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 azreal13 wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:

Honestly, what you are describing Kan is just anybody with half a clue working in a retail sales job. To try and assert they are in any way akin to running your own business (and for clarity, I've done both) is either naive or plain dumb.

The hours of the shops are set by the managers.
The days of the week that they are open are set by the managers.

The only thing that managers really do not have control over at a GW shop are what they stock.

Yeah, cause when you have your days off are just about the most important thing you have to consider when you're running a business.

They don't choose who works for them, how much they are paid or what benefits they are entitled to, what they stock, how much of it they stock, they do not liaise with suppliers and wholesalers, and have to ensure they are paid, they are not responsible for managing the utilities or the rent, nor for making sure they are paid on time, they aren't responsible for any more than the most basic bookeeping, nor for ensuring their accounts are up to date and all tax owed is paid, most importantly, they don't have to ensure that their is money in the bank to pay the wages each month, regardless of everything else that has happened.

Again, naive or dumb, your call.

I don't know how it is in the UK, but here in the US my experiences with the "new model" GW shops?

1) They're set in shopping centers rather than malls, so they get to set their own hours.
2) The managers are the ONLY employee at the shop on a regular basis. There is a "replacement" who is unpaid except for when they are actually needed(an example is when the actual manager is going to Memphis for some kind of training session or Vegas for a GW sponsored meeting) and is picked by the manager. There is also another level of "replacement" that is essentially a floating manager who subs in when the full time manager is leaving/has left and the new hire is not available.
3)The utilities and other sundry items are handled by GW corporate not by the manager. There are no suppliers or wholesalers for a GW manager to deal with--just the company he works for.

If you're in a shopping centre then the hours are set by when the building opens. That is not setting your own hours.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Lutharr101 wrote:
he may not be correct about them being their own buisness but the rest of it is pretty accurate. Dont see the need to start insulting the guy

It's not though. Put your local into GW's store finder. Look at the hours of all of the other stores within the radius you set. You'll see yours is the exception (possibly as it is in a shopping centre, so its hours are set by when that opens) and not how 99% of all the other stores operate.

For example, my local store has 2 staff still. I often wonder why the 1 man opening hours are still in place. Surely if the manager could determine the hours as you so claim then it would open on monday and tuesday?

i dont know about all other stores. Your statement said all stores so I corrected that. And its not in a shopping centre thats dictated by their opening times at all. AFAIK after speaking with him the hours are there to better suit him because he has to travel everyday to get to the shop.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:

Honestly, what you are describing Kan is just anybody with half a clue working in a retail sales job. To try and assert they are in any way akin to running your own business (and for clarity, I've done both) is either naive or plain dumb.

The hours of the shops are set by the managers.
The days of the week that they are open are set by the managers.

The only thing that managers really do not have control over at a GW shop are what they stock.

Yeah, cause when you have your days off are just about the most important thing you have to consider when you're running a business.

They don't choose who works for them, how much they are paid or what benefits they are entitled to, what they stock, how much of it they stock, they do not liaise with suppliers and wholesalers, and have to ensure they are paid, they are not responsible for managing the utilities or the rent, nor for making sure they are paid on time, they aren't responsible for any more than the most basic bookeeping, nor for ensuring their accounts are up to date and all tax owed is paid, most importantly, they don't have to ensure that their is money in the bank to pay the wages each month, regardless of everything else that has happened.

Again, naive or dumb, your call.

I don't know how it is in the UK, but here in the US my experiences with the "new model" GW shops?

1) They're set in shopping centers rather than malls, so they get to set their own hours.
2) The managers are the ONLY employee at the shop on a regular basis. There is a "replacement" who is unpaid except for when they are actually needed(an example is when the actual manager is going to Memphis for some kind of training session or Vegas for a GW sponsored meeting) and is picked by the manager. There is also another level of "replacement" that is essentially a floating manager who subs in when the full time manager is leaving/has left and the new hire is not available.
3)The utilities and other sundry items are handled by GW corporate not by the manager. There are no suppliers or wholesalers for a GW manager to deal with--just the company he works for.

That's pretty much the same in the UK, and that's my point, being a GW manager is in no way analogous to running your own business, they don't have to deal with half the things you will encounter on a day to day basis. Even "manager" is debatable when you only have yourself to manage. Perhaps even more importantly, the buck does not stop with a GW manager, they are not the highest authority, the business' survival doesn't hang on their decision making (although theirs does to some extent I suppose, but no more than any other employee in any other job)

Id hate to be a GW manager. Having to compete against 3rd party stores that give massive discounts and have next to no say is ridiculous. As you say Azrael the term manager is quite silly since its only themselves. But they still have targets to hit that are imo unrealistic considering their compention is holding all the cards.

I've a background in retail sales as I mentioned, ~5 years as a grunt and about 6 as a manager, and a further 3 running my own place, there's no way I would consider a GW gig.

 Lutharr101 wrote:
Id hate to be a GW manager. Having to compete against 3rd party stores that give massive discounts and have next to no say is ridiculous. As you say Azrael the term manager is quite silly since its only themselves. But they still have targets to hit that are imo unrealistic considering their compention is holding all the cards.

And, again, this is why GW is so utterly stupid. Independent stores selling GW products are not competition! By hiring and firing people based on how many sales go through their specific cash register GW has created a situation where they're competing with themselves.

nkelsch wrote:

It has probably lost the few people the owner explicitly intended to lose with such a policy, usually non-customers monopolizing space from real customers. I consider pay to play perfectly reasonable.
But of course, when a FLGS does it, it is reasonable, and when GW does it, it is a sign of the Apocalypse and resulting in the murder of babies.

I believe in "pay where you play" - though a policy like this would likely make me buy more stuff from online sources, etc.

my friends and i are all clean-limbed young men with disposable income...nothing is more offputting to us than a gw full of neckbeards loudly having a battle of 40k. Those shops are very cramped and 'personal', and people battling do get in the way of browsing.

But then the tables in gw are so small that anyone remotely serious wouldn't think of playing there anyway. I think it's mainly newcomers/kids who use them, it seems to be anyway.

clively wrote:

General Hobbs wrote:


Can you refute or validate this rumor? My source is someone who plays there and has posted. I'd prefer not to out his name for privacy reasons. Otherwise then, back off.

Here's a concept: Call the game store yourself and ask them. Heck, you could even *gasp* post the name and location of the store and I'm sure others would call them for you.

Simple enough.

*side note, because we may as well derail the thread: Asimov in his Foundation series stated that one factor in the downfall of society is when people stop checking facts for themselves and instead rely on the points of view of people who, also, have never checked out those "facts".. There was a sub story where a King (or equivalent) went out of his way to track down a copy of a book which discussed a particular historical "fact". Instead of simply going to the point of origin and looking for himself, (yes, the veracity of the claim was apparently easy to prove/disprove), he wasted his and everyone else's time locating this book. The book was written by an author that had also never gone to that original point to see for himself and instead had based his writings on those of yet another person who, laughingly, had also never investigated the actual "fact" but rather wrote his book based on rumor and hearsay. Of course, that seems to be the primary operating principal of the Internet...

Moral of the story: Do your own fact checking. Especially when it's as easy as picking up a phone. Second moral: don't be a troll.

It was 2am in the UK when I posted. I was hoping some gamer was up reading Dakka at that time.

Thanks Bert.


Automatically Appended Next Post:



The manager at Croydon has told me the voucher system is gone. He just started there yesterday.

 Grimtuff wrote:
If you're in a shopping centre then the hours are set by when the building opens. That is not setting your own hours.

I think shopping center has a different meaning for you than it does for me.

A shopping center is not a closed building generally, but rather a collection of smaller units in an open air setting.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 azreal13 wrote:

That's pretty much the same in the UK, and that's my point, being a GW manager is in no way analogous to running your own business, they don't have to deal with half the things you will encounter on a day to day basis. Even "manager" is debatable when you only have yourself to manage. Perhaps even more importantly, the buck does not stop with a GW manager, they are not the highest authority, the business' survival doesn't hang on their decision making (although theirs does to some extent I suppose, but no more than any other employee in any other job)

I think we're talking at cross purposes here. I'm trying to put forth the point that when you look at a GW employee, they have some of the annoyances of being a sales associate(set quotas to meet and the generic upkeep of the storefront as an example) and that of a midlevel/lower tier manager.

Sure there is a higher authority, but that authority is not necessarily there to stick their neck out to cover the employee.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:

That's pretty much the same in the UK, and that's my point, being a GW manager is in no way analogous to running your own business, they don't have to deal with half the things you will encounter on a day to day basis. Even "manager" is debatable when you only have yourself to manage. Perhaps even more importantly, the buck does not stop with a GW manager, they are not the highest authority, the business' survival doesn't hang on their decision making (although theirs does to some extent I suppose, but no more than any other employee in any other job)

I think we're talking at cross purposes here. I'm trying to put forth the point that when you look at a GW employee, they have some of the annoyances of being a sales associate(set quotas to meet and the generic upkeep of the storefront as an example) and that of a midlevel/lower tier manager.

Sure there is a higher authority, but that authority is not necessarily there to stick their neck out to cover the employee.

Perhaps we are, but I was responding to this

To pretend that GW stores are "not individual businesses" is ridiculous. They might have a set of guidelines given to them by corporate but how strictly they are followed is based upon the manager--who in turn is adapting those guidelines based upon the community he is dealing with.

Emphasis mine, which seems pretty clear, but if that isn't what you meant, then yes, from your most recent post, we seem to broadly agree.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
If you're in a shopping centre then the hours are set by when the building opens. That is not setting your own hours.

I think shopping center has a different meaning for you than it does for me.

A shopping center is not a closed building generally, but rather a collection of smaller units in an open air setting.

Not sure about the UK, but a "shopping centre" here in Australia is mostly used for what I believe US residents call a "Shopping Mall" - as in (mostly) enclosed shops in a large, sprawling building/chain of buildings. It can also be used for more open places like this, where most of the shops are outside but there's also a large internal "mall" space. Though it's more of a "Plaza". For a collection of shops in a (generally older) suburban or urban area, it's a shopping precinct. More akin to what I believe are called "High Streets" in the UK?

We use "Mall" to mean a pedestrian shopping mall - which is made up of a street with shops with no automobile traffic (though in Melbourne's main mall, we have Trams).

Newer suburbs tend to have smaller Malls and Plazas, while older areas have precincts or a mix of both as urban renewal continues to roll on.


Just small but sometimes-relevant differences in meaning between the various dialects of English - It's like "truck" or "biscuit" to an extent.

You call biscuits trucks? Silly Australia.

no, no. We call lorries cookies.

PhantomViper wrote:

nkelsch wrote:

 Medium of Death wrote:

ellis_esquire wrote:
OK all - Croydon is my local store - I think the OP has this confused with Heroes and Legends - our local non GW gaming store - which is AWESOME btw.
They've just started charging monies. 2.50 for a three hour slot per person, which aint bad really. Unlike GW you can use bathrooms, make tea and eat in their and generally have 3-5 big tables to choose from.
It has lost a few people to this but still good value for my 2 cents.. or is that pennies?

That sounds like a sweet deal, anybody turning that down seems to have reacted a little harshly. Cheers for the clarification.

It has probably lost the few people the owner explicitly intended to lose with such a policy, usually non-customers monopolizing space from real customers. I consider pay to play perfectly reasonable.

But of course, when a FLGS does it, it is reasonable, and when GW does it, it is a sign of the Apocalypse and resulting in the murder of babies.

All that the FLGSs that have tried it around here managed, was to loose customers and subsequently go bankrupt, so no, I don't think that it is reasonable when an FLGS does it as well.

Table space in a store should be considered as advertisement for their products and as community building "helpers". If you have a community of loyal people that plays at your store, chances are that they will also buy at your store. Sure, you'll always have the 1 or 2 free loaders that only buy online and basically use the tables "for free", but it makes much more business sense to endure these 1 or 2 people than to risk alienating all your other customers by charging them a fee to use the store tables.

nothing wrong with charging to play IMO. especially if the tables are big and nice and a lot of effort/money was put into building, painting them and the terrain.

if someone is so cheap or gets butthurt so easily at having to pay 2.50-5 $ for three hours of gaming the store owner is better off not having them as a customer anyway.

Or it could be that the customer spends hundreds (or indeed, thousands) of dollars a year at the place rather than online and sees being asked to pay a needless insult and takes their business online instead.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Context is everything.

 Lutharr101 wrote:
if ya buying from the store ya will get the tokens by default. If ya not spending in the store then why do folks think they get the automatic right to game there. Support where you game or do one freeloader

Because pretty much every piece of literature GW has ever produced (until very recently?) has a page at the back telling you to pop into a hobby centre for a game.

The stores are also not running in isolation; if I bought my entire army from GW Glasgow, should I be allowed to use it in GW Nottingham or do I need to buy it again?

 Azazelx wrote:
Or it could be that the customer spends hundreds (or indeed, thousands) of dollars a year at the place rather than online and sees being asked to pay a needless insult and takes their business online instead.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Context is everything.

what if you just had it be like a pool hall. beautiful tables and terrain and just charge for that, no store whatsoever to complicate things. that's actually not too bad of an idea.

kb305 wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:
Or it could be that the customer spends hundreds (or indeed, thousands) of dollars a year at the place rather than online and sees being asked to pay a needless insult and takes their business online instead.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Context is everything.

what if you just had it be like a pool hall. beautiful tables and terrain and just charge for that, no store whatsoever to complicate things. that's actually not too bad of an idea.

Yeah, go and ask Maelstrom Games how that worked out for them...

I didn't think it was the gaming area in Maelstrom which caused them problems. I never played there but the gaming space looked brilliant.

The same sort of thing works alright at the gaming clubs I use; both are pay to play, one has no shop and the other has a cafe and shop and both seem to be doing pretty well.

PhantomViper wrote:

nkelsch wrote:

 Medium of Death wrote:

ellis_esquire wrote:
OK all - Croydon is my local store - I think the OP has this confused with Heroes and Legends - our local non GW gaming store - which is AWESOME btw.
They've just started charging monies. 2.50 for a three hour slot per person, which aint bad really. Unlike GW you can use bathrooms, make tea and eat in their and generally have 3-5 big tables to choose from.
It has lost a few people to this but still good value for my 2 cents.. or is that pennies?

That sounds like a sweet deal, anybody turning that down seems to have reacted a little harshly. Cheers for the clarification.

It has probably lost the few people the owner explicitly intended to lose with such a policy, usually non-customers monopolizing space from real customers. I consider pay to play perfectly reasonable.

But of course, when a FLGS does it, it is reasonable, and when GW does it, it is a sign of the Apocalypse and resulting in the murder of babies.

All that the FLGSs that have tried it around here managed, was to loose customers and subsequently go bankrupt, so no, I don't think that it is reasonable when an FLGS does it as well.

Table space in a store should be considered as advertisement for their products and as community building "helpers". If you have a community of loyal people that plays at your store, chances are that they will also buy at your store. Sure, you'll always have the 1 or 2 free loaders that only buy online and basically use the tables "for free", but it makes much more business sense to endure these 1 or 2 people than to risk alienating all your other customers by charging them a fee to use the store tables.

Tables and time are finite resources. (Well, time is not technically finite outside of a cosmological sense, but time in the shop is). If you have a finite resource and demand that exceeds that, you normally sell it. I don't really have a problem with it. It also has a couple of other pluses which is that people actually value their time at the table because it now has a price attached to it. So you don't get people dawdling as much, you get less people arguing over a small sub-set always being there and monopolizing the resource. Read about the Tragedy of the Commons.

Of course you need to encourage people to play and it's mean to charge if there isn't excess demand. So probably what stores should do is mark out "free periods" at quieter times and then have bookable slots. Then you get the best of both - those who really want to be organized and play seriously, they can book a few hours for a relatively cheap rate, others can take their chances with the free slots.

There's another plus with paid table time. It makes having tables a revenue stream in itself, rather than just a burden on the store needed for marketing purposes. That way you're more likely to see multiple tables, larger stores, because paid time will offset the costs of that. Honestly, the place someone mentioned where they have four tables, you pay for the time and you can make tea there and use the bathrooms, etc. It sounds great. If I lived nearer, I'd totally pay for that assuming it's not too expensive. There are tonnes of people who want to game but don't have a lot of space and perhaps can't afford to spend a lot of money or time on fancy terrain. When you pay, you usually get higher quality than free alternatives.

I'm quite for it so long as free spaces are kept available. We're in a hobby where once we have all the miniatures we need, we're actually good to keep playing for a long time without any further expense. That's good for us in the short-term, but difficult for keeping GW viable. Stores are probably pretty tight in terms of revenue. If they can branch out a little into the sideline of quality gaming environment, that could be good for the hobby.

EDIT: And if you went with the above, obviously what you should do would be to give tokens with purchases which you can use to book table time as well. That way, everyone would think: "I can pay for this table time directly, or I can buy this RipTide and get a whole four battle slots free with it".

Herzlos wrote:

 Lutharr101 wrote:
if ya buying from the store ya will get the tokens by default. If ya not spending in the store then why do folks think they get the automatic right to game there. Support where you game or do one freeloader

Because pretty much every piece of literature GW has ever produced (until very recently?) has a page at the back telling you to pop into a hobby centre for a game.

The stores are also not running in isolation; if I bought my entire army from GW Glasgow, should I be allowed to use it in GW Nottingham or do I need to buy it again?

And this is where GW make it difficult for their managers and shops. Yes you bought GW stuff from Glasgow, but that dont help the Nottingham store hit its targets and remain open. Or said manager keep his job. Im on both sides of the fence with this as I see both opinons and agree with both. Its more the people that go to online discounts stores and wont support the local store, yet expect the same considerations as those that do that get on my wick.

 Azazelx wrote:
Or it could be that the customer spends hundreds (or indeed, thousands) of dollars a year at the place rather than online and sees being asked to pay a needless insult and takes their business online instead.

Any smart manager wouldnt make said customer pay.

Herzlos wrote:
I didn't think it was the gaming area in Maelstrom which caused them problems. I never played there but the gaming space looked brilliant.

The same sort of thing works alright at the gaming clubs I use; both are pay to play, one has no shop and the other has a cafe and shop and both seem to be doing pretty well.

That is exactly my point, after their online / physical store went't under they tried to maintain their gaming space purely as a pay to play location and did poorly for it. I'm not saying that their troubles were caused by the gaming area, I'm saying that even with was one of the best gaming areas in the UK (or so I was told), they couldn't maintain the pay-to-play business model.

And gaming clubs are a completely different beast to a commercial venue, you usually aren't trying to make a profit in a gaming club for example.

But we've no way of telling if the Maelstrom gaming area decline was because of the reputation hit the Maelstrom shop got; how many people wouldn't go to the gaming area because the shop owed them money?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Lutharr101 wrote:

And this is where GW make it difficult for their managers and shops. Yes you bought GW stuff from Glasgow, but that dont help the Nottingham store hit its targets and remain open. Or said manager keep his job. Im on both sides of the fence with this as I see both opinons and agree with both. Its more the people that go to online discounts stores and wont support the local store, yet expect the same considerations as those that do that get on my wick.

But that's because of the way GW runs things, and is no way the fault of the customer. I'm aware that my presence in Nottingham (or WHW more likely) with stuff I bought from a different branch doesn't help that branch directly, but for every part of my army money went to GW no matter how indirectly (via GW Glasgow, via the FLGS, 2nd hand) even if it didn't go via the store I'm playing in.

In an ideal world / abstract sense, why should I care? I paid money to GW, I should be allowed to use GW facilities as advertised. Just like any other non-franchise chain, they should be interchangeable. I agree that it makes administration and tracking difficult but that's just a symptom of the schizophrenic way in which GW treats all of it's sales channels.

Herzlos wrote:
But we've no way of telling if the Maelstrom gaming area decline was because of the reputation hit the Maelstrom shop got; how many people wouldn't go to the gaming area because the shop owed them money?

You probably have a point there as well...

 Azazelx wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
If you're in a shopping centre then the hours are set by when the building opens. That is not setting your own hours.

I think shopping center has a different meaning for you than it does for me.

A shopping center is not a closed building generally, but rather a collection of smaller units in an open air setting.

Not sure about the UK, but a "shopping centre" here in Australia is mostly used for what I believe US residents call a "Shopping Mall" - as in (mostly) enclosed shops in a large, sprawling building/chain of buildings. It can also be used for more open places like this, where most of the shops are outside but there's also a large internal "mall" space. Though it's more of a "Plaza". For a collection of shops in a (generally older) suburban or urban area, it's a shopping precinct. More akin to what I believe are called "High Streets" in the UK?

We use "Mall" to mean a pedestrian shopping mall - which is made up of a street with shops with no automobile traffic (though in Melbourne's main mall, we have Trams).

Newer suburbs tend to have smaller Malls and Plazas, while older areas have precincts or a mix of both as urban renewal continues to roll on.


Just small but sometimes-relevant differences in meaning between the various dialects of English - It's like "truck" or "biscuit" to an extent.

You're looking for "strip mall" in the US, i.e. a string of adjacent retail establishments forming a 'strip' with all frontages facing a street.

Yes, "shopping centre" and "mall" are used somewhat interchangeably in the UK. We have big centres like Meadowhall in Sheffield, Merry Hill in Dudley (IIRC), the Eagle centre in Derby and the Victoria centre in Nottingham that people from the US would typically refer to as a "Mall".

Interestingly, my local GW is located in a weird amalgam of the two, as it is considered part of the Waterside centre, yet is located on the outside on Bank Street (guess why it is called that! ) so is not bound by the Waterside's opening times.

Herzlos wrote:
But we've no way of telling if the Maelstrom gaming area decline was because of the reputation hit the Maelstrom shop got; how many people wouldn't go to the gaming area because the shop owed them money?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Lutharr101 wrote:

And this is where GW make it difficult for their managers and shops. Yes you bought GW stuff from Glasgow, but that dont help the Nottingham store hit its targets and remain open. Or said manager keep his job. Im on both sides of the fence with this as I see both opinons and agree with both. Its more the people that go to online discounts stores and wont support the local store, yet expect the same considerations as those that do that get on my wick.

But that's because of the way GW runs things, and is no way the fault of the customer. I'm aware that my presence in Nottingham (or WHW more likely) with stuff I bought from a different branch doesn't help that branch directly, but for every part of my army money went to GW no matter how indirectly (via GW Glasgow, via the FLGS, 2nd hand) even if it didn't go via the store I'm playing in.

In an ideal world / abstract sense, why should I care? I paid money to GW, I should be allowed to use GW facilities as advertised. Just like any other non-franchise chain, they should be interchangeable. I agree that it makes administration and tracking difficult but that's just a symptom of the schizophrenic way in which GW treats all of it's sales channels.

Im not saying your wrong in thinking that. Infact given how GW advertise themselves you are perfectly correct. The point Im making is that as a GW manager, would you be rolling out the red carpet to people who dont help sustain that store? People forget that if the store isnt supported it will be closed. Then that option wouldnt even be available to them at all.

I know they started this at my local GW, Cheltenham, a few months back, only it was 20 pounds.
No idea if they are still doing it, since moved house, but it pretty much single handedly killed in store gaming over night. The caveat was that you could still play on Thursday 'open gaming night' for free.