Work does not equal pay. Period. - Department Manager Guitar Center Employee Review

2.0
Jan 10, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Discounts, Co-workers, Hands on Expereince with new, used, and vintage gear.

Cons

Dealing with the unreasonable, and unachievable goals. Customers expect discounts which come out of your check as a salesperson. No one tells them that, and to be honest they probably don't care, cause they've spent "x" amount dollars there since the 80's and they're entitled to it. It's minimum wage DRAWED against your commission(Fading). So if you made enough sales you pretty much have to buy back your hours. The task that our handed are as follows; Clientieling, Sales Leads, pushing products, add-ons, a minimal requirement to sale extended warranty, cleaning and maintaining a department, requiring to put customer's cash in your own pocket for gear, "basket sizing", warehouse and shippment breakdown, displaying, and pricing. Promotional sales displaying, opening and closing, teaching music mentor, OH and SALES. If you do not "Fade" for 3 months straight, termination. This job is not for everyone. I'm not bitter either, I was a top salesman in my store. I sold 300k in profit, so about half a mill in gross. only to leave with about 25k YTD(scales seemed to be tipped in their favor). Be advise, if you're a shark, snake, or a used car salesman, this might be for you. But for genuine gear heads it might not be.

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5.0
Jun 25, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Very flexible with hours working.

Cons

Difficult to stray away from Hal Leonard curriculum sometimes, but may be different now.

3.0
Jul 1, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

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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