Literally the worst place I’ve ever worked - Anonymous employee Guitar Center Employee Review

1.0
25 Oct 2019
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

A discount in gear. But even this isn’t worth it because a quick fake Shopify website and some clever guitar center price matching you can get anything at a low cost... ALSO all employees have 20% “friends and family” discounts they can use for you each month

Cons

Management, commission structure, pay.... and the way they treat you. DONT WAIST TOUR TIME HERE! I will start by saying I have 10 years in the music industry as a professional recording engineer. I moved and had to find a job so I took one here. Worst mistake ever! I wasn’t compensated for my knowledge and people straight out of high school with zero experience were my coworkers. Nothing against them, just they weren’t nearly as seasoned as me, and guitar center didn’t care at all that I had knowledge. My last day of work here ended with me literally walking out. My manager stole my sale, and at a job where commission matters (and managers don’t get commission) this was a huge low blow! IT GETS BETTER! The reason he stole my sale was because the customer was a Spanish speaker and I wasn’t trying hard enough to sell to him (I don’t speak fluid Spanish and tried my best with google translate). IT GETS EVEN BETTER ONCE AGAIN! The kicker is my manager DOES speak fluid Spanish! He is Hispanic!!! He just didn’t want to come out of the back room to help a customer. And because I made him, he got mad and rolled the ticket under his employee number so I got zero credit. (Not a good way to make your employees follow you). AND IT GETS EVEN BETTER! My manager once told a story how he was working at Disney world and would purposely speak only English to Spanish speakers because he was racist against them and wanted to teach them a lesson that if you’re in America you need to speak English... AND!!! FINALLY! When I told all this to HR, they thanked me and said they would handle it. Well he got promoted to another store with more pay and more employees.... DONT WORK HERE!

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Pros

You get a good discount

Cons

You work retail, which is difficult

3.0
1 Jul 2026
Recommend
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Pros

Sweet deals and discounts Coworkers are very pleasant to work with Good as extra income Good for aspiring musicians to network with experts of the industry

Cons

Obsolete softwares Scheduling system software that is thenmost imperative tool as of it will be the backbone of a lesson lead for your team of instructors success it's also somewhat obsolete amd constantly crashing both IT and Upper management are aware. IT is very diligent and pleasant to work with but Upper management expects their lessons lead to work and deliver at 100% capacity while they continue to have an operating system that only works at 75% capacity, just beware of that and if you're willing to work under those conditions. With that put there go at your own discretion. Nobody gets Christmas/winter holiday vacation time off, also go at your own discretion on that one especially if you have kids and family looking for work-life-balance.

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