Pros
- Most of the people that work for Guitar Center are really down to Earth and fun to be around - The product is very easy to get excited about - and there's a lot of product to get excited about - Promotion from within, almost exclusively; this gives you many opportunities for personal professional advancement, but also gives you supervisors who can sympathize with whatever you're going through as an employee - In my experience, upper management seems to really care about people who are going through personal and medical issues; problematically willful employees are rightfully terminated, but those who seek help for their problems are handled with compassion and care
Cons
- when in a commission-based position, you NEED to be there when the customer is there in order to make a "living wage" - Like any commission-based environment, compensation fluctuates - Commission sales on a shared sales floor...enough said? To make this one clear, competition becomes caustic all too often, and jealousy and spite can immediately impact both earnings and personal/mental well-being. When the vibe is good, you can say "bro, I was working with that guy," and there's no malice behind the heads-up. When the vibe is bad, those same words could spark any one of a number of harsh rebuttals - many coworkers are incompetent: this varies from store to store based on the level of hiring ability and training ability of the store management - training is non-comprehensive - the company has a hit-or-miss reputation, but that can be due to the next con... - many customers are looking to make a scapegoat out of the lowly GC guy/gal; expect some rough (verbal, for the most part) treatment from entitled patrons - The worst part is that your hobby becomes your livelihood, but not in the way that you would like (ie. performance); selling gear is primarily about selling, and only about music and gear by proxy