I worked at the biggest VR Arcades in London. Here is my experience.
If you’re new here and you have no idea what VR (Virtual Reality) is, you live under a rock or you never had that spark to find out more about it. In simple words, VR is a tiny computer that goes on your head and you can play games and enjoy experiences.
Just like any old-school arcades, VR has implemented itself in the business of borrowing expensive machines to customers that will come and play your games for a certain amount of time. Honestly, I had no idea what VR was until my first training day — since then, I’ve been in love with it.
I worked at two of them. Let’s call the first… 1 and the second… 2. Why numbers you may ask? Well, see I don’t wanna be sued.
At VR Arcade 1:
When I started working there, I was working as a Host. Going from bartending/waitressing to Host was easy, and I adapted well. The venue was completely new, and had this awesome idea of creating their own island to find which game you wanted to play. If I were to be honest, the Developers were incredible at their job. The architects and designers that did the place did a hell of a job as well. But truly, that’s it.
During the training days, when the venue was not even open yet, I truly had a lot of fun and learned a lot. I remember thinking: “wow, I’m part of a super cool tech company! This is the perfect job!”. Silly me.
We were given cool uniforms, had after work drinks with staff and owners, great pay, and we got to play VR games whenever the venue was not busy. But, like any business, things were not so great.
I was not, at the time, an easy person to work with, and had yet to adapt to their style of work. I work hard, and like to see others working hard like I do, but the staff only loved two things: gossip and laziness.
It felt like high school all over again. The drama, the cliques, and the suck-assing. If you told the staff anything about your personal lives, everyone would find out. They were mean, vicious, and good pretenders. As I was growing quite fast by putting in the work and always going above and beyond, most of the staff started to be jealous. I would leave my laptop at work sometimes, so staff could use it, and they abused it. I once fell sick and asked if I could leave early, the managers said yes. The staff entered my facebook messenger and send a text to my friend saying “Hey, I got a way to leave work early! I will meet you at the bar soon!”; I hadn’t spoken to that friend in 2 years. They showed that message to the managers, and well, they were not happy.
They would send fake customers emails complaining about me, which only once I left I had found out. Or they would go crying to managers saying that I was telling them horrible things. Which I couldn’t have, as I was working, and they were just standing around a table chit-chatting.
Once I left my bag in the staff room, and because we had no locks, it was right there out in the open. I got 20£ stolen from me. I told my managers, and they said they would investigate. They never did. Later, I did find out who stole it, and this girl just had it in for me. I couldn’t say anything about it, because she was one of the favourites.
The uniforms were never cleaned, and we couldn’t take them home to clean it, because we lacked them. So, sometimes we would have to work with dirty uniforms that were used by other colleagues.
One of the owners, a drunk, was always drinking at the bar. He would normally ask us to stay and chat with him. The last time I did stay was only him and I, and he asked me: “So, Victoria, what is it you want from the company?” and I said “I want to grow and learn the ropes even more” — To which, he insulted me for a whole 10 minutes. I left, took and uber, and cried all my tears. I told the general manager what had happened, and the drunk owner was told that he had to stop drinking for a month. It lasted a week.
The managers started to promote people, but only their friends. The people that were sucking their asses. The people that could be controlled. The people that they had made friends with in other jobs, their favourites.
I was overworked to my core. I remember a week that I worked 70h–80h. I would go back home at 3am and would be back at work at 8am. I loved it, but we were understaffed and I had almost reached that burnout stage.
When they finally talked to me, and I decided to part ways with them, they said horrendous things about me, about what other people had said, but I was alone and couldn’t even say they were all lies. Leaving was one of the best decisions I made.
Later on, the General Manager left as well. I found out he had sexually assaulted a young woman, and had to escape town. The company, I believe, did not know this fact and thought he had just left because he couldn’t work the hours anymore.
When I left a few people followed me as well. In their notice letters they put “one of the reasons why, is because I didn’t like how you have treated Victoria”. They are still my friends.
Honestly, the issues were all staff related. If they had better management, and better staff, i’m sure my experience would have been completely different. But they were acting as if they were still in High School.
Customers were treated badly, and barely given any attention until they were inside their booths. They would be made fun of behind closed doors, and ignored when they had issues.
Lastly, when Corona Virus hit, the managers and owners decided to fire everyone and keep only the clique. But they had to re-hire everyone, so they could get government help. And this says a lot about what type of people are running that company.
If they weren’t so hungry with greed, I’m sure they would have grown even more than they had. Sad, I know.
At VR Arcade 2:
I decided to finally go back into VR after a few months, and for a nice fuck you to VR Arcade 1, I decided to go with their competitors. And the experience was completely different.
I had scored a General Manager position. The owners listened to me, took all my advices, truly cared about my well-being, and were fair. A much smaller place, but they cared and it showed.
Every customer was treated with respect and attention. When they had any issues, we would try and solve them. The staff was kind and accepting. I was the only woman, at the time, but I never felt that they didn’t listen to me because of that.
They wanted to grow with love and attention. They had no greed. Their ultimate goal was to give customers a good time.
The staff and owners were all friends, almost nearly family. Whenever anyone had any issues and couldn’t make it to work, others would pick up their shifts or work extra hours. During evaluations processes, I had made a big deal about asking staff how their mental health was, and the owners agreed this was an important question. They could open up to all the managers and not feel judged.
They have been growing a lot, opened 2 new venues, and I truly wish them all the best. That was the best job I had ever had.
Of course, not always perfect, we had a few bumps, but we were truly always there for each other. The bumps were technical issues, or trying to figure out how to best do our jobs. And for them I was so thankful, because they showed me what a business made with love is really about. No greed. Pure love, attention, care.
Overall,
Not much about the VR experience itself, and I could go on and on about how messy VR Arcades can be, about technical bugs, and how the service industry still has a lot to grow on, but customers always sense the “in between the lines”.
I’m glad I had a horrible first experience, because I had found the best job later on. And I guess that’s what I would like to tell you today:
Know your worth. Do your research. And, most importantly, look to work at places where you’re valued for your positives and negatives. A place where you can grow, and the people around you are there to help.
Victoria Wolf.
