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MarvinGayeIsMyDaddy wrote:

Grot 6 wrote:???

What do you expect? When you go into a GW shop, your a Dupe that is ripe for the picking. If they don't nick you then they arn't going to think they are doing thier job.
Do what I do, tell the lackeys to have a nice hot cup of S.T.F.U., and if they don'ttop !@#$ing with you that you will turn thier store into a gymnasium.

In GW stores, you are eternally 14. go ahead and act like it. Call out the redshirts and smack one or two around.

!@#$ GW's weaksauce stores and thier subpop !@#$ing employees.

Maybe they treat you like you are 14 because you are 14.

Hey, GAY. look before you step next time. A post like yours opens alot of doors for me, but im going to stay on my side of the fence.

I'm probibly generalizing that GW employees over on this side of the pond are pretty notorious for being obtuse overselling !@#$'s with a full bag of get a clue.
If you're not, then you are the exception rather then the rule.
You are probibly the guys that need to get your @#$% friends in line who give people the general opinion.

What I don't mind seeing is someone who doesn't mind having a conversation, but lays off of the " SO and SO is the flavor of the month, so YOU HAVE TO GET SOME OF THEM!"
crap that is the picturebook example of an overbearing asshat that is trying too hard to make a sale.

GAY, you get a pass right now, because in point of fact, I'm trying to turn over a new leaf and I already see how this thread is all in all tame enough to stay civil.

Grot 6, your posts in this thread are inflammatory and insulting. You:

1. Recommend acting like a jerk -- (In GW stores, you are eternally 14. go ahead and act like it. Call out the redshirts and smack one or two around.)
2. Are skirting too close to the no profanity line -- (We know what STFU and the "cartoon swearing" mean)
3. You say you're turning over a new leaf, but your reference to MarvinGayeIsMyDaddy is obviously you calling him gay -- (seriously, he gets a pass? You're insulting him, in your mind, in the same breath!)
4. Got called out for being immature and responded rudely

You generally have a bad attitude, but your behavior in this thread has put you over the line.

Hey, GAY. look before you step next time. A post like yours opens alot of doors for me, but im going to stay on my side of the fence.

edited by JFRAZ as being offensive

2. Are skirting too close to the no profanity line -- (We know what STFU and the "cartoon swearing" mean)

I'm pretty sure the repeated capitalization of "GAY" is enough over the profanity line to warrant a response other than a coy talking too.

JFRAZ note: OK PEOPLE ENOUGH MOVE ON

Honestly most of the GW stores Ive been to have been great, my local one in Milwaukee( go check it out if youre around there tell em menzer sent you they know me) is run by a buddy of mine who takes all of his veteran players(well not all but the decent ones) and talks to them all once a week and tries to figure out what works best and what doesn't, and the rest of the workers are great too, never knew em before a few years ago, all 3 are friends of mine now and I live in florida currently and am in the army so am rarely able to stop in.

The reason i said all that was because I think the generalizations werent really relevant, I agree with all the posters who say you get more good then bad and just wanted to tell a story of the good who actually treats the vets well, instead of treating them like they are 14.

That said it is a buisiness, you can run a game store 2 ways as far as Im concerened(and this comes not from me but from the aforementioned manager of the GW store and other managers of game stores Ive known/know) 1) as a place to hang out, where the buisiness aspect is secondary or 2) as a place to sell stuff primarily while gaming is secondary.
Both can be effective and make money, but GW is first and foremost out to make money and not be a place to hang out, so I think everyone just needs to keep that in mind as well.

Grot, gay isn't an insult, and complaining about being treated like a 14 year old, and then acting like one in the same thread is hardly conducive to a coherent point.

To quote an anti-homophobia advert in the UK, some people are gay. Get over it.

And if indeed you are fourteen, I believe one of those ghastly emo bands released a song entitled 'Gay is not a synonym for lame'.

The OP more or less sums up why I go out of my way to avoid visiting GW stores. The employees are aggressive to the point of being annoying and I'd rather not have to answer "no" to a couple dozen sales attempts whenever I buy a new paint pot. A couple extra subway stops to the local game store was more than worth it back when I lived in Boston.

I have had similar experiences as the OP had.

But once they get use to me, they are ok. Once they know that I am only there to buy certain items, and I am not going to be sold on the latest item, they backed off and became rather helpful.

Of course they would then go and hire a new employee and I would have to break them in again.

Honestly, I never had a problem with this at most of the GW stores I've been in. At the GW here in Denver, before it sadly closed, I was on good terms with the managers. Once they know you've been in the hobby for a while, they stop trying to push things on you so much. There was always the,

"hey, have you pre-ordered this new shiny thing yet?"
"no, i don't need it and don't have the money to spend on it."
"but it's so shiny! and new!"

every now and then, but that's just them doing their job, and I don't fault them for it. They'd take my negatives with a smile anyway. I would often get in talks with them about whether or not these things were actually worth it, if certain rules were good, etc., and more often then not they'd admit that they were on my side.

I'm not sure, but I think that they're required to be very friendly and attentive when new people step into the store, offering demo games if they seem interested enough. For people who have an idea of what they want, they can help direct them to the right area, and suggest possible units and such. For veterans, soon as they said "I'm just here to pick up X" it was "alright, it's over here. let me know when you're ready."

Perhaps my store was atypical, but it was run well. Why GW decided to close it down and not replace it, I'll never know.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Yes. How dare an employee in a shop do his job.

What a swine! And perhaps if you tried saying 'no, really, I'm okay thank you' you might have gotten on a bit better.

That is probably the lamest excuse for poor employee behavior I've ever seen. If a customer reacted like that to his behavior, he's obviously a poor asset to GW and not doing his job correctly.


The last time I was in an actual GW store, most of the employee's had this unsettling sycophantic behavior, while its one thing to be enthusiastic, its another altogether to blab on about something that the customer either obviously doesn't care about or obviously doesn't agree with. My local independent is much better. If someone wants advice or is looking to buy stuff, they are helpful and realistic, rather than acting like used car salesman, they aren't going to try an unload an army on someone just because they need to meet a quota or shift stock, they'll ask someone what they are interested in and give them pointers or advice, but aren't going to be super pushy or try and cram the newest release down everyones throat.

The local Gw store I go to frequently cause i work evenings and have nothing to do during the day are extremly helpful and are all good friends of mine. But i think that if you are a frequent customer they learn how to treat you and what you want out of them. I am a Tourism major in college and thats what they teach us. Your good customers who come back time and time again you should know how they like to be treated and handled as a customer. So I think all this talk about bad employees is honestly just a result of poor comunication and sale training.

Tell you what's worse than pushy sales, I went into a LGS in central London last week looking for some paint, and as I walked in I just got this glare from the blokes in there, they went silent and just stared at me as I walked to the bit where the paint was. They then turned their backs on me and carried on talking. I had to say 'excuse me' three times before they turned, again glaring, to me and asked what I wanted, I told them, they said they didn't have it and turned their back. I'm not off in there again, I'll tell thee that. I can only assume that they were thrown by the sight of someone who had showered entering the shop.

It was your odor (or more to the point lack thereof). Without the identifying scent of three day sweat and last week's chip grease wiped on the seat of your trousers, you were like a restless ghost invading their store, seemingly there, but yet lacking a physical presence. It's no wonder they were threatening and unsettled.

Greebynog wrote:Tell you what's worse than pushy sales, I went into a LGS in central London last week looking for some paint, and as I walked in I just got this glare from the blokes in there, they went silent and just stared at me as I walked to the bit where the paint was. They then turned their backs on me and carried on talking. I had to say 'excuse me' three times before they turned, again glaring, to me and asked what I wanted, I told them, they said they didn't have it and turned their back. I'm not off in there again, I'll tell thee that. I can only assume that they were thrown by the sight of someone who had showered entering the shop.

Yowch!

Those chaps need a decent kick up the into reality methinks. Thats more awkward than the time I got kicked out of a French store selling GW stuff by a policewoman because I didn't know what she was saying xD

Greebynog wrote:Tell you what's worse than pushy sales, I went into a LGS in central London last week looking for some paint, and as I walked in I just got this glare from the blokes in there, they went silent and just stared at me as I walked to the bit where the paint was. They then turned their backs on me and carried on talking. I had to say 'excuse me' three times before they turned, again glaring, to me and asked what I wanted, I told them, they said they didn't have it and turned their back. I'm not off in there again, I'll tell thee that. I can only assume that they were thrown by the sight of someone who had showered entering the shop.

Which one was that?

Hmmm, you people across the pond sound like you're getting the short end of the stick when it comes to Redshirts...

I am not a GW Fanboy by any means, but the vast majority of staff i deal with here at my local shops in Canada are awesome. Not pushy, but not complacent.

While I am not as aged as the original poster, I am a veteran gamer and find I am treated by the staff consistently as such.

They know I need little help with modelling, painting and gaming advice, but they know I still come in for a reason.

And that is to get new info, new releases, maybe some friendly chat or theoryhammer ideas.

Usually all it takes is a mention of a cool new model on their part to get my mind churning and next thing I'm buying a new army.

Well trained staff (with competent managers) can recognize the differing levels of gamer and cater to them as such.

The bad salespeople and management tend to group everyone together and use the say technique, day in and day out.

I've been in GW for a few hours painting and seen a staff member do the same ol sales routine to 5 different customers. He thinks he has a 'good pitch' or tactic, but usually it sees the customer out the door instead.

I have to say that generally speaking I have received an "appropriate" level of salesmenship in recent years. What always amuses me though is when some new guy is doing the demo games - giving it all the "pew pew" and "dakkadakkadakka" noises, accompanied by completely hammy death throes and general wows. If when I was a kid someone had demo'd a game to me in that manner I'd have run an absolute mile! Maybe kids these days need this stuff though! Who knows? Back in the day though, even the bright red and orange paint that was everywhere was enough to make me hide under the table!

YAY! It's the "Let's heap on GW Store Staff" thread. Again.

And again.

Look, you know if you're going into a GW store, you're going to get a certain type of reaction based on their training. People with varying levels of social awareness/awkwardness being excited about the hobby. If you're looking for a lively debate about the various aspects of the hobby, you're likely to get it.

And about the CoS/orphaned army issue, the dude was (awkwardly) trying to look out for you. Take it in that light.

It's like that comic said about his wife: If something I say can be taken two ways, and one of them offends you, I meant the other one.

All I can say is, if I were 13 years old and local to a GW, red shirts would probably
have been the greatest boon in my learning to paint. Instead, I took instruction
from the folks on Dakka in my college years.

To be honest, I've had nothing but good experiences with my local GW store, but then it's right next to where I work so I end up popping in most days on my lunchbreak to kill time.

For everyone who has issues with staff being "pushy", just tell them you're browsing, it's simple.

Occasionally you get a new member of staff who takes their sales training a little too seriously and tries to push things down your throat, maybe it's just me, but I find this pretty amusing and have no real issue with it.

I've been to several GW stores including the Baltimore battle bunker. I have only one thing to really comment on. The GW - Franklin Mills, PA store, despite my best efforts to convey that I'm NOT a new player, just one that is restarting the hobby, the Staff wanted to treat me as a n00b and gave me the sales pitch on everything. This was annoying, but none the less their job. I do give them credit that despite giving me sales pitch after sales pitch, they were in no way pushy. They took my "No" answers the first time and moved on, making it more of an informative sales tactic, but still a little annoying to me.

yeah,
I'm 29yrs old.
I Like going into the 4 stores in my area because the staff are cool and nice to talk to.
Bromley, Oxford Street, Covent Garden and Blue Water
I like being excited about my hobby.
I like chatting about stuff, even stuff I already know.

you never know when you'll get a idea for something that you didn't think of.
for example when I was making my halfling Bloodbowl team I needed 2 treemen, so I'm stareing at the horrible WHFB Treeman and a box of dryads, when a GW dude asked me what i was looking for? he was able to help me, I hadn't thought about the LOTR range... but he ran over grabbed a few boxes and show'd them to me... and they were just what i was looking for.

GW Staff have always spoken to me with respect, So I find it hard to believe that there so little respect for them here?
Sure I'll moan if i think I got a raw deal with a broken model etc... but 99% of the time that gets fixed without complaint.

I really don't know what the issue here is...
If you don't want to talk about your hobby or the new releases or what your working on? just say so.
I say something like "sorry mate I'd like to have a look around pick up a few supplies and I'll get back to you when I'm ready."

Question: After the Staff guys asked you about what your working on, have you ever asked the GW staff guy what armys he's working on?

PaniC...

I don't patronize GW stores (thank the maker there isn't one in my state and I hope there never is one).

If YOU have a choice, you should find a nice FLGS and visit it instead.

A GW store is what it is.

Vets come there to BS and perhaps paint with like minded people.

New players come to get games in.

People who've never heard of the game come in to see what the hell is going on, and get introduced to the hobby.

The people who work there can be douchebags, but they can be great, same as any other store. It's like going to T.G.I.Fridays. You know what yuo're going to get 85% of the time, everyonce in a while, you'll get a bad server. If you don't like being talked to, don't go into the store. The first few times, expect the questions. Play a few times, TREAT THE STAFF LIKE PEOPLE, and they'll get to know you and realize that you're a regular. Adjust expectations accordingly for new staff.

Unless you have your army's heraldry tattooed on your forhead, realize that they're going to assume you're like the 95% of the people who enter the store who need to have this stuff explained to them. Realize that your store is staffed by fellow nerds who are as awkward as you are/may have been. If you're that rare nerd mysteriously attractive to your perfered sex who never went through an awkward phase, revel in that and shut up.

They are trying to sell you stuff, but they're also trying to get to know you.

Valhallan, what you say about GW stores and GW employees is generic to the point where it can be said of any gaming store. The problem with GW is that their employees exaggerate these qualities to the point where it drives people away whereas FLGSs typically do not. I've never had FLGS employees try to sell me stuff that they know is crap (in fact, I've had some caution me against buying things), but I have had a red shirt try and convince me that Pariahs are a great addition to a Necron army.

You point out that every business has douchebag employees, but the fact that it is commonplace for gamers to complain specifically about the douchebaggery of GW salesmen is an indication of a problem. It all comes down to their management practices.

I'll step up for the GW store in the St. Louis area.
I'm rarely ever in there... I think I've been there less than a dozen times. In fact, I'm CERTAIN of it.


They know my name.

That's important to me. If you take the time to know my NAME, even though I am almost never in there, then you're taking the time to remember ME.
The first time or 2 I visited the store, I got the "hard sell." It wasn't as bad as some here have seen and I didn't feel pressured to buy. I felt like the dude just wasn't going to leave until he said everything he "needed" to. Once he said that and I indicated that I was good to go and would let him know if I needed anything, he left me alone.

Like I said, this happened the first 2 times I went there... and never again.

Even when the newest employee started, he seemed to take the lead from the older employees and let me be.

If I go in and ask about ANYTHING, I get escorted directly to it, unless I tell them that there's no need for them to escort me and ask them to just point it out... then, that's what they do.

I have good talks with them about armies and conversions and painting, etc. I can tell when they're saying the "GW theory" on things and when they're genuinely saying their thoughts, but that's from knowing the difference. Even if they espouse "GW mantra" to the kids, it isn't harmful... mostly, it just makes them build sucky armies. LOL

I like the St. Louis GW store.. I just wish it was in St. Louis and not East G. Zus.


Eric

I only have 1 GW store anywhere near me, Franklin Mills. It's about an hour away.. I only stop in if I'm in the area for any reason and I haven't been there in well over a year. But I've never had any kind of hard sell from anyone there.. usually just a "can I help you" and when I saw "naw, just looking" they go away. Or if I say "yeah I just gotta get this and that for my whatever army" they might engage in some small talk and ask about my army, but thats about it. I guess they can tell I know what I'm looking for or if I mention I have 4 other armies they know I know what I want

Danny Internets wrote:Valhallan, what you say about GW stores and GW employees is generic to the point where it can be said of any gaming store.

It also happens to be true. GW shops can be like FLGS's that happen to sell only one product line.

Danny Internets wrote:The problem with GW is that their employees exaggerate these qualities to the point where it drives people away whereas FLGSs typically do not. I've never had FLGS employees try to sell me stuff that they know is crap (in fact, I've had some caution me against buying things), but I have had a red shirt try and convince me that Pariahs are a great addition to a Necron army.

I argue that the problem is perception and target audience. You're a vet, I assume. You're probably not the target audience, and for you to assume that they should know you already play is foolish. Most of them are newish, as retail turnover is fairly high, and so they only have a modicum of training. People who only have one or two tools tend to wield them clumsily at times. Turn the questions around on them. Turn it into a conversation, same as you would at an FLGS. Don't go into a store with a chip on your shoulder.

Danny Internets wrote:You point out that every business has douchebag employees, but the fact that it is commonplace for gamers to complain specifically about the douchebaggery of GW salesmen is an indication of a problem. It all comes down to their management practices.

The fact of the matter is that the internet is full of people who complain about everything. If the internets were any true indications of the majority, Jervis would have been drawn and quartered years ago, and Rick Priestly would have been dipped in honey and rolled in bees. If you don't want to talk to people about your hobby, don't go into the store. People keep coming back to the stores, and keep joining the hobby. The Great Doom bespoke of by the Internets is not yet apon us.

Responding to what Danny and some others have said, I’d actually suggest that it’s more of an issue with any store staffed by geeks. Take this from a once-socially-awkward homeschooled-until-college geek. A lot of us are missing social skills and/or develop them late.

In many independent gaming or comic stores you also get antisocial behavior, but often of a different kind, mentioned by an earlier poster- the unfriendly, unhelpful, unwelcoming kind. Where the staff act as if the store is their private clubhouse, and have no clue about customer service. IME these stores/kind of staff are no less common than the pushy, over-the-top annoying GW staffer.

Thankfully, my experience is that BOTH of these kinds of problem staff are the exception rather than the rule. Most GW staffers I’ve met, and most FLGS folks, have been quite nice and decent people. Not offensive at all.

After nearly ten years of being active online in this hobby, I’ve certainly seen some complaints about GW staff. But my perception is that it’s gotten better overall, and that most gamers get along fine with their fellow gamers, those geeks-in-uniform who accept a less than outstanding wage in order to spend their days working with the toys we all love. Retail sales is never an easy job, and I can absolutely cut some slack for the guys who don’t quite understand how to properly and judiciously apply what they’re taught in sales training.

All that said, I think the OP’s post was a reasonable one. It’s reasoned, measured criticism of a staffer (not called out by name) who was (and probably still is) misapplying his sales technique.

I'm 2nd-ing Stelek's experience - no GW's here, only FLGS. All of them friendly, locally-owned/operated shops full of guys that have pointed me in the right direction, be they employees, owners, or simply the local gang of loiterers.

I've been in sales before and currently work telecom customer service. A sales rep is responsible for every customer that walks in the door. Every customer has unique needs and concerns and it's the sales staff's job to size them up, make modest inquiries, and provide the most effective service based on the information they obtain. If a beardy-lookin' git walks in - leave him be! He'll let you know what he needs and if you make small talk to open him up a bit, maybe he'll remember something he wanted to ask or get your opinion. If it's a soccer-mom or geek-dad (like myself) with 12 year olds, then approach away and wax poetically about whatever item is on the sales quota for the week/month.

Kilkrazy wrote:

Greebynog wrote:Tell you what's worse than pushy sales, I went into a LGS in central London last week looking for some paint, and as I walked in I just got this glare from the blokes in there, they went silent and just stared at me as I walked to the bit where the paint was. They then turned their backs on me and carried on talking. I had to say 'excuse me' three times before they turned, again glaring, to me and asked what I wanted, I told them, they said they didn't have it and turned their back. I'm not off in there again, I'll tell thee that. I can only assume that they were thrown by the sight of someone who had showered entering the shop.

Which one was that?

I'm curious too. The only LGS in central london proper that I am aware of is the Orc's Nest which could sort of match that description. Great range there though if you want anything non-GW.