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Hi Rowen! So let’s kick things off with the usual question. For how long have you been working at clueQuest?
I’ve been here 1 year and 4 months now. I joined back in December 2017.
There doesn’t seem to be much of a guidebook for those wanting to work in escape rooms. How did you know it was right for you, and that you’d be able to do it?
Sometimes you just get a feeling about a certain place. I had played a couple of escape rooms prior to joining and loved them and I’d worked for 3 years at The London Dungeon as an actor, so for me it felt like another form of delivering entertainment and fun memories. Plus, being an avid Alias fan, the secret agent theme was right up my street!
Well that feeling seems to have served you well. Since then, what has been your proudest moment at clueQuest?
There’s been a lot of proud moments for me since working here. I’ve hosted a game for Reece Shearsmith, I’ve had 3 teams get onto our leaderboard for cQ:Origenes. But I think my proudest moment is recording voice-overs for one of our missions. There’s something special about being asked to be a part of something, like taking on an acting role.
You get such great feedback from customers, but I imagine they can’t all be easy to deal with. What’s been the most embarrassing thing you’ve witnessed from a team?
It’s more from one team member, but, during a game, a team needed a code to get into something. They had the correct numbers, but one member was convinced they had too many. I called them on the radio to confirm the numbers they had, they read them out to me and I confirmed that it was the correct code. But this man was adamant they had too many numbers. Again, I confirmed what they had written down and told them it was 100% the correct code. Still the man persisted and began to get quite rude. I read the numbers back to him and asked if that was what they had written down, he said yes, I then asked him to try it. He did so, still protesting, and of course it opened, causing him to turn beetroot red for a good few minutes afterwards.
If Professor Blacksheep blew up the place tomorrow, what would you miss the most about it?
The camaraderie. We’re such a close-knit team; we have so much fun together and share lots of laughs. Every day is an adventure and we all look out for each other. That level of friendship is hard to find in the workplace.
Rowen, thank you so much. Finally, is there anything you feel you’ve learnt from this job, that you’ll remember for years to come?
Attention to detail. When running games, you have to pay attention to every little detail in the room to tailor how you proceed with help. And as a player, recognising patterns and connections is vital to progress. In some ways I’ve already begun to apply that to other things outside of work, so it’s going to be something that will stick with me for a long time.