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It's not exactly the toughest job in the world, you have to sell toysoldiers and get paid minimum wage for it. As usual, you are pretty much at mercy of any regional managers or the like which will very much terminate you and your fellow staffers if you don't meet some arbitrary and, might I add, sometimes unreasonable quota. The store also often gets misused as a daycare center and, in addition to the regional woes of working in retail, wargaming tends to attract an extra load of especially disgruntled crow that loves nothing more than complaining for hours on end about stuff you simply have no control over. Also, depending on how much the regional heads like to show up at random with some new kind of complaint or demand, the store atmosphere may or may not be alike to some facist police state.
Let's just say it's not as great as one might think at first.

Most of this is, of course, regionally dependant, but let's just say I've seen an enthusiastic employee become disillusioned and then completely fed up with the company and Warhammer/40k forever. It's not exactly an environment that fosters love for the subject.

I would argue being a GW employee these days rather than in the late 80's/90's is better (from a UK perspective). Yes, the employee discount is nothing like as good as it was before but these days we have the minimum wage here in the UK which means GW sales positions are at least on a bit more of a level with other equivalent jobs.

Obviously I haven't worked for them for a while but I looked back into getting a position with them in London which was about £25K per annum inclusive of London weighting. The equivalent job in other retailers including London weighting and annual bonus was £42K per annum, so quite a difference.

I will admit that if you live in other parts of the UK though it is incredibly variable and I may just be biased because I live in London / South East.

For example I could live like a King (well not really but certainly far better) in Nottingham on £25K per annum and could live in a much better house than in London.

I would say one of the biggest benefits working for GW now is actually having set, scheduled days off which we didn't have in my day. I have no idea how they manage annual leave now though with so many one man stores.

If you're OK with having Mondays & Tuesdays off for your working career.

I'm sure you could make a fair whack buying at 50% discount and selling on to your mates, but that was officially forbidden too.

They actually check now I believe, so that's a big no no and could be considered gross misconduct.

I must admit I still have stuff sitting in a cupboard that I bought on discount when I worked for them almost 20 years ago, lol, probably why I never had any money!

In terms of days off though having 2 regular consecutive days off working in retail is considered a luxury.

 Matthew wrote:
Are there any current or ex GW employees here? It doesn't matter if you're a clerk or a designer, just say what it was like! I've been talking to the guys at GW Stockholm, they feel like it's an awesome job.

Worked for GW in 83/84 as a miniature painter for the Dalling Road store.

It seems like it was a lot more fun than I hear about now.

MB

StraightSilver wrote:
In terms of days off though having 2 regular consecutive days off working in retail is considered a luxury.

Very true, but Monday/Tuesday off sucks if you've got any kind of family/social life on a regular basis. I'd rather take random days off and the risk that they aren't consecutive (which is what the mrs does).

 curran12 wrote:
No GW employee in their right mind would reveal themselves as one here.

I was working for them on the trainee manager program a couple of years ago

 aprilmanha wrote:

 curran12 wrote:
No GW employee in their right mind would reveal themselves as one here.

I was working for them on the trainee manager program a couple of years ago

Current...

Why would an employee present themselves? On an internet forum? It would be like being a slab of raw meat in an lions cage. Can only end up going to crap.

 Wyrmalla wrote:

 aprilmanha wrote:

 curran12 wrote:
No GW employee in their right mind would reveal themselves as one here.

I was working for them on the trainee manager program a couple of years ago

Current...

Or Ex... At least thats what the OP says

I imagine any retail staff on here would not be able to answer any questions people have anyway.
We never got told about anything till the last minute anyway

 AnomanderRake wrote:
You're in a room full of 1) wargamers on 2) the Internet. It's a pretty tough crowd.

There's also a certain kindness to being able to take off the jersey and just enjoy your hobby. Especially if you're a front line guy, like the trade team or a staffer at one of GW's stores. Imagine getting constantly badgered for "insider information" that, even if you had it, which you don't, because a lot of what hobbyists ask about is higher level strategic stuff or things that the game design team would actually know about, would be covered by your NDA.

Are you still there, Matthew?

(Worst thing about this topic is that we might've chased off an enthusiastic kid with our aging, misanthropic grumbling.)

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Imagine getting constantly badgered for "insider information" that, even if you had it, which you don't, because a lot of what hobbyists ask about is higher level strategic stuff or things that the game design team would actually know about, would be covered by your NDA.

Thankfully people usually understood that as a Front line staff member I actually knew as much as they did and stopped asking pretty quickly after I gave them the usual

On the PP forums, people were complaining that there was no Hordes film saying what was coming out.
A member of the PP team came on the forum and explained that they didn't have the film ready in time and so would show the film in the next convention in a month.
People went "Oh, okay."
End of discussions.
Letting confusion and frustration ferment isn't a good idea.

 MWHistorian wrote:

Letting confusion and frustration ferment isn't a good idea.

Think you are preaching to the choir here. Going to be hard pressed to find someone to argue with that statement.

 Vermis wrote:
Are you still there, Matthew?

(Worst thing about this topic is that we might've chased off an enthusiastic kid with our aging, misanthropic grumbling.)

Yeah, I'm just looking. Interesting opinions...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Azazelx wrote:

 Matthew wrote:
Are there any current or ex GW employees here? It doesn't matter if you're a clerk or a designer, just say what it was like! I've been talking to the guys at GW Stockholm, they feel like it's an awesome job.

Stockholm Syndrome?
(sorry, I had to - I'm just surprised that no-one else already had yet...)

Dude.

I worked at GW HQ, and pretty much stopped looking at and posting on forums as your own personal comments could too easily be misconstrued as the view of GW itself. I stopped looking in because of all the tripe that was being trotted out at the time about staff and products at the time, some of the rumour mongers of that era should really have a long look in the mirror.

Hey ho, I'm on the other side now, and I still only bother to visit certain vitriolic forums irregularly and stay away from any GW sections in this forum even now. An overdose of hobby kinda burned me out, and now I rarely get any 40K on, and seem to run back to 2nd ed a lot lol

I'm glad the OP brought this up, but no one in their right mind currently working for GW would reply to it. Better for ex members of staff to reply, and yes there are a lot of really great people working in GW as well as those less desirable. Such is life. I miss it, more I miss the great people I worked with.

niv-mizzet wrote:

 NorseSig wrote:
But the average shop manager ect doesn't deserve the abuse they often get imo.

The average ANYONE in retail or service industries doesn't deserve the abuse they often get. (The people who deserve it are the ones who don't come into contact with customers.)

I agree with you, but I mentioned GW specifically because that is what the thread is concerning; is GW employees.