Firstly I must admit that I don't regret any of my time spent there. I met some amazing people who've become some of the most important people in my life, I'm looking at you Dave, Darwin, Karl & Roy, and likewise I met an incredible number of people who surprised me every day that they were able to breath. I also learned some invaluable lessons, both what to do and what NEVER to do, and I honestly don't think I would have been able to get where I am today without those 3 and a half years.
With that in mind, here is one of the first stories that I was told when I first joined all those years ago.
The Trial and Tribulations of Games Workshop Richmond
When I got back into the hobby after Uni, I was saddened to see so many of the Games Workshops I knew had closed (Hammersmith, Ealing & Richmond), I later found out that this was due to the LOTR bubble burst, but Richmond had a little bit more to it than that.
First off, the Richmond store was in a terrible location, in an odd placement by the underground station, but located in such a way that it was almost impossible to find and that was one of the leading reasons to its closure. The other reason was the Richmond Curse..
The curse began one late evening when the then Regional Manager of London was walking back home late at night past the store, (he lived in the area), and noticed the lights had been left on inside. Using the set of store keys all regional had, he let himself in to turn off the store light. Unfortunately it was as he was turning the lights off that he noticed the back office light was likewise on and thus proceeded to enter the office to investigate.
What he was greeted with was the Manager of Richmond buggering the male Key Timer (part timer) on top of the safe. I can only imagine what was said and how they tried to explain the situation, I can only hope the Manager tried to sell it as a late night 10 commandments training sessions.
Same regional manager, but some time later, his wife was out shopping in Richmond when she walked past the Richmond GW and noticed something strange going on with the staff member. You see the way the store was laid out meant that as you walked past the store you got a side on view of behind the counter and what she saw was the staff member, clearly bored out of his mind, jerking off into the opened till.
The final victim of the curse was the accounting department up in Head Office who decided to investigate the unusually high phone bill of Games Workshop Richmond. Their questions were soon answered through the discovered that the primary and sole cause was the constant phone calls to a multitude of sex phone lines perpetrated by the staff at GW Richmond.
Now, although I thought that this was possibly the funniest story I'd heard at the time, I wasn't entirely convinced it was true. This was changed quite quickly when during a manager meeting up at head office, the story was retold during breakfast and before the manager could continue on to the sex hotline segment, one of the members of staff present piped up. He explained that it wasn't that funny when he had to sit in during the disciplinary for the safe/buggering incident and had to inform the Manager that he was to be let go primarily due to improper use of a company safe!
Priceless.
This isn't a photo of the Richmond Store. I tried to find one, failed and decided to use GW's stock store photo, which is oddly enough a mystery in itself as no one up in Nottingham could tell me what store it was from!
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