at a house is going to be far better.

we were considering that, but only my house is really suitable, and with my being at boarding school most of the time, it doesn't really work. we have been debating writing to head office, but i was wondering if it was worth it

No loitering, No food/drink... Seems pretty reasonable and the rules I see posted in about 95% of retail stores...

How old are you? if you are under 18, then why should the GW store babysit a non-customer minor?

I am not seeing the problem, if unsupervised children are ruining the store, I support the manager doing something about it, especially if they are causing issues and not customers.

Man tough luck I second the playing at home notion, you don't really need anything to begin with, i mean to a little plastic man, diving behind a coke can for cover is the same as a building to him

The manager you're having a problem with certainly has a superior. Your post is very well written, its possible if you express your concerns to the district manager you'll see results.

Keep in mind that course of action might cause tension with the store manager, but it sounds like you might be at that point already.

I didn't play in a game store for at least five years after I started, even then I still hosted games in my basement. Great times!

Ok
(1) bottled water is easier to clean than spilt coke so this i can understand.
(2) At the end of the day it is a shop not a gaming centre gw primary objective is to sell product being able to paint or play there is a bonus and should be treated as such.
(3)There is nothing to stop you and your friends painting at each others houses or gaming without any of the rules you dislike so much.

To summarise gw is not a youth centre it is a shop with bonuses, all the rules you have stated are pretty much standard practice at most stores i visit and as a 25 year old man i appreciate these rules. There is nothing worse than visiting my local shop in the small amount of free time i get and not being able to get round the shop to make serious purchases because of an abundance of kids who seem completely oblivious to the customer. these are all things to be aware but i would say you sound like a fairly sensible person if you feel as though you are being unfairly treated speak rationally with the manager and state your problem calmly and concisely. GOOD LUCK

Making a table is an easy project.
1] You just need a 4'x6' peice of plywood.
2] Paint it or cover it with a sheet or felt
3] Put folding legs on it [$20 at your local Home Improvment Store]
4] When not using it, fiold it up and put it off to the side.

weiler wrote:Ok
(1) bottled water is easier to clean than spilt coke so this i can understand.
(2) At the end of the day it is a shop not a gaming centre gw primary objective is to sell product being able to paint or play there is a bonus and should be treated as such.
(3)There is nothing to stop you and your friends painting at each others houses or gaming without any of the rules you dislike so much.

To summarise gw is not a youth centre it is a shop with bonuses, all the rules you have stated are pretty much standard practice at most stores i visit and as a 25 year old man i appreciate these rules. There is nothing worse than visiting my local shop in the small amount of free time i get and not being able to get round the shop to make serious purchases because of an abundance of kids who seem completely oblivious to the customer. these are all things to be aware but i would say you sound like a fairly sensible person if you feel as though you are being unfairly treated speak rationally with the manager and state your problem calmly and concisely. GOOD LUCK

but there fully prepared to take young peoples money , encourage them to buy there products , these rules sounded fair , no drinks or sweets , fairly reasonable.

But the creeping rules that have been imposed , seem to me draconian , how are you to develop as a player , as a person if you cant act sensibly , and by all accounts they do.
apart from this 12 yr old , who sounds like he has to grow up a lot more...but thats being 12 for you (and where does a 12 yr old get a grand to buy GW stuff , although that might just be 4 models by next years prices).

As for the 50 yr old , I would watch very carefully , I am sure he is harmless , but can never be too sure

I would approach the staffs line manager , and tell him of the situations (espcially the old dude) , stress you dont want him to get in trouble , but there seems an unfair rule going on here.

James

I vote for getting the district manager involved. But before you do that, ask yourself if you can honestly say you support the store. When was the last time you bought something there? How about your friends?.
Your answers to the above should direct your next course of action. If you are paying customers then you are being treated poorly. If you are just hangin and havn't bought anything but a paint pot last fall, then maybe it's time to go the game club route.

Maybe you could talk to the manager privately and get the real story.

ok, all of the above comments seems to be aiming at the same target, so to speak, so i will try and cover them all in one reply. while we are under 18, and we realize that a GW shop isn't a social meeting point, they are also advertised as a place to play games with your friends, we never loiter there and are always doing something to do with the hobby, be it discussing our latest armies or planing things by bouncing ideas off each other. i have only ever seen customers being bothered by the 1 problem child, who often gives up in the middle of his games, or just begins to bend the rules of the game to suit his situation.

as for diving behind coke cans, we are a fairly purist bunch, and we love the feel of playing with real terrain (what little of it we have access to at our GW).

with the bottles, it wasn't the spilling that triggered the ban, it was the aforementioned problem child leaving the bottle on the floor, nearly killing the manager (if only). and while GWs main objective is to sell their models, they also sell a game, which they provide tables for in almost every one of their stores (and ours is pretty darn big as they go). it's just that about 5-6yrs ago, our store increased in size, and somehow in the past three years the number of tables has dropped from 5 tables for anyone to play a game on and 3 beginner tables for the three main systems (with 4 paining stations); to two tables, two painting stations, three beginner boards that never get used, and a massive area at the back of the store that is being used for nothing.
he says it is for the games day board, but he has still taken up far more room that is necessary.

and ok, maybe we don't buy as much stuff as we used to, but that is because most of us have finished or near finished armies. however we still like to buy stuff for either painting, or just to see if we like the army. as for how the 12yr old get a grand, well it appears to be that his parents throw money at him to get him out of the house.

yes the rules are their to keep irritating little kids from making the place a living hell, but my group of friends gets on with the gamers in their mid-20s just as well as they get on with each other. the only exception is this one kid again, and while we like him, we just can't see why he is still allowed within 20 yards of the store.

I'd like to ask if you have actually spoken to the store manager about this? You seem quite reasonable on here so presumably you would be able to have a sensible discussion with him and discuss the precise reasoning behind the rules?

That line of thinking is wrong.

It's a game store that caters to newbs. You are totally off the mark in the stance of "It's not a baby sitter.... yadda yadda."

The kids play in the store, they throw down hard earned mom and dad coin- the place will be whatever they want it to be if they are making money there.

Thats GW's schtic, anyways... at least until the kid in question starts pitching off his or her unused, unpainted stuff on feebay and sees through the lies that are being sold to them that they are the next Golden Demon winner.

To the OP- Feth them. I'd call them out on it and find another place to play if the guy wants to be a jerk. Some people really are not your "Friend". He might act like it to make you want to spend money, but he will just as soon pee on your shoes then give you the time of day.

Move on to somewhere else to play with your mates. ALL of you leave, and file a complaint with another GW store when you go there. Tell them of the issues at hand and ask them if thats what they do. Maybe if you either get the same answers that it is across the board, or you put the word out that the guy is being a dick that you will get some serious no foolishness answers.

Snarul has a good line of thinking as well.

GW stores are notoriously psycho when it comes to YOU spending money. You have money to spend, their your pal. You just looking? get lost, do not enter, or they throw you out.

Pretty stupid if your in the selling minis business.

Synthetik i didnt say they wernt happy to take kids money, in fact i made referance to it being a shop twice however like i said it is not a youth club i have 2 brothers 14 years old who collect and as much as they like to think they are grown up they are still very socially unaware and when a regular paying customer cant get to a shelf because a group of kids with backpacks on who mainly want to play not pay dont understand they should stop playing for a moment and make room for you they create this problem for themselves. having an issue with not being able to eat or drink in a retail shop while being given the space to freely use boards and desks to paint seems a bit odd to me and something i witness everyday as manager of a game store

Hard to tell from one side of the story... there's no food allowed in most GW shops AFAIK, or at the very least in the playing area. And if there were wrappers/bottles left lying around? That rule makes perfect sense...

It sounds like he's gotten to a tipping point and decided to take drastic action... however, his earlier requests sound completely reasonable (and appropriate) to me.

If I go to my local GW not looking to play, I may go in and say "Hi", talk with the manager and people I know, perhaps stay 20 minutes. But if he had young people hanging out there all day... then yes, that's a problem, and even though what he resorted to in the end sounds kind of extreme... perhaps the point wasn't getting across earlier.

we have tried to speak to him, but it always seems to boil down to the same response, 'it's my shop, and if you aren't doing anything, get out'

and are you sure it's his career, any reasonable person wouldn't fire him, just strip him of his managerial position and relocate him to another store in the area

What I meant by the career comment, which i removed because i realised it was misleading, was that it seems a little unfair to cause trouble for him without giving him a chance to explain, I wasn't suggecting he'd be fired or anything silly like that..

WAAAAGGHH-god wrote:we have tried to speak to him, but it always seems to boil down to the same response, 'it's my shop, and if you aren't doing anything, get out'

Most stores(GW or otherwise) don't really like people just "hanging out".

Seriously. Many retail chains consider it an "unnecessary risk" because you may or may not be 'scouting' for people who are planning to shoplift.

Of course, you could always leave it for a while as a cooling off period...find somewhere else to play for a while before going back to test the water as it were..

He certainly wont be fired or stripped of position on the word of a few kids (this is not my view this will be his superiors view)so long as he is hitting targets and mantaining order hes there untill he decides to move on.
I must admit he sounds fairly immature if i was you i would stop trying to win this one and enjoy the game by playing with your friends at a friends house i get far more enjoyment this way.

nkelsch wrote:No loitering, No food/drink... Seems pretty reasonable and the rules I see posted in about 95% of retail stores...

How old are you? if you are under 18, then why should the GW store babysit a non-customer minor?

I am not seeing the problem, if unsupervised children are ruining the store, I support the manager doing something about it, especially if they are causing issues and not customers.

You know how I know you didn't read the OP?

On Topic: Sounds like the manager in question is a spineless Nancy. Take your groups business to another store and rat him out to Customer Service.

WAAAAGGHH-god wrote:yesterday was the tipping point however, when we were told that every day, if we wanted to come into the shop, we were to phone ahead and ask if there were any events going on. if there are no events that we can participate in, we are not allowed in the shop, if we do enter the shop, we are banned for a day. also we must book our tables for casual games in advance, as well as our painting time on one of the two paining stations, we are also only allowed one one hour painting slot per day. he has also told us, despite our behavior in the shop being immaculate (with the single problem child being the issue), that if our behavior does not improve our parents will be called, and we will be banned for a week.

I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt up to this point. It sounds like your behavior, which might seem immaculate to you, is actually upsetting this guy. He doesn't want you around unless there's an event, he doesn't want you to spend too long at his painting tables, and he has threatened to call your parents and ban you from the store based on your behavior.

Maybe some introspection is necessary. Or, maybe he's really being a jerk. Either way, it might be better to find an alternative venue.

I wouldn't contact his superior until you do a little soul-searching on your own to determine if he is actually the problem in this situation.

hmm, it looks like we will have to choose between two fairly bitter pills. reporting him, or leaving the store.

and the whole scouting for shoplifters thing is kinda ridiculous seeing as we have been going to that shop for almost 6 years. and nothing has ever been stolen to our knowledge.

and the thing is, we really don't have anywhere else to play, there is one gaming club, but they don't accept under 18s, and as a group we don't get together that often, that GW store was the only reason we know each other

as for the behavior thing, immaculate is probably the wrong word, but we are definitely the best behaved under 18s there, we have been misbehaving maybe twice in the last two years, and that was outside of the shop, out of view. certainly nothing worth making any fuss about, considering we are very mature about our attitude in the shop

Go elsewhere. A friend's house, a different store, doesn't matter. It does sounds fairly suspicious that the manager would act this way. Either you're not as well behaved as you think, like biccat said, or the manager really is just a jerk.

Either way, a change in venue is the best solution, IMO.

EDIT: apparently I type very slowly. If another store or club isn't an option, you can try to play at a friend's place.

Worglock, seriously?
Thats the advice your giving

Honestly, can't you just find a new (non-GW) store to play at? I don't know about the UK, but I despise US GW stores rather intensely. Its not a very welcoming environment in general (I have encountered one and only one exception, being the 'battle bunker' in Boston, MA).

Actually, I once again find myself agreeing with Worglock, to an extent. While I don't think ratting the guy out is necessary, nor do I think it would even be effective, I do think that, if the OP and his friends feel they are being mistreated, they ought to take their business elsewhere.

If you dont go in there that often then i dont see the problem in just sticking to these rules and calling in advance
as you said this is the only option you have

weiler wrote:Worglock, seriously?
Thats the advice your giving

According to your (spelling in context) posting, nothing will happen because the manager is obviously in the right and those dirty, DIRTY.... *DIRTY*... kids should GTFO and go elsewhere. So what's the problem?