Poorly managed company - Lessons Lead Guitar Center Employee Review

2.0
May 16, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Employee discount - Good relationships with coworkers - Good relationships with lessons customers

Cons

The company is just so poorly managed from the top down. I lost count of how many new things were promised by corporate in order to streamline the lessons business and make my job significantly easier that simply never happened. The weekly conference calls make the poor management glaringly obvious - "good job you made number go up! everyone look at number and also make number go up! yay big number!" - That is pretty much the intelligence level you can expect from upper management. Aside from my part of the business, which improved dramatically because I was good at it, literally nothing else improved in the 2 years that I worked there. Note that if you have a degree in anything, no one will bat an eye. They do not value intelligence, only your ability to do grunt work, make numbers look good, and sell insurance plans and credit cards. It's just sad, Guitar Center wants to do it all--guitars, drums, keyboards, pro audio, DJ, production, lessons, repairs, rentals, used & vintage--but they will never be able to cover all these areas successfully as long as they keep cutting labor and offloading part time responsibilities to full time managers. Obviously the pay is laughable, this is retail so don't expect anything competitive. I was there for the experience, and I guess it was cool for a while. But whenever I talked to people with regular jobs, they were shocked at my workload and how stressed I was all the time.

Explore other reviews about Guitar Center

5.0
Jan 9, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Got to work with so many people

Cons

Long hours during holidays were rough

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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