Brad as GW Model
Originally uploaded by sexyphlegm.

My husband used to be 6'3" tall and 239 pounds. He had a deep and beautiful laugh, the kind of laugh where he laughed with his whole body. He was a good-natured fellow: he enjoyed kittens, held babies like bombs, and an easy-going demeanor. He was a huge hulk of a man with tree trunks for legs, and just as sinewy, and a robust voice to match. He was probably a lumberjack in a previous life.

But the evil corporation Games Workshop mercilessly kidnaps him for 37.5 hours a week, shrinks him down to size, so they may torture him however they seem fit.

He is forced to do manual and domestic labor (like moving heavy boxes, setting up battle scenes and dusting) under humiliating circumstances (like dusting places that have no dust).

But the most egregious act that Games Workshop has committed so far has been to screw Brad over for every possible promotion.

There was a guy called Sean who used to the district manager for Games Workshop in the L.A. area. He's the one who hired Brad in January with the intention to make him a Manager-In-Training (MIT) as soon as possible. The store with which Brad was first employed had not had a manager in about 7 months, and so there was the possibility that Brad may take over that location. When Brad joined the team, the store became the highest grossing store in the region, as then was ranked #6 out of hundreds of locations of GW stores around the country. Brad's average price per sale was the highest of his coworkers and he built a Lord of the Rings (GW) community out of nothing.

He was transferred to Glendale 3 months ago, with the promise that he was going to be trained as a manager or as an Assistant Manager to the Glendale location as that store was also without direct management. He has yet to receive a single day of training in that regard.

The man who originally hired Brad recently quit the company without so much as a word to Brad--he didn't have the decency to even tell Brad about his quitting even though he informed Brad's fellow employees. With Sean's departure, there was the vague chance that this would mean that Brad would finally get trained because there were spots to fill: Sean's position as cell manager for L.A. and still a manager in Glendale was needed.

When Brad moved to Glendale, within 2 weeks his per sales average nearly doubled the closest employee (meaning that Brad was earning the store an average of $54.00 per transaction when the nearest coworker was only earning $30.00). He has also managed to start a Lord of the Rings community in the Glendale location as well--again he was able to build this customer support from nothing: his coworkers didn't like the game so they didn't sell it and thus no customers purchased it and so no one played it in the store.

Instead of utilizing Brad's skills, the District Manager, Shad, has seen fit to use his own personal bias against Brad and conveniently overlook him for logical promotion. Instead of training Brad to be a manager, employees were shifted around in the various locations and someone new was brought in to be the manager at Glendale.

According to a reliable source (another Games Workshop manager who is honest and forthcoming with the truth) informed Brad quote, "You probably had a good chance of becoming a manager eventually with Sean around, but Shad just doesn't like you. So I just don't see it ever happening now."

Personal agendas should not play a role in the workplace, but they do, as I found out earlier in the year when I was laid off for not being pretty enough to answer phones (read pretty as: blonde and buxom enough, no seriously). If an employee has demonstrated competence, likeability by all of his co-workers, skill and finesse, there should be no logical reason to not utilize him more thoroughly in the company. However, Shad dislikes Brad for no particular reason, and so Brad is suffering the consequences.

As a side note, Shad is an ass. Shad throws chairs in meetings to try to intimidate employees. He gets in peoples faces and degrades and demeans them. I suspect that he enjoys squashing people’s egos into the ground because it either gives him a hard-on or it fills him with power, and then gives him a hard-on.

Jimmy is the new manager at Glendale Games Workshop. And Jimmy is also an ass. And that's not a personal bias: I heard him make fun of his own customers. He calls the customer base for Games Workshop quote: "Fat, lonely desperate gamers."

Jimmy used to be in the military, but now he looks more like Jabba the Hut, so you'd think maybe he was just making fun of himself (I mean, he was in the military and couldn't get a better job than retail, nobody even wanted him to at least peddle car insurance)?

Unfortunately for Jimmy's wife, Jimmy is married. And whenever relatively attractive females enter the store at Games Workshop in Glendale he makes comments about how he "hasn't cheated on his wife in 2 years, but man that is one fine piece of ass."

In addition to these humiliations that Brad must endure, Games Workshop forces him to do highly skilled labor, for instance networking the cash register to the mainframe of the corporation for only $8.50 an hour when that easily would have cost them $1200 by any other computer consultant. The employees at Glendale Games Workshop barely knows how to even turn on a computer nonetheless setup a network, and even Brad's boss and his boss's boss didn't know how to set up the cash register properly, but because Brad is not entirely brain-dead he did it for them.

Brad accepted this job as a last resort. I was being laid off for an illogical reason (as stated above) and Brad took the first job that was offered. He remained faithful and loyal to the company because he enjoyed what he was doing and he thought that he would be treated fairly. So he worked as hard as he could to do his best and drive in sales for Games Workshop in Northridge and Glendale, but still does not get a single drop of recognition.

I think it's unfair that personal bias plays such a major role in the workplace today. People should be professional enough to realize that they don't necessarily have to like the people with whom they work, as long as those people do their job and do it well and don't actively annoy anyone. (Because we all know Brad doesn't go out of his way to be obnoxious. Brad's just not that kind of person.)

And it is for this reason that I loathe Games Workshop in Glendale and now Games Workshop in general. They treat their employees unfairly and they make fun of their customer base and they sexualize any female presence inside the store--actually that's a lie, they ogle women who merely walk by the store as well.

The management in Glendale, as I have described to you, is hypocritical and mean-spirited. (Is it any surprise, then, that Shad works out of the Games Workshop Glendale location?) So do everyone a favor and if you have to buy Games Workshop merchandise, buy it from a local hobby shop (or if you can find it online--particularly eBay--even better). They need the business more than this company (even though Games Workshop will ultimately get paid anyway). Or if you live in the L.A. area shop at Northridge instead of Glendale.

( 1comments )

at August 16, 2005 2:12 PM  Power_Overwhelming said...

Whores.