The day I failed the Emperor or how I almost worked for Games Workshop

I have a confession. Back in 1999 I was a massive card carrying GW fanboy. But you know that already. I would go to Games Day every year, I still have an entire company of Spam all lovingly packed in foam trays ready for an apocalyptic battle one day. I have a scratch built cardboard Warhound titan for them as well. (I'm not forking out hundreds for a Forgeworld one. I have a beautiful, understanding wife, but there are limits.)

She is looking a bit lop-sided and sorry these days.

I'm better now, but back then I loved Games Workshop. They were my altar. Going to the store every Saturday morning to play a mass battle was my church. Before I tell you this story then, let me confirm that everything that transpired was in my own control, it was my fault, I am not blaming anyone and I have the utmost respect for the GW staff involved in this tale. This is not a griping tale of woe, this is a confession of youth.
The manager of the store I used to attend was a brilliant manager, us kids all had a lot of respect for him. As I said, I would regularly attend Saturday mass battles. (This was before the name Apocalypse existed but essentially the same.) and as it was a Saturday the store was also busy with people buying so the staff were kept busy. Therefore sometimes, us older players took control of the game and kept things under control.
One Saturday the manager took me aside and asked me the ultimate question. "Had I ever considered working at a Games Workshop?" Well, as you can imagine, I went dumb with excitement. He went on to explain that although he couldn't just employ me, he could nominate me to go to an interview with his area manager and if successful there, the job would be mine. Well, of course I said yes. Get paid to paint models and play games, as that old philosopher said, find a job you love and never do a days work in your life.

So, one, Saturday morning I put on a shirt and tie, my leather duster jacket with the Blood Angels pin on the lapel, my Imperial Eagle belt buckle and grabbed my official Games Workshop carry case with some of my best painted models. The first part of the interview was a group interview. The usual talk about yourself in the group, some icebreakers, including where you adopt the pose of a GW model and the other candidates try and guess the model. Thinking back, all models then were just holding a pistol and a sword or a rifle in a very similar pose, I'm not sure how any of us thought we could guess any of them. I sailed through the first round, that wasn't the difficult part. The one on one interview however, urgh. I'm not normally a nervous interviewee, never had a problem with job interviews before or since. I guess I just really, really wanted this job. I came across as someone who knew nothing about the product, couldn't explain what a Space Marine was. I knew the whole physical make up of a Space Marine inside out! I could tell you the whole tale of Horus's betrayal and eventual fight with the Emperor aboard his Battle Barge. In this interview, it was as if I had never even heard of GW. I was even given a second chance, I was asked to demonstrate a game of 40K to the interviewer as if they were new to the hobby. I played this in my sleep, and yet at that moment I knew nothing. I panicked that I didn't know the exact stat of anything and instead of just making it up, I froze.
Of course afterwards it was explained to me by all the GW staff I knew that it didn't matter if I didn't actually know the exact rules, they were just trying to hear how I would enthuse about the product, describe how a game would play. Well obviously, if I had known that beforehand I would have breezed the interview of course! Why didn't they just say that? I felt like they just didn't want to employ me and purposely made my interview over complicated to prove I wasn't good enough.

Looking back on the day, I realise now they bent over backwards to try and actually justify hiring me. The manager of the store that referred me must have really bigged me up.  Of course on the day none of this occured to me. They had stood me in front of a giant target with a bazooka and I had missed. I came out of the interview a failure. My friends tried to cheer me up with a trip to the cinema. I wanted to go see the new Mummy film, the trailer had looked awesome. They wanted to take me to see some new Keanu Reeves sci fi film called The Matrix. I was not happy, "What, like that godawful Johnny Mnemonic?"

And Finally,
Evidence that I did meet up with some fellow bloggers at Salute, pop on over to "Don't throw a 1" the blog of a lovely chap called Ray to see a photo of yours truly meeting up with the gang here.