Do not work there! - Anonymous employee Guitar Center Employee Review

1.0
Sep 8, 2018
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Employee discount and some awesome people

Cons

Executive management is out of touch with reality. Very cut throat environment yet they wonder why they receive poor scores on their employee engagement survey in certain categories. Many people there have come up thru the ranks however truly lack the right skill set to be effective. They “teach” Servant Leadership however many executives don’t have a clue on how to execute that mentality with their staff. Instead they speak down to you in front of others and definitely manage by fear. During annual review period they determined the metrics AFTER the year was over which then caused poor ratings on employee reviews and subsequently little or no merit increases. They continue to overwork the staff and poor data integrity and processes makes the job difficult to execute properly - just plain inefficient. They continue to burn thru dedicated employees and it’s just a matter of time before they face legal action for their behavior. HR dept is definitely mismanaged and is not in favor of the employee. I would never recommend working here.

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5.0
Jul 16, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Management takes good care of you

Cons

No complaints that I can think of

1.0
Jun 29, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Employee discounts are the biggest reason why people work here, as the discount is really good.

Cons

Your experience working at Guitar Center will largely depend on which store you work at. Some stores have a good management team and employees and are fun to work at. But a lot of stores do not have a qualified management team and they have a staff that is not fun to work with. My location needed a new store manager and instead of promoting the ops manager who knew the store better than anyone else and was with the company for 15+ years working at multiple locations, corporate instead promoted a customer service lead who had been with the company less than 2 years and didn't have management experience. These are the people that corporate decides so often to run their stores.

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