Pros
-They promote early and from within. -This job gives you a lot of customer service experience, in a trial by fire sense. -You get to work with musicians and the teachers are a lot of fun to talk to. -The guys I work with are a lot of fun; with such a small store you become a family pretty quickly, in fact they're the only reason I've stayed as long as I have. -If you like kids, you do get to interact and see a lot of them, between lessons and walk-ins. Helping our lesson students with questions and supplies is one of my favorite parts of the job. -Upper management is very hands-on. This is a good thing provided you have a good District Manager. If you have a bad one (like i currently do) you start to feel micromanaged and suffocated and you'll see a real big drop in morale in your district. The Maryland markets for instance have a couple of really great DMs from what I've observed. Just be aware that you will see your District Manager in the store very often.
Cons
-Your paycheck does not reflect the amount of work you put into the job, especially part-timers. -Customers can be extremely difficult. Between rentals, sales, lessons, and repairs a lot can go wrong and you'll frequently find yourself on the wrong end of the phone with an angry customer, and the rules aren't always clear cut so it can be hard to give them a straight answer. -New employees are never trained well. Not only does M&A not have a very good screening process for applicants to begin with, their idea of training is a joke. Despite taking ten days, the training deals mainly with store procedures and memorizing scripts. This could all be done in about two, maybe three days. Most new employees come out of training with next to no product knowledge about the instruments and accessories they're selling. And they don't train you to deal with difficult and angry customers. They just pretty much throw you to the wolves and hope your store manager and other employees can help you learn. -When I first started, upper management put as much emphasis on the customer experience as they did sales which was fine by me. But ever since the NOVA district got a new Regional Manager and District Manager, it seems like customer service has gone out the door and been replaced by a ridiculous focus on driving up sales (which hasn't worked by the way, in fact it's done just the opposite). -Despite always being in the stores, upper management has very little clue as to how day-to-day operations go in the store. Having to answer the phone before the third ring and not putting someone on hold for more than 10 seconds is great in theory, but in practice it's unrealistic. Especially since most stores only employ on average 6-8 people, and if someone calls out, you're by yourself for a whole shift. -Rental Season. The month of September is a month every Music & Arts employee dreads. Depending on your store size you could have anywhere from 20-50 people in your store at any given time needing to rent an instrument. The company runs a competition to sell the most add-ons to customers, some of which the students need but a lot they don't. So the whole practice can seem unethical. -Managers get the shaft. No joke. They do not get commission, they're required to work 10 hour days 6 days a week during September and December, but since they're salaried they do not get paid overtime. They also do a lot of work outside the store, but since they're not paid by the hour they aren't compensated accordingly. -The meetings. Music & Arts loves their meetings. They're early, they're often, they're long and they're completely and utterly pointless. The only good thing about them is that you get to see the employees from other stores and put faces to the names of people you've spoken to on the phone countless times. I have never come away a meeting feeling like I've learned something new or useful. -They tend to make people managers based on sales numbers. Sometimes this works, but just because someone's a good salesperson does not mean they will make a good manager.