I’ve never been the type to want to open any kind of store. When I was a teenager my first job was in a retail store so I got to experience first hand the type of career that working in a store would be, add in the fact that my fathers career was also in retail management and I quickly determined that this wasn’t for me. Working or owning a store means long hours, nights and weekends. It means being open on holidays and always feeling like you’re the only one working. Working in a store requires dealing with the public everyday, all day and never having a bad day.
No I would never want to own a store, in fact I wold probably be terrible at it and would soon go out of business because the only store I would open wouldn’t even sell anything. The only store I would ever want to own would simply be a game store, but I wouldn’t sell games instead I’d rent them out for people to play at my store.
I should mention that the games I’m talking about would be board games and not video games and I suppose that can tell you about my experiences as a child as I played far more board games than video games. We didn’t have a game night every week but we certainly played alot of board games as a family. We had all the traditional games….Monopoly, Life, Trivial Pursuit, Pictionary, Yahtzee just to name a few. We played games that involved throwing dice and moving plastic pieces around a board and games with spinners and driving stick people in cars. Games with the small little sand in the hourglass timer and games with no timers that seemed to last forever. Still to this day whenever we gather we most likely will break out a board game and play as a family. So I always thought it would be fun to own a store to recreate that feeling of sitting down with family or friends and playing a board game.
Imagine a store filled with games…..all kinds of games. The walls would be lined with games the shelves packed with them. Every board game ever made would be in this store and people could come in and play them for a small fee. And I wouldn’t try to sell anything….no coffee or tea, no bagels or doughnuts, nothing to distract you from the game. There would be all kinds of tables, big ones, small ones, long ones and round ones, and all you’d hear would be people playing the games, shouting, laughing, even anguish cries of an unlucky dice roll and most of all there would be no TV’s or cell phones allowed.
I know this might make some people feel uneasy not having their phone in their hands or right next to them but I would have small lockboxes to lock their phones in so they were inaccessible and the lockboxes would sit on the table as they were playing and if anybody opened the lockbox to check their phone they would be immediately kicked out and told to never come back, banished from the game store. and possibly publicly humiliated…….yes I know, perhaps a bit harsh but hey nothing should interrupt the game.
I know this store would probably never be successful in this day and age, although board games are still very popular I lament that people seem too busy to play, too many distractions, too much to watch and too much social media to scroll thru but still I would love to have a store where every night is game night.
If you had a family game night or favorite game you played as a kid please feel free to comment and share your experiences and don’t forget to hit that like button
Peace and love,
John
John's Blog 