well wheni was a kid i took some of my space wolves (not my latest ones, my very first army 15 years ago
) up to the store to see what the staff thought of them. i'd spent ages working on them getting them up to the best standard i could, and even though i wasn't a very good painter at the time i was very proud of them. i'd drybrushed the armour and then neatly filled in the rest of the details. but the staff were less than impressed. they basically told me that my models were aweful and that i shouldn't bother if that was the best i could do. so i though i'd show them and bought another model that i started painting in the shop, which only had about 10 different colours to work with so i had to mix up most of the colours i needed. and again i was told how shockingly bad i was compared to them! it put me off for a long time.
thankfully, the staff these days are a lot more encouraging and i haven't see anything like this for a long time.