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Made in us
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Mississippi

Another thread has me curious - does anyone know/remember the story of the Old US GW manufacturing shop and what happened to the physical location?

I only vaguely remember that GW had a manufacturing hub of some sort in the US in the 80's/early 90's, but that it was shut down. Never knew why, nor what happened to the machines, molds and whatnot - were they shipped back to the UK, destroyed or what? Why did GW shut the hub down? What did they make? Could you order direct from them or did their products only go to US GW stores (or to also FLGS)?

Always been curious, but never knew where to look for information about the whole shebang and what was really going on.


It never ends well 
   
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GW's US HQ was in Glen Burnie, MD (just south of Baltimore) for the longest time 90's-00's. They did a bit of manufacturing of plastic kits there as well, possibly some metal models, but I'm not entirely sure about that. It didn't shut down per say, it moved.

GW moved their US HQ and manufacturing to Memphis, TN around 2012 to a larger facility where it could serve as HQ, manufacturing facility and the US warehouse; the US customer service center is also at this location as well as the short live World of Battle (i.e. Warhammer World North America).

The manufacturing that was done in the US was for the US market only and did not have any unique products. Shortly after the move to TN, GW decided to stop all manufacturing in the US. This US HQ in Memphis is still operational, but now serves as only a warehouse and the US Customer Service Center. The casting machines were shipped back to the UK.

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2021/06/14 20:09:16


 
   
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 oni wrote:
They did a bit of manufacturing of plastic kits there as well, possibly some metal models, but I'm not entirely sure about that.

Did they do plastics? I always thought it was just metals.

And they did actually have at least one 'unique' product - the female inquisitor, which were made for US games days. Although I think she did make it onto the UK store for at least a brief period after she had been around for a while. But there was a period of a few years where she went for silly money on eBay because nobody from the rest of the world realised that the model was freely available through the US webstore.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/06/14 21:29:12


 
   
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The Great State of New Jersey

 Stormonu wrote:
Another thread has me curious - does anyone know/remember the story of the Old US GW manufacturing shop and what happened to the physical location?

I only vaguely remember that GW had a manufacturing hub of some sort in the US in the 80's/early 90's, but that it was shut down. Never knew why, nor what happened to the machines, molds and whatnot - were they shipped back to the UK, destroyed or what? Why did GW shut the hub down? What did they make? Could you order direct from them or did their products only go to US GW stores (or to also FLGS)?

Always been curious, but never knew where to look for information about the whole shebang and what was really going on.



It was in the mid 2000's, I believe they opened in like 2003-2004 (though they had other offices in Memphis as early as 1999) and shutdown around the 2009-2011 timeframe iirc. They still own (or maybe lease) the facility but its used for warehousing now - its their primary US product warehouse. They established it for insurance reasons to ensure business continuity in the event of a disaster (for example, a fire burns down their main factory in nottingham), but to my understanding they never really utilized it to its actual potential. There was a user on dakka in the past who worked in the factory, iirc he said that basically GW sent them a set of steel molds (used for plastics) for the top selling kits in their catalog (IIRC the top 50 but it might have been top 100), as well as the majority of the rubber molds used for metal miniatures, including a lot of the older (heavily worn almost unusable) molds from the early days. The US factory actually had a lot of molds for metal products that the Nottingham factory didn't have, as it was mostly considered "junk" by Nottingham and stuff that they thought was wasting space but didn't want to completely throw away. The US shop apparently spent a lot of time refurbishing the older molds to make them usable again and put them back into production.

I don't remember the reasons stated for the shutdown, I want to say it was related to labor and staffing issues - iirc the Nottingham factory was unionized and they couldn't get anyone to transfer to the US because of the lower standards of living and compensation, etc. in Memphis, and that also caused friction because obviously the US site was non-unionized and internal politics and all that. From what I recall there were issues finding existing skilled labor stateside that contributed to it, and because of reasons all the molds had to be tooled in the UK and then shipped to the US which caused lots of issues (and I believe on at least one occasion a mold was lost at sea or damaged in transit), and I believe the US operation was generally mismanaged as well, etc. Anyway, they killed it in order to consolidate their operations in the UK.

No, you couldn't order "direct" from them, you just ordered from GW and they sent it from the hub nearest to you provided they had stock available. They made, as I said before, the most popular plastic kits and most of the metal catalog (seemingly to include supplying some of the metals range back to the UK on occasion). I assume most of it was shipped back to GW when the factory shut down ops.

 oni wrote:
GW's US HQ was in Glen Burnie, MD (just south of Baltimore) for the longest time 90's-00's. They did a bit of manufacturing of plastic kits there as well, possibly some metal models, but I'm not entirely sure about that. It didn't shut down per say, it moved.

GW moved their US HQ and manufacturing to Memphis, TN around 2012 to a larger facility where it could serve as HQ, manufacturing facility and the US warehouse; the US customer service center is also at this location as well as the short live World of Battle (i.e. Warhammer World North America).

The manufacturing that was done in the US was for the US market only and did not have any unique products. Shortly after the move to TN, GW decided to stop all manufacturing in the US. This US HQ in Memphis is still operational, but now serves as only a warehouse and the US Customer Service Center. The casting machines were shipped back to the UK.



Your timeline is incorrect-ish. GW set up shop in Memphis in 1999 (June 23rd, to be precise, is when they became a legal entity there), but upsized a few years later (around 2004ish) GW did move out of Glen Burnie to Memphis in 2012 - but the Memphis facility had already been there for a decade at that time. I don't know if Glen Burnie ever manufactured plastics, if they did that operation had been moved to Memphis by the 2006 timeframe.

 insaniak wrote:
 oni wrote:
They did a bit of manufacturing of plastic kits there as well, possibly some metal models, but I'm not entirely sure about that.

Did they do plastics? I always thought it was just metals.

And they did actually have at least one 'unique' product - the female inquisitor, which were made for US games days. Although I think she did make it onto the UK store for at least a brief period after she had been around for a while. But there was a period of a few years where she went for silly money on eBay because nobody from the rest of the world realised that the model was freely available through the US webstore.


Yes, they did do plastics but only a limited selection. IIRC the former dakka manufacturing employee said that Memphis actually had more modern plastic injection machines than Nottingham did at the time.

Like I said earlier in this post, they actually had quite a few "unique" products because GW sent them the only sets of metal molds for quite a few kits (but again, stuff that Nottingham had basically written off and was only put back into production after a lot of TLC from the Nottingham crew).

There was also one other "unique" product to come out of Memphis - the legendarily awesome Generals Compendium for WHFB circa 6th edition. As I understand it there was quite a bit of drama with that one (according to a friend who worked corporate in the UK and transferred to US corporate shortly afterwards), apparently the US "design studio" (which was apparently really more of a playtest and marketing team than an actual design studio) went "rogue" and basically wrote and published the book without any oversight or authorization from the design studio in the UK under the guise that it was a marketing campaign to push Warhammer Fantasy Battles sales in the US (which was doing horribly, WHFB struggled greatly in the US and 40k was the vastly more dominant product line here) by approaching it from what the US team felt was a more "American" perspective in an effort to draw interest. As I understand when the UK team found out there was some bad blood and I think a few people on the US side of the atlantic got shitcanned for it, but IIRC Jeremy Vetock got an offer to go work in Nottingham afterwards so it wasn't all bad I guess?

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/06/15 01:10:02


CoALabaer wrote:
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I do not think Glen Bernie ever produced plastic kits.

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IIRC the Memphis facility did quite a lot of Finecast (a.k.a. Failcast) initially. And the utter failure of this product coming out of Memphis is what sparked the 'quality labor' debate and added to the decision to stop manufacturing in the US.
   
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Glen Burnie was warehouse space, offices, a small inhouse store... Pretty much a Mecca, then there was the old Dakka Shop...

Those were some great times!



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I only went to the Glen Burnie bunker maybe 6 or 7 times... but they used to have metal bits sales.

You could go in and order bits any time, but occasionally they would have sales and sold the bits by weight.

You cold also buy forgeworld stuff there.

The last sale I went to, I got 3 metal dreadnoughts in bits and 3 resin dreadnought plasma cannons.

I also want to say that they did have at least some plastic manufacturing as you could buy individual plastic sprues... My friend kept buyng the chaos warrior sprue individually just for the hand weapons as he was building a (new) black templar army, and I would regularly get 2 or 3 space wolf accessory sprues...
   
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The Great State of New Jersey

Thats not because they manufactured in Glen Burnie - that was just a thing GW did in that era. I fondly remember the annual GW bits catalogs, they were the size of a phone book and allowed you to order individual bits and individual sprues from most of GWs product range. It was great. You either had to call in your order, order online, or I think mail in an order form with a check to do it - or you could purchase directly at a GW Battle Bunker (one of the 4 or 5 flagship stores that GW had in the US, Glen Burnie was one of them) or Warhammer World in Nottingham.

CoALabaer wrote:
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Hyderabad, India

As long as we're waxing nostalgic...

Troll Boss Bob has weekly clearance sales I got a lot of cool crap from those. Then there was the time when the bitz shelves collapsed and you could order pounds of random bits.

My group went in together and got some massive order and got...

ten bags of warmaster. And almost nothing else...

 
   
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12 year old me would have thought I was the unluckiest SOB in the world if that happened to me... 32 year old me would have done backflips of joy.

CoALabaer wrote:
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chaos0xomega wrote:
Thats not because they manufactured in Glen Burnie - that was just a thing GW did in that era. I fondly remember the annual GW bits catalogs, they were the size of a phone book and allowed you to order individual bits and individual sprues from most of GWs product range. It was great. You either had to call in your order, order online, or I think mail in an order form with a check to do it - or you could purchase directly at a GW Battle Bunker (one of the 4 or 5 flagship stores that GW had in the US, Glen Burnie was one of them) or Warhammer World in Nottingham.


Also the little black and white "troll magazine"? that was included with white dwarf at that time.

The GW catalog was great... but was kind of not very well made... I remember the binding being really bad and I lost a sheet out of it the first flip through. I even remember that that sheet was about cadians... as I didnt play Imp guard and was upset that the book was already falling apart but not too upset.

   
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The Glen Burnie HQ was my main store for the first 10ish years that I was in the hobby.

New hires in the casting department were allowed to fill a bag of bits on the day they were hired. I know they also did tours of the facility, but not sure if they had any extra gifts to give out for those folks. It was usually local journos looking for puff pieces on slow news days.

I remember they had a big blowout bits sale where you just paid by the weight of the bits, rather than retail. I think that was at the tail end of that places tenure at that location, before the Memphis move. Or just Kirby cutting costs.

One of the employees who didn't make the move to Memphis tried to build a shop on the same location where GW had their retail storefront, but it only lasted for what seemed like a summer. Apparently, a games store that just sells miniatures and paints has alot of difficulty keeping the lights on. I tried to give them some business, but it was infrequent as I had moved to Towson by then. I specifically remember that I pity purchased a finecast Scyla Afingrim and couldn't bring myself to return it when it was a mishapen mess.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/06/21 19:20:08


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 nels1031 wrote:


One of the employees who didn't make the move to Memphis tried to build a shop on the same location where GW had their retail storefront, but it only lasted for what seemed like a summer. Apparently, a games store that just sells miniatures and paints has alot of difficulty keeping the lights on. I tried to give them some business, but it was infrequent as I had moved to Towson by then. I specifically remember that I pity purchased a finecast Scyla Afingrim and couldn't bring myself to return it when it was a mishapen mess.


I used to do the NY to DC drive all the time and would stop in Glen Burnie if I had time. Never knew about the indy shop there, but it was a really remote location, no foot traffic at all.

Didn't the Maryland Battle Bunker also become an indy shop?

 
   
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OK, I used to be a customer, redshirt, and then a sales manager at GW Glen BUrnie until the mid 2000's and am still friends with many staff members.

Maryland was the first location of a GW store and eventually HQ because it was cheaper than NY, had a port, and an airport that would fly directly to England.

GW HQ opened in the late 90's. I went to the first store several times and they eventually built a Battle Bunker and merged it with a new store. GW was strung out between 2 buildings at the time. So building A had the warehouse and casting site ( imagine most of US production came from 3 or 4 spinners) and Building B had the store, offices and more warehouse. Storage was somewhere in the two buildings. Eventually the store in B was closed and moved over to A, in the space the casting room was located. In 2006 everything moved over to another building ( C) and they remained there until the move to Memphis.

The former manager and several backers did open up a new store a year or two after the closing. It was a nice store, with lots of painting tables and great chairs and a full stocking of GW product, and they brought in a lot of different bitz ranges etc. They ran some great events there. The problem ended up being some mismanagement issues and a rival store about 10 minutes away which had a much fuller inventory of gaming and RPG product and a strong MTG base. Plus a lot of the customers were long time GWers and former staffers who did not buy a lot of product, because they already had a ton of stuff. I know....I actually pay a couple hundred dollars a month in storage fees for half of my GW stuff and my comic books.

They never had plastics manufacturing there. 99% sure of it, but I did ask some older staffers to make sure.

After John Stallard left the company in the early 2000's, Ernie Baker became CEO. HQ stayed at GB because again, easy to fly to London and Mr. Baker did not want to move. During this time the main warehouse for product and bits and manufacturing was in Memphis. Sometime after 2008 Mr. Baker was let go, and I believe Tom Kirby took over his duties. HQ remained in GB again because of travel purposes. I was working at Battlefront at this time.

After Mr. Kirby left the CEO position, there was no reason to keep the Glen Burnie location open, so as has been told elsewhere, everything was moved to Memphis.

The General's Compendium story.....I don't know about the UK issues, but all but two of the people listed in its production were still staff members when I joined GW. I think Chad left right before or after me. I've asked one of the Hobby Team members if he remembers what happened. Jeremy Vetock was already in the UK when I joined, but Eric Sarlin was still there and he is a terrifically nice guy.

Yes, when you ordered the product it was entered in there and the actual order shipped out from Memphis.

Edit: Confirmed, no plastics in Glen BUrnie, and no issues with the UK.







This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/08/22 17:28:15


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Story I heard when I was a GW staffer in early 00's (unverified )

Is this bollocks?
Verdict: (please enter here)

What prompted the creation of a US production facility was a cargo ship that sank carrying a tremendous amount of GW stock to the US.
It was insured so GW didn't lose out monetarily but there were stock shortages for a while until the next cargo delivery could be made, and it highlighted the danger of having a single production facility (fire in Nottingham and the company could be ruined etc.)
Apparently it was full of the old original plastic Eldar Falcon tanks - these were shrink-wrapped and reportedly when the ship sank it landed on the sea bed hull facing upwards. So there was the possibility of using cutting equipment or even depth-charges to breach the hull, and because the vehicles were shrink-wrapped they would then float to the surface and be picked up.

I was laughing while writing this..

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Sounded plausible right up to the bit about divers cutting the ship open to save the precious, precious Falcons. Yeah that part is BS.

I think I remember this story but with the new Land Raider back in 2000.

 
   
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 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Sounded plausible right up to the bit about divers cutting the ship open to save the precious, precious Falcons. Yeah that part is BS.

I think I remember this story but with the new Land Raider back in 2000.


It was the Falcons.

.Only a fool believes there is such a thing as price gouging. Things have value determined by the creator or merchant. If you don't agree with that value, you are free not to purchase. 
   
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General Hobbs wrote:
 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Sounded plausible right up to the bit about divers cutting the ship open to save the precious, precious Falcons. Yeah that part is BS.

I think I remember this story but with the new Land Raider back in 2000.


It was the Falcons.


Yup it was the falcons. Very well known story including the silly rescue plans

I believe GB was the first NA store with Toronto and Vancouver not far behind. Shall we talk about the famous "virus bombing" if the Toronto store?

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/08/23 21:05:28


 
   
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 FabricatorGeneralMike wrote:
I believe GB was the first NA store with Toronto and Vancouver not far behind. Shall we talk about the famous "virus bombing" if the Toronto store?


LOLWUT? Fairfax and College Park were already around back in the Benson Avenue days. Hell, Vetock worked at College Park before Glen Burnie was even a thing.

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 Smokestack wrote:
I only went to the Glen Burnie bunker maybe 6 or 7 times... but they used to have metal bits sales.

You could go in and order bits any time, but occasionally they would have sales and sold the bits by weight.


By weight was good. Even better...if you attended a GT in that era, you could cut deals with Bob. I ordered a big chunk of my metal Genestealer Hybrids that way. We talked about how many I would order and agreed on a price. Different era...


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Was College Park where the first GW HQ building was? I remember when I first got into the hobby, I had bought some plastic Chaos Warriors (the single pose Slambo looking ones) from the now defunct Hobbytown in Glen Burnie and saw on the back of the box that there was a Games Workshop store in Maryland.

Loaded up into my mom's station wagon and we took the trip to the store address on the box, only to find out that it had moved to the Glen Burnie location some time before that. It was funny because the Glen Burnie store/HQ was only like 3-4 lights down from where my hobby journey started, and essentially across the street from the Price Club/Costco that my family had been shopping at for years.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/08/24 16:50:42


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Ellicott City, MD

 Robert Facepalmer wrote:
 FabricatorGeneralMike wrote:
I believe GB was the first NA store with Toronto and Vancouver not far behind. Shall we talk about the famous "virus bombing" if the Toronto store?


LOLWUT? Fairfax and College Park were already around back in the Benson Avenue days. Hell, Vetock worked at College Park before Glen Burnie was even a thing.


Yup. I met Jerm there when I used to make pilgrimages to the College Park store when I was home from college in the early 1990’s (might have been late 1980’s? I was in college for a while...) I remember picking up blisters of WHFB Slann from the store back then. Back when getting GW stuff wasn’t always easy…

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 Robert Facepalmer wrote:
 FabricatorGeneralMike wrote:
I believe GB was the first NA store with Toronto and Vancouver not far behind. Shall we talk about the famous "virus bombing" if the Toronto store?


LOLWUT? Fairfax and College Park were already around back in the Benson Avenue days. Hell, Vetock worked at College Park before Glen Burnie was even a thing.


Notice how I said, I BELIEVE that, which usually means 'I'm not that sure but from what I remember back in the day 30 years ago.' Memories are faulty sometimes. I guess mine is.

LOLWUT? Doesn't change the fact that Vancouver and Toronto where the first two GW stores in Canada does it? What location was the first NA GW? Why did they shut down/move/consolidate locations? To much overhead?

   
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Mississippi

 FabricatorGeneralMike wrote:
General Hobbs wrote:
 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Sounded plausible right up to the bit about divers cutting the ship open to save the precious, precious Falcons. Yeah that part is BS.

I think I remember this story but with the new Land Raider back in 2000.


It was the Falcons.


Yup it was the falcons. Very well known story including the silly rescue plans

I believe GB was the first NA store with Toronto and Vancouver not far behind. Shall we talk about the famous "virus bombing" if the Toronto store?


Okay, what is this virus bombing story?

It never ends well 
   
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Atlanta, GA

 Pacific wrote:
Story I heard when I was a GW staffer in early 00's (unverified )

Is this bollocks?
Verdict: (please enter here)

What prompted the creation of a US production facility was a cargo ship that sank carrying a tremendous amount of GW stock to the US.
It was insured so GW didn't lose out monetarily but there were stock shortages for a while until the next cargo delivery could be made, and it highlighted the danger of having a single production facility (fire in Nottingham and the company could be ruined etc.)
Apparently it was full of the old original plastic Eldar Falcon tanks - these were shrink-wrapped and reportedly when the ship sank it landed on the sea bed hull facing upwards. So there was the possibility of using cutting equipment or even depth-charges to breach the hull, and because the vehicles were shrink-wrapped they would then float to the surface and be picked up.

I was laughing while writing this..



I remember hearing this story about a cargo full of Eldar Falcon tanks way back in probably '97 from the guy behind the counter at my local flgs!
   
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This seems like a good thread to ask: What were the logistics behind the earlier shift to white metal (pewter) in the US, a few years before the UK?

I've bought a few MISB things from the early/mid 90s with American packaging that are white metal, like Epic-scale Predator tanks from the Space Marine / Titan Legions era. In the UK, the same releases were lead. White metal didn't become standard in the UK (and Australia) until the late 90s, when the great lead sales began to clear out the old stock.

I gather the earlier use of white metal in the US had something to do with health and safety laws there (see also: Reaper Miniatures), but how did they arrange it? Was the US production facility created early enough for that, or did they make other arrangements?


 Mr. Grey wrote:

I remember hearing this story about a cargo full of Eldar Falcon tanks way back in probably '97 from the guy behind the counter at my local flgs!


In three thousand years' time, this will be the archaeologists' equivalent of a Bronze Age shipwreck. Oh, the dissertations. "Ritual purposes."
   
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The reason GW (and everyone else) moved away from lead miniatures was health and safety. New legislation meant if you were selling anything with lead in it you couldn't market it as a toy, or for children. If the US got white metal before the UK that was likely either because the laws changed at slightly different times, or possibly that GW had a long lead-time for white metal production ramping up and it took a while for the to sell through their old stock of lead models.

I remember the switch well. I got an entire 4000 point Dark Elf army in lead for something like £80. It was nuts.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/09/16 12:25:39


 
   
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 Stormonu wrote:
 FabricatorGeneralMike wrote:
General Hobbs wrote:
 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Sounded plausible right up to the bit about divers cutting the ship open to save the precious, precious Falcons. Yeah that part is BS.

I think I remember this story but with the new Land Raider back in 2000.


It was the Falcons.


Yup it was the falcons. Very well known story including the silly rescue plans

I believe GB was the first NA store with Toronto and Vancouver not far behind. Shall we talk about the famous "virus bombing" if the Toronto store?


Okay, what is this virus bombing story?


Basically someone from head office, showed up in GW Toronto and as employees started to come in for work they got fired. So the full timer who usually opened walked into the store and dude from the UK was sitting there painting his models and asked him who he was. He told him, and he had been told he was being let go, pack your stuff your gone. He ran the store while canning all the employees. I think this was the mid to late 90's this happened. I did have a pretty cool manager when I worked for GW. I heard a lot of horrible stuff form him on what went on at manger parties and stuff like that. Was interesting to hear and that was the moment I knew I would never cut it in retail because I am not ruthless enough to play the game until you hit manager, then start the game all over again in hard mode. Then hit middle manager at HQ and have to play in Boss mode. :(

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/09/26 12:25:06


 
   
 
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