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mikhaila wrote:I've personally known this person for about 20 years. He came into my shop as a skinny 8 year old kid. Very polite person, very into his gaming. Played in a lot of GT's, paints well, low key sales techniques, very big into the hobby and running events. He was between jobs a couple of years ago and worked for me at my shops, and did a great job. He started up in Voorhees, and moved into the managers spot when they went to one person stores. On his off days he'd bring a half dozen guys over to my store to game and make scenery, buying the scenery supplies himself, and making sure his store had good tables for players to use. I'm quite shocked to see him let go by GW.

As are we. As are we. He was an amazing manager. As for the nay-sayers: There may be other reasons to the firing. The community was given no answers. I was there on sunday afternoon while GW kept all the community members outside for an hour while they fired him. After waiting an hour, this person tried to hold the door open for the community (while the new Black shirt and a HR person was to run the store inside), but was forced by his (former) supervisors to close the door and walk to his car. The community had to wait another half hour before they let us in (Note: The store was supposed to open at noon, No one was let in until 1:15). No answers were really given to the community unless it was "I don't know why he was let go."

This firing was a complete slap in the face to the community.

You seriously think they're going to give you an answer?

They're not.

And continually using hyperbolic statements like "a complete slap in the face to the community" just makes you look silly.

Kanluwen wrote:And continually using hyperbolic statements like "a complete slap in the face to the community" just makes you look silly.

I've posted about this twice.... "continually" is quite a stretch.

On the other hand though escorting a well liked (ex)employee off the premises in front of customers and keeping them waiting outside is so discrete and understated.

I agree with a lot of what you have said Kanners, especially about not airing laundry in public, but can't help thinking that this was not dealt with well.

Stoupe wrote:No answers were really given to the community unless it was "I don't know why he was let go.

Sorry that you lost a valued member of your community.

But not telling you why he was fired was the right thing to do. Legally they CANNOT discuss this. If you want to know, the only person who can tell you anything is the guy who was fired. Heck, if I was GW, I would not even discuss or respond to anything regarding his termination.

Does anyone know if there are confid. clauses written in GW manager contracts?

Kanluwen wrote:You seriously think they're going to give you an answer?

They're not.

And continually using hyperbolic statements like "a complete slap in the face to the community" just makes you look silly.

In a situation like this, with people waiting outside the store, I do think people seriously expect an answer. Many of those people were part of a community, and not used to how callous a corporate firing can be. So while you or I don't expect GW HR to ever give an answer, those customers probably do want to know why the head of their community was fired, and fired in that way.

I don't see his statements as being silly. There was a very strong community at that store. The community, or roughly 30 people of it, got to sit outside a store and then watch him be escorted out. They naturally want to know what's going on. Even if GW can't/doesn't want say why he was fired, the manner in which this was done is certainly a 'slap in the face'. There are better ways to let someone go than the way this was done. I have a bit of sympathy for the new manager, as he has his work cut out for him.

So what 'answer' did the fired manager give? Or did he just walk to his car and drive off into the sunset? If he was a prominate in the local community and you guys were so involved with him, I am surprised that he hasn't told you guys 'Nope, no reason except for that one person I asked to leave because profanity.'

I am surprised with so many people fighting and making a stink of second-hand info, no one has direct confirmation of 'his side of the story'.

There may have been legitimate reasons and often companies don't give any reason because they want to give the departing employee a smidge of dignity in case the person did something bad. Most times companies are not even legally allowed to tell other companies why they dismissed you so not only are you due no explanation but legally they may not be able to give you one out of fear of opening themselves to a lawsuit.

This is fairly common in the business world... If you don't like it, vote with your wallet.

You know, the interesting thing is that I haven't seen a single less than glowing comment about the fired manager on the GW store's Facebook page.

You'd think there was at least one person who was willing to come out and say something maybe a little negative.

Though, you have to understand all you guys, GW absolutely CANNOT tell you why the former employee was released. That would be a privacy violation that could lead them to being sued by the former employee.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Haha...I just kept reading down the Facebook page. Good ol' "Mauleed" posted asking about the firing.

mikhaila wrote:The community, or roughly 30 people of it, got to sit outside a store and then watch him be escorted out. They naturally want to know what's going on. Even if GW can't/doesn't want say why he was fired, the manner in which this was done is certainly a 'slap in the face'. There are better ways to let someone go than the way this was done. I have a bit of sympathy for the new manager, as he has his work cut out for him.

This is exactly what I meant. I wanted an answer because to see him escorted out was a bit much. The store is closed on Monday and Tuesday. They couldn't wait til he closed at 6 pm on Sunday to do this? They had to do it publicly in front of all of us.

nkelsch wrote:So what 'answer' did the fired manager give? Or did he just walk to his car and drive off into the sunset? If he was a prominate in the local community and you guys were so involved with him, I am surprised that he hasn't told you guys 'Nope, no reason except for that one person I asked to leave because profanity.'

I am surprised with so many people fighting and making a stink of second-hand info, no one has direct confirmation of 'his side of the story'.

He has been more than appreciative of the community feedback. He has told some members of the community the reasoning, but to air it online is his choice and his choice alone. He remains a great member of the community, often posting for us and keeping in contact. He actually has been more than professional and most of the anger has come from the community and not him.

Stoupe wrote:

He has been more than appreciative of the community feedback. He has told some members of the community the reasoning, but to air it online is his choice and his choice alone. He remains a great member of the community, often posting for us and keeping in contact. He actually has been more than professional and most of the anger has come from the community and not him.

He sounds good then, some of the people posting on that GWs store's FB wall are doing him a disservice.

The best thing they can do is vote with their wallet. When I see people who whine and cry but still buy their plasticrack, it seems empty and wasteful.

The real thing these people can do is help this fellow find a new job making more than he did at GW. That would show real support and realistically, hand-picked references is the only way anyone is getting employed in this economy.

He should have been removed out of hours so as not to make a scene and have some privacy. To remove someone from the premises in the middle of the day is a bit much, did they really want to humiliate him?

Really though, there's no way of knowing what has been going on behind the scenes. There was one story on Dakka of a guy who seemed the nicest store owner, then it was found that the store had a £8000 hole in the accounts. I'm not at all saying that's the case here, but you just don't know what was going on between him and his superiors based on your interactions with him.

In my experience, companies usually will have some sort of escort for the ex employee if the individual had access to decent amounts of cash, merchandise or customer personal info. Sometimes locks and computer passwords are changed as well. It usually is overkill, but for bean counters that worry over every lost penny or a risk to said penny, its neccessary to their peace of mind.

Not trying to justify GW firing a seemingly great ambassador to the hobby, just putting it into some sort of understandly reasonable context.

Well certainly they would not sack you and then leave you in charge of sensitive material or cash, but to create a scene by chucking you out in the middle of the day seems weird. Did they arrive at the store and find something they took an immediate dislike towards? It should have been done at the end of hours, not in front of a crowd of customers.


Of course I gather in the US you can sack someone on the spot at any time without reason and many in the UK might not realise just how non-existent employees rights are in some areas. It simply isn't like that in the UK, you have rights to notice periods and fair reasons for dismissal.

NELS1031 wrote:In my experience, companies usually will have some sort of escort for the ex employee if the individual had access to decent amounts of cash, merchandise or customer personal info. Sometimes locks and computer passwords are changed as well. It usually is overkill, but for bean counters that worry over every lost penny or a risk to said penny, its neccessary to their peace of mind.

Not trying to justify GW firing a seemingly great ambassador to the hobby, just putting it into some sort of understandly reasonable context.

A coordinated perpwalk and escort out of the building is standard operating procedure for dismissals. They want as minimal notice to the employee as possible to avoid any possible damage, theft or other issues. Always pull them in to HR when they have no chance to do anything, then cut their rights, lock down everything and then walk them out into the street. People can make an appointment to retrieve personal belongings at a later date. Also doing the exact same overkill proceedure in all situations protects the company.

It really is not that unheard of and many times it is for the employees own protection as it prevents them from making bad and possible criminal decisions in a bad situation. Gives them time to cool off and protects both ex-employee and company.

The way they handled it may have been overkill, but sounds pretty reasonable from a corporate POV and how I expect good firings to be handled in a legally judicious way. Also sounds like there was a crowd of people in the store who would have been unruly... the best way to stop a riot of 30 people is to shuffle them all out of the store before they know what is happening and get a chance to cause a scene. Maybe they were more worried about the people in the score causing trouble and not the manager. Considering the posts on the FB wall, sounds like they protected themselves from a bad situation with out of control customers.

Howard A Treesong wrote:Well certainly they would not sack you and then leave you in charge of sensitive material or cash, but to create a scene by chucking you out in the middle of the day seems weird. Did they arrive at the store and find something they took an immediate dislike towards? It should have been done at the end of hours, not in front of a crowd of customers.

Yeah, that was kind of unprofessional for the higher ups to do it during business hours with paying customers in full view. I wasn't trying to justify that aspect.

But on the flipside, I have seen it done before with former employees who made some seriously egregious errors or malficence, which makes me curious to see both sides of this, and we'll most likely never know that.

Where I work they tell you you're fired somewhere around 3:00. Then security walks you to your office/desk and watches while you put your things in a box. Then they escort you out the door (after having taken your key and ID badge of course). This is to make sure that you don't walk off with things that don't belong to you and you don't have an opportunity to damage company property. It is also so that you can't make a fuss about it to your fellow employees during work hours.
It may be humiliating but the company has to protect itself from people disrupting and/or damaging its property.

Stoupe wrote:This is exactly what I meant. I wanted an answer because to see him escorted out was a bit much. The store is closed on Monday and Tuesday. They couldn't wait til he closed at 6 pm on Sunday to do this? They had to do it publicly in front of all of us.

While it sounds harsh - they have things to do as well. People at corporate headquarters generally don't work weekends, or retail hours. The fact they were asked by someone higher than them to do it on a Saturday probably pissed them off, and they did it when they could. Mikhaila was right when he said how callous corporate firings can be. Even corporate redundancies can be harsh. They're not paid to be nice, and they likely don't know them personally, so have no reason to play nice. GW are no different to other corporations. It's unfortunate they decided to do it during opening hours - probably would have been better to do it before or after as you said. It's also likely they wanted to do it before opening hours. Didn't someone say the sotre was meant to open at noon? It's likely they intended to do it before opening, and just slot the new manager in, but got delayed and had to do it then without wasting the rest of the day.

Not sticking up for GW in this case. From the glowing comments about him, he's someone they were stupid to let go of, and they did it in a terrible way. But again, corporate layoffs are rarely done nicely.

I also feel that there is probably more to this than meets they eye, but understand that employment law in the US is very different to the UK.

Just to put things into context as to why GW takes a hard line on this sort of thing though I can tell you a couple of incidents that I had to deal with when I worked for them.

One of my jobs for GW was refitting new stores, or resolving the fallout from situations like this.

I remember one London store where the manager was fired over the telephone from Notts before they thought to get the shop keys from him.

The store in question had a flat/apartment above it which was used as a stockroom. The fired manager, one of his mates and his girlfriend had the locks to the store changed and squatted in the shop, living in the flat above.

When my team got there after he was finally evicted we found the shop in such a mess that the whole store had to be refitted. They had used the shop as a toilet and totally trashed it, and had stolen the shop safe and most of the stock.

In another incident a manager had "borrowed" a substantial amount of money from the store safe to pay for a holiday and I had to wait outside the store with two police officers from 6am to catch him when he opened up.

In that case I felt bad as he had the money in his wallet to put back in the safe, and if one of his key timers hadn't grassed him up Head Office would never have known.

However he was charged with theft, taken away in handcuffs in front of his colleagues and ended up serving time in prison. Needless to say he also sacked.

The reason I mention these incidents is to highlight the fact that a manager has access to keys, cash, stock etc as somebody already mentioned.

It is common practice now to escort a manager off the premises immediately so tha these sort of things don't happen.

However it is highly unusual to do this during opening hours, in front of customers, and is also grossly unprofessional because it results in this sort of bad publicity.

It is also unusual for a manager to be sacked on the spot in the UK unless he is guilty of gross misconduct, although that may not be the case in the US.

In the UK he would have been suspended on full pay whilst an investigation took place, and if fired would be able to present his case to an industrial tribunal. He would also be entitled to representation from his union if he was a member of one.

In this case I won't defend GW's actions, as being escorted from the store in front of his customers must have been both humiliating and embarrassing, and frankly I am very surprised this happened.

However I understand why a manager would be summarily dismissed and escorted from the premises, just not in front of his customers and I hope if anything good comes of this it will be that that doesn't happen again.

I wish him well for the future though, and urge the community to rally together and somehow keep him involved in some way.

I feel bad for one of my co-workers. At the end of his shift tonight, he's being told that he will no longer Have a shift at that particular account.

I myself was fired from my last job with no notice, and it really sucks.

Stoupe wrote:

mikhaila wrote:I've personally known this person for about 20 years. He came into my shop as a skinny 8 year old kid. Very polite person, very into his gaming. Played in a lot of GT's, paints well, low key sales techniques, very big into the hobby and running events. He was between jobs a couple of years ago and worked for me at my shops, and did a great job. He started up in Voorhees, and moved into the managers spot when they went to one person stores. On his off days he'd bring a half dozen guys over to my store to game and make scenery, buying the scenery supplies himself, and making sure his store had good tables for players to use. I'm quite shocked to see him let go by GW.

As are we. As are we. He was an amazing manager. As for the nay-sayers: There may be other reasons to the firing. The community was given no answers. I was there on sunday afternoon while GW kept all the community members outside for an hour while they fired him. After waiting an hour, this person tried to hold the door open for the community (while the new Black shirt and a HR person was to run the store inside), but was forced by his (former) supervisors to close the door and walk to his car. The community had to wait another half hour before they let us in (Note: The store was supposed to open at noon, No one was let in until 1:15). No answers were really given to the community unless it was "I don't know why he was let go."

This firing was a complete slap in the face to the community.

What is shocking to me is that after they escorted the manager out, you all went right back in. To find out answer, I imagine, but did anyone stay? Did people sit around and game for the rest of the day? Or did they leave out of outrage?

As I mentioned in another thread about this, I doubt this is the whole story.
A company simply would not fire someone for the reasons stated unless there were serious underlying issues.
They would leave themselves liable to serious legal issues.

As to the HR people not telling the reasons why he was fired to the customers, They can't tell you. It's none of your business, and you have no right to breach the ex managers privacy in this matter.
If you want to know the full reason, you'll have to ask him, although you're unlikely to get the full story.

Seems like an unfortunate incident. My prior experience with managerial positions in the (Australian) retail industry is that termination is normally done during after hours and behind closed doors, regardless if it is outside the usual working hours for the area manager/corporate representative. The style of termination used in the OP is similar to the type I’ve seen used by shonky low level businesses.

At the end of the day, regardless if the person was guilty or innocent, its poor form to let such matters be visible outside of closed doors as it has a negative affect on the reputations of both parties (not airing dirty laundry etc). Given GW’s extremely odd practices the past year or so, I’m not surprised that this has happened. Expect to see further craziness in the future etc etc.

Let me get this straight. After directing all of their focus towards children GW is now firing employees for reinforcing family friendly environments.

Another case of GW's left hand not even knowing its right hand exists***.






***Assuming there isn't more to the story, that is.

"The minds of gods are not for mortals to know, or to judge. Accept that Tzeentch has a place for all of us in his grand scheme, and be happy in the part that you have to play."

Not sure why people are complaining. GW clearly put its company policy in the most recent CSM codex...

Well, we cannot be privvy to the internal process so i guess the only thing that the OP's community can do is En Masse Write to GW head office deploring the loss of this store manager.
if done by many people and worded in a level and polite way they may realise what a following he has built up and it may influence their decision.

may.

there's no guarentee's but its worth a try. i would also advise if you are going to do this you do NOT send any nasty letters, you don't know better then their management as you are not in on the full reasons so just be polite and hammer them with letters (paper not e-mail)

I agree with Hulksmash.

There is always more to stories like this.

Always.

While normally I would say that there would be more to this, the glowing comments about him really do seem to tip it in his favour.

Could be that the guys complaining did a similar thing to what your doing, got friends to make false complaints or perhaps accused him of something worse.

All I can say is good luck, its a damn shame that someone who did so much for the community gets treated like that

H.B.M.C. wrote:Another case of GW's left hand not even knowing its right hand exists***.

I'd say it's more a case of it's right hand not knowing what it's doing because it's too busy jerking off onto the faces of it's customers

Asuron wrote:While normally I would say that there would be more to this, the glowing comments about him really do seem to tip it in his favour.

This is a common misconception: that employees that are beloved by customers are always good employees.

I worked for a small business, and the senior salesguy (guy who closed, had a key, etc) was a great guy. Loved by the customers. Got fired when he was stealing hundreds of dollars a day.

Employee fraud is very common, and far more common among higher employees.

I'm not accusing anybody of anything, but it's more common for an otherwise model employee to violate some major breach of trust than for a company to fire a model employee over a handful of complaints.