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'When I was a lad…….'By DennisWell, when I was a lad I was blinded and brainwashed into joining an all controlling cult, yep that's right I got a job working for Games Workshop! (AKA the evil empire) Anyway having spoken to Jon and Gary about the strange people I met and odd rituals I participated in Gary suggested I write an article for the mag to warn and educate you about the perils of the evil empire! So gather round, buy me a pint and I'll begin…….. It all started about 12 years ago when I found myself needing a job and having spent several years collecting and gaming with GW stuff I thought I'd apply for a job with them. Well I was asked to attend an interview at the old Chewton St head office in Nottingham, having driven up there I was disappointed to see that the home of GW was old industrial unit! and not the old castle that I thought it would be. Not one to be put off by this I cracked on to the interview with a guy called Simon Tift, head of retail no less! The only thing different about the interview was the grilling on GW products I got. You needed to know about at 3 of the games systems, collect armies for at least two and have a good general knowledge of the figure range. After the interview I was given a tour of the factory, mail order dept. and the stores. The factory was in a small room with a few guys casting up the figures, mail order dept. was sheer chaos! With boxes, paper figures and games all over the place. The best area was the store, row upon row of plastic bins each filled with cast components of every figure that GW made and a few filled with figures that GW had not yet released. I was given an A5 envelope and told to take half an hour wandering the racks filling the envelope! Looking back I should have filled it with terminators or something like that, but instead I got a load of empire halfling bowmen (20) and some reiksguard knights (20) the plastic horses and bases were also chucked in. I was then shown to the exit and sent on my way with my free goodies! Not long after that I was offered a job in GW Cambridge, so I moved from
Lowestoft to Cambridge and started as a sales assistant in a GW store.
On the first day I was given five of the old GW t-shirts as a uniform
and left to work the till, paint a few figures, stack the shelves etc
just general shop stuff. The worst day in the store was the Epic road show, when a GW Celebs came to Cambridge with a load of the studio painted figures and put on a game. The shop was packed, there were hundreds of people in the shop, all wanting to look at the figures and meet Commissar Chris Bone and Jervis Johnson, who I must say was the dimmest bloke I have ever met, I certainly don't think he helped write the warhammer rules but that's just my opinion! The highlight of time at GW was the one week stay at head office on 'Company Training' basically I spent two days in the retail office taking the GW shops stock orders etc, one day in mail order packing orders, one day with the guys who make the moulds - large round rubber things all hand made with the master figures and the guys who cast the figures and one day at the studio with the figure painters and game designers. The best part was being given a kilo of lead to be able to cast up my own figures! So I wandered about the mould racks picking up what I wanted and then casting them. In the end I got loads of empire cavalry, dwarfs, bowmen, the elector counts (before they were released) and the wolf guard terminators (again before they were released) one thing about the head office that will amuse Mr Hooper was that all of the people there were into 15mm Napoleonic gaming in a big way and not the devout GW gamers I thought they would be! Ironic really, the people who run the biggest fantasy company in the world are all (or were) into proper war gaming. The studio was interesting, they really have some very talented people working for them, the artwork and painting was great although the people were a bit odd! By that I mean that they actually lived like the warhammer and 40k universes were actually real! I met most of the GW personalities, well when I say met I actually mean I saw them at work; such people didn't talk to the likes of me! I also went to Games Day 91 and ran a stall teaching the kids how to play warhammer, what a hellish day that was, I didn't get to see much of the day although as compensation we were all given a free t-shirt, packed lunch and paid time and a half for the day! Anyway, I'm rambling now so to finish off, after about 7 months working for them I was offered a 'proper job' back in Lowestoft so I left the wibbly wobbly world of GW and headed home. All in all I enjoyed working for them and while the pay wasn't great the access to cheap / free figures certainly made up for it |