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carmachu wrote:

Grot 6 wrote:

I find a douche store. What do I have to do to turn that around to make it a place that I'd want to come back to, aside from the obvious telling the oppressed owner to take a bath?

Supposidly, if you act with rainbows and puppies type attitude, it will get you in the good graces of the staff, and they will in turn treat you better. Or at least its been said in the thread here.

Añd acting like a pompous jerk has done so well for you?

SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
Añd acting like a pompous jerk has done so well for you?

You get what you give. Thats what I was given, so have it right back.

carmachu wrote:

SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
Añd acting like a pompous jerk has done so well for you?

You get what you give. Thats what I was given, so have it right back.

And you don't consider they gave what they got back to you?

carmachu wrote:

SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
Añd acting like a pompous jerk has done so well for you?

You get what you give. Thats what I was given, so have it right back.

I think the problem is you're giving to much.)

I really don't have a problem with someone not liking a store that gives bad service or a store owner who acts badly. They reflect back on the entire industry when they do that. It makes me furious.

But aim it at them. Don't bring it up in every thread that mentions FLGS in general.

A bad store or store owner will put themselves out of business, which is reality getting revenge for not working harder. Especially on customer service

-Loki- wrote:

And you don't consider they gave what they got back to you?

I can tell you and solo falcon have never worked with the public. or retail.

It doesnt matter what the customer is- if your going to play tit for tat with the customer, you will fail as a store. I've had to deal with people in 20+ years that are happy, sad, PMSing, fighting with their spouse before they came in, mad at the last retailer they went to.....and it doesnt matter. MY job is to sell them, no matter what THEIR attitude is, Not give them attitude back. I've turned angry customers into happy ones. If I follow YOUR advise and solofalcons, they wouldnt be customers.


And mikhaila, frankly in 20 years I've only had one decent retailer and he didnt have playing space yet I still came back to him. I assume yours is as well. But frankly FLGs as far as I have seen are irrelevant to playing, especially nowadays. 22 years of playing, and FLGS havent come out on the positve side of the equation with me or our group. And no bad stores dont put themselves out of business. Some of them are still chugging along fine.

After reading the above post, you should really consider that the common denominator for all 22 years of woe was you. You should probably look into that.

What happened when you went back to the store and let your feelings on the matter be known?

People forget in general, and not just in the gaming industry, that people have bad days and that it's not all sunshine and rainbows. I'm sure there are days when even Mikhaila can't be bothered to open the store.

I bring this up because I know of one situation when people didn't go back to a store because the owner was grumpy with them (he was having trouble with his marriage) and despite explaining the situation and apologising, the store suffered for a while.
I think it's unrealistic to expect an all singing, all dancing, roll out the red carpet scenario, every time you go to a game store. That's not to excuse bad service, but people should be more realistic.

You know, I kind of feel sad for Carmachu.

I first visited a hobby store in Macon, GA back before table top gaming really existed back around 1980 before I was even 10 years old. They had all these awesome balsa wood airplane models and model trains that I loved just walking around and looking at. The store was a couple of blocks away from my father's office in downtown. If I was ever at my dad's office after school, I would want to walk down and look at the stuff at the store. The owners were always really nice, and would usually buy me a Coca Cola out of the machine.

When I was 15, I had my first experience with a gaming store called Comix Castle in Macon (I think that's how they spelled it...might have used K's in stead). I played in a D&D role playing tournament. When I finally got my driver's license in 1988, I started spending just about every Saturday at the Castle. The owner's name was Monnie Robinson, and he was awesome. I remember starting to play Rogue Trader right when it first came out. During the summer, I'd go and have role-playing night on Monday night, and be there until two or three in the morning playing. Monnie even gave me a Tick (old comic book) T-shirt for my 18th birthday, right off the rack.

I spent my college years in Athens, GA, where I didn't game much because I couldn't afford it. There was a hobby store there that was a sister store to the Comix Castle in Macon, and the original owner ran that store. He wasn't quite as cool as Monnie was, but he was all right. I never really had a problem with him in the least, though he didn't really do that much gaming in his store. It was mostly a comic place.

When I moved to Savannah, I started playing at Morningstar Games. I met a lot of good people there and rekindled my love of Warhammer and 40K. That store and the customers there were some of the biggest things I missed when I had to move to Atlanta. The owner was awesome, and many times on Saturday evenings, a bunch of us (including the owner) would all drive somewhere and have dinner together. I remember Olive Garden being a really popular choice.

When I came to Atlanta, I discovered a humongous hobby store that had a big gaming area in NW Atlanta. I met a lot of people there that I am still friends with. It being a big type store, not a small business, there was a lot more turnover in management. That was the first gaming store that ticked me off. The son of the franchise owner would take the pre-release Codex/Army Books and the pre-release of the WHFB 8th edition book home for days at a time to read it instead of leaving it at the store for prospective customers to look at. I remember when the Blood Angels codex came out, that guy had the codex at his house for a week. Sigh.

Since then, I've found what is arguably my favorite game store of all time, considering the owner, the space, the variety of gaming that goes on, the ambiance and the clientele. I'm giving a shameless plug here, the place is called Giga-Bites Cafe, and the owner posts as Sergeant Horse on these forums. It's just a great place to play. They have a great community, the owner supports the club, makes space available for a wide variety of different gaming systems, stocks a wide variety of gaming material, and will always find a way to make time to play a newbie to the store. Even now that I live 20 miles away from the store, I still make a point of driving up there to spend an afternoon every weekend, even though there are closer stores.

You see, I've hardly had any real negative experiences with the FLGS, regardless of where I've lived. So, I actually feel sorry for Carmachu that his experiences have left him with such a negative impression of that type of store.

See my dream is opening a FLGS and really supporting the community of gamers around me. People like Carmachu make me question my dream. I wonder if I should open a store when you'll have people like him never being happy and scareing all the good players away.

Yes the FLGS should always give good customer service to the customers even on a bad day. But if you come in as a customer with a chip on your shoulder then what do you expect in return?

UsdiThunder wrote:

Yes the FLGS should always give good customer service to the customers even on a bad day. But if you come in as a customer with a chip on your shoulder then what do you expect in return?

Good polite customer service, no matter the mood I'm in. The store is selling goods, they don't have the option to be rude in return, not if they what are money. Thats how ALL stores work.

Noir wrote:

UsdiThunder wrote:

Yes the FLGS should always give good customer service to the customers even on a bad day. But if you come in as a customer with a chip on your shoulder then what do you expect in return?

Good polite customer service, no matter the mood I'm in. The store is selling goods, they don't have the option to be rude in return, not if they what are money. Thats how ALL stores work.

That would be great if they are automatons, but as humans with emotions we tend to reciprocate how we are treated. Most of the time we don't even catch we are doing it.

Noir wrote:Good polite customer service, no matter the mood I'm in. The store is selling goods, they don't have the option to be rude in return, not if they what are money. Thats how ALL stores work.

100% Wrong. Just because you are in a bad mood does not give you the right to treat someone badly. If you are rude they are quite within their rights to kick you out for being a jerk. God, what makes you think you have the right to go somewhere and be rude just because you have some money in your pocket and your day isn't going well.

Self-important Americans who think their piddly little bit of money in their back pocket some how makes them important are annoying.

You are not important as an single customer. Your little bit of money isn't that important. The other 99.999% of customers who can behave like functioning adults are important. Volume is important not individuals and providing you treat the 99.999% of customers nicely and provide good service to them the self-important jerks can take a hike. No big deal and no big loss.

fullheadofhair wrote:

Noir wrote:Good polite customer service, no matter the mood I'm in. The store is selling goods, they don't have the option to be rude in return, not if they what are money. Thats how ALL stores work.

100% Wrong. Just because you are in a bad mood does not give you the right to treat someone badly. If you are rude they are quite within their rights to kick you out for being a jerk. God, what makes you think you have the right to go somewhere and be rude just because you have some money in your pocket and your day isn't going well.

Self-important Americans who think their piddly little bit of money in their back pocket some how makes them important are annoying.

You are not important as an single customer. Your little bit of money isn't that important. The other 99.999% of customers who can behave like functioning adults are important. Volume is important not individuals and providing you treat the 99.999% of customers nicely and provide good service to them the self-important jerks can take a hike. No big deal and no big loss.

Go to any big store and I'm right,. Take safeway (a store that dosen't need to worry about that one guys money), it part of the rules to smile. It called customer service industry for a reason, no matter what you belive. It is the job of the staff to make to customer to want to spend there money, there no other reason for there to be there. If you can't make a rude person into a rude customer, find a differen t line of work. I deal with pissed parents on daily in my job, other can do the same, it what we are payed for.

while different stores and places have different policies regarding abuse to their employees, i find that even these places have something in common:

annoy/harass/scare away the customers, you're out.

a customer complaining about another customer is the fastest way to get a manager on the floor.

fullheadofhair wrote:

Noir wrote:Good polite customer service, no matter the mood I'm in. The store is selling goods, they don't have the option to be rude in return, not if they what are money. Thats how ALL stores work.

100% Wrong. Just because you are in a bad mood does not give you the right to treat someone badly. If you are rude they are quite within their rights to kick you out for being a jerk. God, what makes you think you have the right to go somewhere and be rude just because you have some money in your pocket and your day isn't going well.

Self-important Americans who think their piddly little bit of money in their back pocket some how makes them important are annoying.

You are not important as an single customer. Your little bit of money isn't that important. The other 99.999% of customers who can behave like functioning adults are important. Volume is important not individuals and providing you treat the 99.999% of customers nicely and provide good service to them the self-important jerks can take a hike. No big deal and no big loss.

This.

It sort of goes along with point #4 I was making to Carmanchu.

4) A store owner only owes you a few things. A courteous demeanor, product knowledge, and a safe establishment if he allows in store gaming. Anything beyond that is icing on the cake. Interpreting anything more than that as lacking on his part is bogus on yours. It's true that the greatest of owners will allow little favors and be more like a friend from whom you buy things, but if you expect them to hurt their business to cater to you or to spend hours tweaking a schedule that makes you happy at the expense of other gaming communities and you are again acting like a very entitled 40 year old who had a mother that never told him no.

As I said before, no one opens any kind of business with the hopes that no one buys any of their stuff. A store owner becomes angry and bitter when distributors screw them around and when customers whine about products and the store. When a customer (example unnamed) enters with a combative attitude, of course a store employee will be leery of him.

When I find a good store, and I have two of them, I make sure my money goes to them first. They allow me to sit and use their tables, I don't make a nuisance of myself, and I converse with the owners when they have time. They opened these stores (one-way), so I am respectful of them (other way). It is a two way street where we both profit. Neither of them begged me to be there with needless discounts, that's not their jobs.

Now I remember we uso to have a card game store with a Magic TG as favorite game. The store owner hates Yugioh! so he use to crack-break expensive Yugioh! cards in front of customers to make them clear how he hates that game. Bad attitute in front of customers.

Our FLGS has just this week stopped its long-running weekly YuGiOh! tournaments. The reason? Unlike MtG and Pokemon players (and the rest of the boardgame/minigame crew), the recent YGO players bought most of their stuff online. The majority of the YGO cards to leave the shop over the last few months... have been prizes for the tournaments. Add in some ugly incidents with expensive decks gone missing (a phenomenon unknown amoung the other CCG players here) and the FLGS has decided to cut its losses on YGO.

A pity, I suppose, but if the local YGO players aren't profitable, then why would the FLGS continue to cater to them?

(As an aside, the YGO aren't banned from the store or anything, there just won't be any more organized tournaments. I also rather suspect that future orders of YGO stock will be much reduced.)

Vulcan wrote:
A pity, I suppose, but if the local YGO players aren't profitable, then why would the FLGS continue to cater to them?

And that is why I will continue to buy my 40k stuff online, I'm one of the few 40k players the store has left so any purchases I make aren't going to make them any significant profit and I can see them cutting down on 40k space shortly.

Vulcan wrote:Our FLGS has just this week stopped its long-running weekly YuGiOh! tournaments. The reason? Unlike MtG and Pokemon players (and the rest of the boardgame/minigame crew), the recent YGO players bought most of their stuff online. The majority of the YGO cards to leave the shop over the last few months... have been prizes for the tournaments. Add in some ugly incidents with expensive decks gone missing (a phenomenon unknown amoung the other CCG players here) and the FLGS has decided to cut its losses on YGO.

Figured I ought to chip in here, being an employee at the FLGS in question. While the above factors contributed slightly, the primary reason was the local board game meet-up group (who we are the sponsor of) lost its Thursday night slot at another location. Yu-Gi-Oh turn-outs have been flagging, and the meet-up group's are consistently 30+ and growing. Since we're primarily a board game store (yes, even above wargaming and cards), having a set weekly date for board game playing in store just makes sense. We're still carrying Yu-Gi-Oh, and are considering bringing back tournaments when the planned store expansion is finished and we have more gaming space.

-Alex


Automatically Appended Next Post:

jgehunter wrote:

Vulcan wrote:
A pity, I suppose, but if the local YGO players aren't profitable, then why would the FLGS continue to cater to them?

And that is why I will continue to buy my 40k stuff online, I'm one of the few 40k players the store has left so any purchases I make aren't going to make them any significant profit and I can see them cutting down on 40k space shortly.

I'd argue that that sort of attitude is counter-productive. Every little bit of income is important for a small business like most LGSes, and stores certainly don't like to see their existing stock lingering on the shelves. On the business side, shrinking stock in anything is a great way to make players of that game feel unappreciated, and makes it far more unlikely that anyone new will pick up the game. Plus, playing a game in store that you refuse to buy there is a great way to make your LGS employees feel unappreciated.

Laughing Man, what store is this?

Game Nite on Watson Road. If you stop by, I'm Alex, the anorexic-looking one who talks too much.

EDIT: And is it just me, or is the link not working?

Ahh, I frequent Fantasy Books and Games on the Illinois side of the river. 45 minute drives to the stores over there have never been worth it to me when we've got such a good store on this side.

Fair enough. I've been to Fantasy Books and Games for a FoodMachine event, it's a great store. If you ever find yourself in the neighborhood though, feel free to stop by.

Are tournies over there any good? We usually get pretty small showings over here and I've wanted to attend a tourney that's had more then 8 players for a while now.

Edit: Sorry for the threadjack.

Working on that. Our Warmachine tournaments are routinely huge, but we're still growing our 40K (and to a lesser extent fantasy) communities.

Ahhh, thats unfortunate. Maybe next time i'm in St. Louis I'll swing by though.

/threadjack

The real trick is, we have an ENORMOUS number of game stores here in St. Louis. The competion is ferocious.

The Fantasy Shop has something like 6 locations, there's three or four Fantasy Books and Games locations, Fantasy II in the city, Game Nite, Miniature Market, Star Clipper has a couple locations, Ogre games in the city, and a buch more whose names I forget but I know the locations.

The population density of gamers around here is great!

To be fair, Miniature Market doesn't exactly count anymore, after they got rid of pretty much their entire retail space, and all but a single table of gaming space.