Guitar Center Employee Reviews for Anonymous Employee

"Leadership leads from the front and not from the back. We are forced to do more work than what we are paid to do. We have to work overtime to get the job done. There is ZERO recognition when a job is done well and when the demanding deadlines ARE met. There are ZERO training materials you've just gotta google and hope for the best a lot of the time. There is no structure. management expects you to answer your phone on weekends that you are off and not on call and they expect you to answer thier calls when you are off work. When I shared my Happy Black History month post that was on the company website a white manager said this was off base and inappropriate to put in the team chat although it was copied and pasted from the GC website. This company over all has been the worst company I've ever worked for full transparency. If you aren't in the good ole boys club here at GC good luck."

"Guitar Center is a wonderful company with some of the best HR in the industry. The GC pay is very low/weak for GC employees. GC Pro pays a bit better and is a lot more fun than GC is. AVDG is the ultimate in fun, but is very poorly run and is rife with problems. GC and AVDG are working on fixing the process problems and at some point it will probably be a really excellent place to work. Right now AVDG is having serious growing pains and has not yet found it's legs."

"I worked for Guitar Center for almost 18 months before COVID-19 halted business. The company does right by its customers, but policy and training implementation are at the employee’s expense. There is very little incentive to move up in management if you find success as a sales associate. It is not uncommon for managers to step back down into entry-level roles."

"Guitar center is a great place to work if you're passionate about music. Store level management is very easy to get along with and, by and large, they are passionate about the same things as the sales associates. However, you should know that as a store associate, there is a large degree of separation between you and the corporate level that is, at some times, frustrating. Overall, a very good experience."

"Great environment to work in and good potential for growth."

"I have wanted to work for guitar center since I was 13 years old, being 21 now I felt that I finally met the qualifications to work there. I ended up being right, I got the job. I absolutely loved the job in the beginning, then I started realizing the BS that they do such as, not enough pay for the amount of time you take to work with a customer (20-45 minutes) 1% commission is apparently enough to them. Making you do a TON of work that is mostly work that is thrown at you so you have something to do. I can't tell you the amount of times my department was perfect and my manager would just walk in and move something and then tell me to fix the whole wall. He moved something slightly. They find ways to make you do brainless tasks because they can't stand when you stand there or go play a new piece of gear that comes in, that's another thing I was not allowed under any circumstance to play... at all, I thought this was a MUSIC store where we are all musicians who spent years honing the skills we had to play the way we did. We got new gear from NAMM and we weren't allowed to try it out and see how it played or worked, which is vital in sales to help customers play to their full potential. Knowledge on the product didn't seem to matter to GC, they were solely focused on doing brainless activities to "keep us busy". As for the Ops department I felt horrible for them because they had to do all this crap to make sure the sales floor ran smoothly and they got crap pay to do it. They got mad at me for doing training module which you know helps me do my job, God forbid, we do anything to improve our way of doing the job that we were paid and hired to do. Because of the environment and commission structure, no one ever worked as a team, it was literally every man or woman for themselves, worst of all my manager was always making fun of me or insulting me. I must say Guitarcenter really let me down and I have no interest in buying my gear from them. Thanks, Guitarcenter."

"Being at GC, I have had great pleasure in being around many individuals who are incredibly talented at what they do. Having worked with many intelligent and talented people helps enhance my experience. There have been a few changes in management and thus changes in the goal, but that happens in many companies. I cannot say for all employees in the company but the salary seems to be competitive with other companies. The benefits are something that could be improved upon, though."

"I've worked for Guitar Center for 8 months and I've seen a lot of changes being made, some good and some not so good. The chain itself has over 250 stores and a huge online selection the benefits we get are pretty good but I don't think we get paid what we are worth."

"At least in the creative services department, everyone including the managers, directors and VPs are cool to work for. Everyone is committed to doing good work, although for a music-related company, they don't appreciate creativity as much as you'd think they would and often play it very conservatively with advertising. There is more bureaucracy than there needs to be, but it's also not as bad as other companies can be."

"Good company to work with if you like working in the retail music industry. Discounts for instruments and other music gear."