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So I was talking up a new employee at the FLGS, asked him what he played. He listed it off and said 40k. Now 40k players as employees are a rarity so I chat him up. Immediatly after asking him what he played he said "Dark Eldar, I just with this game wasnt so expensive" Then went into a tirade about how the new space marine codex sucks because it has more content then the others, how the starting books are expensive and how the models are crap and how superior flames of war is...then tells me that flames of war now has to share with pathfinder night, despite flames of war not selling at all?
Then came the time my friend scratched the FLGS owners car and I got blamed for it.
We had the MTG guys come in unannounced for a tournament, the day we had booked out the MTG area for a 40K tournament, booked over 2 months in advance.
because MTG "magically" gets more sales (despite 3/4 of them getting their cards off the net) the TO got shafted, no refund on the bond he had to pay (350 bucks) and we ended up having no tournament that quarter, meaning the TO was out another 400 bucks for the prize money.
We now run our tournament days at the Italian club, which means we get food, drink AND a bathroom and the LGS doesn't get our business.
A store near me in the charming town of Skegness called warlords gives out terrible advice to shift stock, and out right lies.
I had a friend who was looking for a copy of the open fire flames of war set, when he went to warlords they tried to sell him the old set with the out dated rulebook insisting it was the latest version.
Not to mention your pretty much ignored if not a regular till you approach the till with something in your hand. They also never seem to open on time, and when they don't open till midday you wouldn't think that would be to hard. Very annoying when you have gone out your way living in a rural area to visit.
Yeah so bad sales advice, bad and unfriendly customer service and random opening makes it a pretty bad store in my mind.
Wales: Where the Men are Men and the sheep are Scared.
Doctadeth wrote: We had the MTG guys come in unannounced for a tournament, the day we had booked out the MTG area for a 40K tournament, booked over 2 months in advance.
because MTG "magically" gets more sales (despite 3/4 of them getting their cards off the net) the TO got shafted, no refund on the bond he had to pay (350 bucks) and we ended up having no tournament that quarter, meaning the TO was out another 400 bucks for the prize money.
We now run our tournament days at the Italian club, which means we get food, drink AND a bathroom and the LGS doesn't get our business.
This started over a year or so ago. We were have a store vs. store friendly games tourney. Our best against their best. We show up at the scheduled time on a Friday night. We all head downstairs and start looking at the boards on which we will wage war upon each others armies. On a 4x6 board you should have about 25% terrain. They were all covered ... like 80% to 90% of terrain. 7 boards like this, honestly, I was just floored.
The owner's wife came in and freaked out, like really freaked out bad, telling her hubby that "This is not going to work, this is not going to work at all, you have to do something different." As well as various other things that I can not post here. She thought she was being quiet but, my hearing is quite good, and this poor guy was getting mentally brow beat so bad that it should have been illegal, and I heard it all. She kept telling him that it was MTG night and that we (the 40k players) could not be in the basement, not tonight, not on MTG night.
I was kinda pissy about that as it was the owner who suggested this little tourney and I was thinking that she was all into MTG and that we were 'ruining' her night. I brushed it off and played three games and bolted after I got my Furioso Dread (2nd place $50 product support) without saying anything to her.
Months later my buddy and I had to go to that same hobby shop to get parts for his RC car. There she is ... running the store. I think to myself "Great ... PSYCHO in the HOUSE!"
My buddy gets his bearings for the car and at the register she asks my buddy if he does Magic. I can see the wheels turning in his head and we discussed it afterwards and I was spot on. He has never heard of MTG, let alone played it and to top it off there are booster packs right in front of him that he does not even bother to look at. He starts off thinking ' Is she serious? Is she having a go at me? She is serious. WTF?!?"
His reply was one of the greatest I have ever been witness to in my life.
"I have no magical ability what-so-ever."
I start rolling. I mean he told her that in a completely serious tone and meant every word of it. I explained what she meant by the cards and that, and told her that we do not 'Do Magic' at all. She goes into a tirade about how they 'smell up' the store on Friday nights and she has 4 of those Glade automatic fresheners cranked up to max so that she can bear it. It was then that I figured out that it was not the 40k players that were ruining her night during the tourney, but that the MTG guys were going to be upstairs and she could not tolerate the reek that the crowd of these kids brought with them.
I still chuckle about that to this day.
Now, we like big books. (And we cannot lie. You other readers can’t deny, a book flops open with an itty-bitty font, and a map that’s in your face, you get—sorry! Sorry!)
OIIIIIIO wrote: This started over a year or so ago. We were have a store vs. store friendly games tourney. Our best against their best. We show up at the scheduled time on a Friday night. We all head downstairs and start looking at the boards on which we will wage war upon each others armies. On a 4x6 board you should have about 25% terrain. They were all covered ... like 80% to 90% of terrain. 7 boards like this, honestly, I was just floored.
The owner's wife came in and freaked out, like really freaked out bad, telling her hubby that "This is not going to work, this is not going to work at all, you have to do something different." As well as various other things that I can not post here. She thought she was being quiet but, my hearing is quite good, and this poor guy was getting mentally brow beat so bad that it should have been illegal, and I heard it all. She kept telling him that it was MTG night and that we (the 40k players) could not be in the basement, not tonight, not on MTG night.
I was kinda pissy about that as it was the owner who suggested this little tourney and I was thinking that she was all into MTG and that we were 'ruining' her night. I brushed it off and played three games and bolted after I got my Furioso Dread (2nd place $50 product support) without saying anything to her.
Months later my buddy and I had to go to that same hobby shop to get parts for his RC car. There she is ... running the store. I think to myself "Great ... PSYCHO in the HOUSE!"
My buddy gets his bearings for the car and at the register she asks my buddy if he does Magic. I can see the wheels turning in his head and we discussed it afterwards and I was spot on. He has never heard of MTG, let alone played it and to top it off there are booster packs right in front of him that he does not even bother to look at. He starts off thinking ' Is she serious? Is she having a go at me? She is serious. WTF?!?"
His reply was one of the greatest I have ever been witness to in my life.
"I have no magical ability what-so-ever."
I start rolling. I mean he told her that in a completely serious tone and meant every word of it. I explained what she meant by the cards and that, and told her that we do not 'Do Magic' at all. She goes into a tirade about how they 'smell up' the store on Friday nights and she has 4 of those Glade automatic fresheners cranked up to max so that she can bear it. It was then that I figured out that it was not the 40k players that were ruining her night during the tourney, but that the MTG guys were going to be upstairs and she could not tolerate the reek that the crowd of these kids brought with them.
An NZ small claims court would be pretty useless in that situation mate...
Shame. I can't get over the cheek of the owner though. It was his fault they couldn't play, so it's his duty to refund their cash imfo.
Sorry, I wasn't clear. He's Australian. That's why an NZ small claims court would be useless. An Australian one may well be useful if we we have one, I have no idea
I wish I had time for all the game systems I own, let alone want to own...
No real bad store stories really, I'm blessed by great stores whereever I have been, miss the old hk one, shout out to sonny if he is on here, bloody great store
In the town where I used to live (I won't name names) the LFGS owner got mad at the hardcore 40k players because they were having "side" tournaments at their houses. Mind you, the store only had a tournament about once every three months. In response to these tournaments he banned all of them. The store closed 6 months later...
I haven't got any really good stories but I do recall having people in a GW make fun of a friend and I for playing LOTR. Looking back though I don't blame them since we did take up a table with it (there were only 2 tables in the store) and honestly we thought it was pretty funny.
I'm lucky I suppose, my stores are all okay. Not great, though.
One time I walked in to a shop that I drove an hour to get to, and they let me in even though I arrived early, which was cool.
Then the store opened its doors and these people who I thought were regulars walked in and went behind the counter and started hanging out (close friends in all likelihood). Even though my girlfriend and I were in, they started discussing the latest outrages of various games and the threads on their forum very loudly, and they weren't curbing their vulgarities despite us being able to hear every word.
I don't really care, I'm a young guy and talk a lot of gak myself when putzing around with friends, but that's bad for business because someone like my girlfriend didn't like it at all. I assume that kind of behavior is commonplace from the management, it has to be having some kind of effect on attendance.
timetowaste85 wrote:This one time? At GW? A girl stuck a battle fleet gothic battle barge in...never mind, it's not important.
Speak, and tell what thou is hiding
Experiment 626 wrote:My old GW store tried to kill me... multiple times.
And that's not counting what working in a mall that's under major renovations will do to you...
What happened? Please do tell
As it is, there used to be a store in Preston, called Worthy Games. Now, this was a great store. However, the owner had, as it turned out, no actual interest in it, in fact he disliked it, and only used it to fuel his painting commission company (that was bleeding money like a slit artery). Any way, things where fine for the first few months. Until after Yule. Then the signs started. Little things, like orders not being fulfilled, and shelves being left un-stocked.
Anyway, that summer, 11 months after it had opened there was a massive sale, and the store closed. I was there on the last day, up to the final closing. I remember buying hundreds of pounds worth of stuff for around £20-£30 (90% reductions in some cases ).
But the real kicker was this: the store owed Red Steel, the club, money. Allot of money. And did he pay up? No. Instead, he pointed to some terrain that one of the floor staff had painted for us in good faith, and said that the job was equal to the value. It wasnt, not by a long chalk. Whats more, some of the terrain packs promised to the club where sold back to the suppliers. And there was nothing we could do about it.
Free from GW's tyranny and the hobby is looking better for it
DR:90-S++G+++M++B++I+Pww205++D++A+++/sWD146R++T(T)D+
And that's not counting what working in a mall that's under major renovations will do to you...
I've read what's being referenced here before, but please repost them for the benefit of others, as they are absolute gold.
Pretty please?
Well, since it's the holidays and we've all been good little gamers... (except for High Elf players - you guys are on the DoC's naughty list!)
As the story goes, "this one time, when I worked at the local GW store..."
- T'was the week before Christmas, and all along the lakeshore, a blizzard was raging, but the mall wasn't deterred! We stayed open, despite white-outs and mass traffic chaos and no plows came to our rescue... (okay, enough with the bad not-rhyming!)
So to celebrate the near state of emergency, (as there was just so much going on you could've shot a cannon off and no one would've cared), the construction crews decided to cut our internet lines, meaning no debit or credit card transactions could be processed, AND being the last weekend before Xmas our HQ was all off on their own holidays.
For the busiest 11 days of the year, we could only accept cash! Suffice to say, our sales sucked, and when our internet provider was able to finally get a crew together to fix things, they required a football field's length of wire to re-connect us to the central box! We did get a huge laugh though when we were finally able to print a Z-Report, (basically a listing of the day's sales numbers & weather or not you goof'ed up and either stole/gave away money), our Over/Under numbers: -$5,800 or thereabouts! HQ nearly had a heart attack, until we reminded them we hadn't been able to print a report for 11 days because we had no internet...
Oh, and those same construction crews figured since once was really fun, why not cut our internet lines again 3 short weeks later! The third time they did it, we AND the Cogeco repair crew were frothing at the mouth, ready to kill these dumb watch the language please. Reds8n .
- There was the idiot construction worker who though he'd be conscientious of keeping a safe & clean workspace around his welding station... so to catch any sparks he laid down a plastic tarp... then lit his acetylene torch and walked away, because nothing bad could possibly happen when an open flame is left unattended & hanging precariously over very flammable materials. Luckily the Fire Department's main firehouse is only half a black away.
Oh, and if you're the mall admin and think you can open your mall up for shopping again, before the fire department is done fumigating with their really cool large fans & checking the air quality to make sure it's NOT still toxic, well erm, don't be surprised when the chief flips his gak!
- Then there was the day the winds were coming right off Lake Ontario and gusting up to 90-100km/hour.
This was of course during the building of the back edition to the structure itself, meaning those winds were howling right into a confined open space and the only thing keeping them from blowing right into the mall itself were the plywood hordings acting as the 'pretend wall'...
Things would have been fine, if the moron construction crews had properly bolted both the bottom AND the top of those hordings to the floor/ceiling! So the end result, eventually a gust caused a section of boards to come crashing down onto a mother pushing a baby stroller with her kid inside. (luckily the mother got the worst of it, being some cuts/bruises)
This wasn't the only time they made this mistake either! When the back expansion was being built further down at our end of the mall, we had a day where our manager & other full timer plus one of the women from our neighbouring Carleton Cards store were physically holding up a section of hording. Meanwhile the assistant manager from Carleton went into the work area to inform the dumb construction crews their hording was about to get blown out (again) only to be screamed at for being in a work area without the proper footwear... (yep, they were clued in enough to notice high heels right away, but oblivious to the wild & very loud banging of plywood boards that are about to break free from it's fastenings and blow out into the mall itself.)
- We were getting a new escalator to go right in front of our store. Cool, more traffic & exposure! The catches...
First getting told less than a hour before closing we'd need to find ourselves an overnight 'fire watch' in case things went wrong with the welding work to get the upper level ready for the escalator... (yes, this was after the first fire.)
The digging of a giant pit in the floor to house all the wires & foundation for the escalator, which of course was left open for about 2 months and smelled like a cross between a rancid urinal fermented in mustard gas. Which of course wafted right into our store. (but it did look like a really cool mini gladiatorial death area, what with the bent & twisted metal refuse that had been tossed in there!)
Then Mall admin screws up and orders the wrong size of stairs, so now the work crews need to hand grind stainless steel during operating hours because they're running 3 weeks behind on the project! Note: breathing that crap in will result in your nose bleeding, (sometimes profusely!), every single time you need to blow your nose. (and also it will continue to bleed the morning next morning as soon as you need to blow.)
Finally the finished escalator was built in such a way that our storefront ends up almost entirely obscured from sight, unless you walk down our side of the hallway. (so much for increased foot traffic...)
- New receiving bays we being built behind our store. We seemed not to care about this one, until it came time to lay down to highly toxic chemical sealant on the concrete floor to protect it from weather & heavy trucks...
The crews had decided to vent the new bay by opening up the bay doors to the outside. This was fine and dandy, until the dumb guy on the crew decided to open the back door to the service hallway and thus create a vacuum effect that then sucked all those really awful-for-you fumes strait into the back of our store... (*cough*)
And no, mall admin wouldn't let us close, because they claimed the problem was being "addressed" and that within an hour or so the air quality should improve...
- One of the final new stores to get reno'ed was (surprise, surprise) well behind schedule, so the mall admin told the contractors to hurry the hell up and do whatever was required to ensure the new store would be ready to open on time.
Only problem with this, the previous store had a carpeted floor. The new store (some tween/punker style clothing store) going in was going to have a wood paneled floor. To get the floor ready for the new surface required the crews to dissolve all the old carpet glue, which means you need some really nasty chemicals that are capable of rendering anyone who inhales them unconscious within minutes!
Normally, they should have done this work at like 1am in order to keep everyone safe and sound and get the air cleared properly. Because they were so far behind on the work, well they used this crap at about 6am and hadn't quite set up their fans properly, meaning a portion of the highly toxic fumes overcame a couple of the mall cleaning staff in the service hallway...
Cue yet another evacuation on account of sheer incompetence & stupidity...
On the plus side, it was a basically a free day off and we got to see the police mobile command post being set-up, plus the fire department pulled out all their cool hazmat gear because these chemicals are really that nasty when used improperly!
- Druken old people on mobile scooters provide entertainment! Because they think they can ride their scooter down the escalator, then crash spectacularly, and finally try to beat the crap out of the paramedics who show-up to try and stop their rather profuse bleeding from multiple lacerations!
Okay, so that's basically the main construction foibles. (and drunken old guy)
Mother Nature & the resident restaurant then took their turns, but that's another story entirely...
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/12/13 14:22:17
Nathan, the store manager of GW NZ is an evil salesmen. Manipulates kids into buying product they dont actually want, tells you what you want despite telling him what you want. And if you are young and have non gamer parents well be prepared to end up with useless models you dont need. Took me an hour to buy a codex, and 3 boxes of eldar simply because what i wanted was wrong. I feel very sorry for the kids who have no where else (as the other wargames store was driven from buisness) to go and are stuck with this man as their GW supplier.
Oh man, there's a store in Orlando, FL. It's quite a large store and apparently it's opened up franchises in Nashville and a couple other places. But let me tell you, they treat their customers like total crap. The various employees routinely ban customers without ever explaining why, and apparently without consulting management at all.
When I was still going there on the regular, Pokemon cards were their biggest cash cow (I suspect this has changed to Magic, of course). As a result, Pokemon players had the final say in all things. Of course, the average Pokemon player was an 8 year old. Customers were being ejected left right and center for idiotic things, like when a kid's conservative mom decided that she didn't like a guy's tattoos and he was ejected in the middle of a 40k game. This also led to a bunch of incredibly vulgar, vile little toadish third graders being allowed to stand around hurling insults and, I kid you not, suggesting genocide. This one kid always got the others whipped up into a frenzy over how all the Japanese should be killed.
Don't worry, I have no idea either.
Now, here's something interesting that not a lot of the store's customers apparently know (or knew, whichever). They sold porn there. Live action and Hentai. This store is so...odd. There are a couple areas that like nobody actually goes to, not because they're roped off or anything but because they're just off to the far end of the store, which itself is the size of a supermarket. You'd find some weird stuff, like porn on display and hentai comics opened up to the pages with the tentacle rape scenes, all the fun stuff. And, children being poorly supervised and naturally inclined to explore, would sometimes wind up in the sections where porn was housed. I'll let you soak that in for a minute. The porn section of the store was such an oddity. Combine this with the awkwardness of the average geek (this was before geek became chic) and the (completely surprising) number of very attractive girls who worked the register, and you occasionally had the hilarious spectacle of a stuttering ultranerd buying porn from a really cute girl, and all the awkward antics that go with it.
There were a lot of those scenes.
I was once playing in a 40k tournament, Ard Boyz 2010 I believe, after not having visited the store for ages. I'm in the middle of the second round and one of the employees pulls me aside and tells me that I'm banned from the store. When I ask (read: demanded) that he explain, he said he didn't know why I was banned, only that someone said they thought they remembered a guy who no longer worked there saying that I was banned years before. I managed to convince them that they were, in fact, slowed, and finished out the tournament. I haven't been back to the store since, and to be honest I have no idea if I'm banned or not. I just don't care enough to go back there unless there's a particularly big tournament to draw me in.
Oh man, there's a store in Orlando, FL. It's quite a large store and apparently it's opened up franchises in Nashville and a couple other places. But let me tell you, they treat their customers like total crap. The various employees routinely ban customers without ever explaining why, and apparently without consulting management at all.
When I was still going there on the regular, Pokemon cards were their biggest cash cow (I suspect this has changed to Magic, of course). As a result, Pokemon players had the final say in all things. Of course, the average Pokemon player was an 8 year old. Customers were being ejected left right and center for idiotic things, like when a kid's conservative mom decided that she didn't like a guy's tattoos and he was ejected in the middle of a 40k game. This also led to a bunch of incredibly vulgar, vile little toadish third graders being allowed to stand around hurling insults and, I kid you not, suggesting genocide. This one kid always got the others whipped up into a frenzy over how all the Japanese should be killed.
Don't worry, I have no idea either.
Now, here's something interesting that not a lot of the store's customers apparently know (or knew, whichever). They sold porn there. Live action and Hentai. This store is so...odd. There are a couple areas that like nobody actually goes to, not because they're roped off or anything but because they're just off to the far end of the store, which itself is the size of a supermarket. You'd find some weird stuff, like porn on display and hentai comics opened up to the pages with the tentacle rape scenes, all the fun stuff. And, children being poorly supervised and naturally inclined to explore, would sometimes wind up in the sections where porn was housed. I'll let you soak that in for a minute. The porn section of the store was such an oddity. Combine this with the awkwardness of the average geek (this was before geek became chic) and the (completely surprising) number of very attractive girls who worked the register, and you occasionally had the hilarious spectacle of a stuttering ultranerd buying porn from a really cute girl, and all the awkward antics that go with it.
There were a lot of those scenes.
I was once playing in a 40k tournament, Ard Boyz 2010 I believe, after not having visited the store for ages. I'm in the middle of the second round and one of the employees pulls me aside and tells me that I'm banned from the store. When I ask (read: demanded) that he explain, he said he didn't know why I was banned, only that someone said they thought they remembered a guy who no longer worked there saying that I was banned years before. I managed to convince them that they were, in fact, slowed, and finished out the tournament. I haven't been back to the store since, and to be honest I have no idea if I'm banned or not. I just don't care enough to go back there unless there's a particularly big tournament to draw me in.
It sounds like they are trying to create a physical manifestation of the internet.
- Druken old people on mobile scooters provide entertainment! Because they think they can ride their scooter down the escalator, then crash spectacularly, and finally try to beat the crap out of the paramedics who show-up to try and stop their rather profuse bleeding from multiple lacerations!
Best part of the entire thing, though the whole story is great.
My gaming store is really good, except for those awkward moments when you walk in and a bunch of old guys playing X-Wing turn around and stare at you.
How are you gentlemen. All your base are belong to us.
My local GW manager tried to make me feel guilty about buying GW models from my FLGS and that I was responsible for making sure he has a job and is able to feed his family.
5000pts 
6000pts 
3000pts
).
IMPOSSIBLE IS RELATIVE 
