Pros
I have good people I work with on a day to day basis. And you can play some of the display instruments when it’s slow.
Cons
Where to begin? Everything. Totally overworked and underpaid. Literally earning minimum wage even with a college degree and direct experience. The stores in certain markets are just totally forgotten and abused. Broken slat walls, poor facilities, lack of storage, computers that barely function if they’re even functioning. A fully staffed store is only 4 people and those 4 people have to all be comptent enough to run, schedule, hire, and payroll for the lesson program, organize, distribute and contract rental instruments, maintain and care for instruments in store stock, liaison between customers and the repair shop, perform basic maintenance on customer instruments, ship product cross country and source from stores outside your market, and be knowledgeable enough to be able to sell everything from pro audio, to keyboards, to guitars, to percussion, to orchestral strings, to wind band instruments, as well as any accessories and sheet music anyone might need. The only training you’ll get is a few painful guitar center geared online modules that have incorrect information throughout. There is commission but the sales goals you have to meet to even earn it are so astronomical compared to the actual foot traffic you’ll get that you’ll probably never make it and if you do it’ll be pennies. God forbid someone on your team quits, you’ll be understaffed and overworked for months. And even worse if it’s your manager who leaves you’ll be stuck doing managerial work for months as a part timer working full time hours for zero benefits and minimum wage. The raises this past year for my entire staff only added up to 45¢ all together even though we’ve been crushing throughout the pandemic with a complete lack of support from corporate and half of us don’t have health insurance. If you need to reach out to someone on the corporate level, you’ll most likely be ignored or talked down to, and chances are they won’t even help. Any IT ticket you submit will most likely come back resolved 24 hours later yet the problem will persist for another 2 weeks before someone actually does anything to fix it. The company chooses what your store is stocked with so even though you’ve been out of Ernie Ball .09s for a month you won’t get them till someone at the warehouse decides to send them your way. And even though you’ve never sold a FunkoPop you’ll get 3 every time you get a shipment. The “Rental Credit” policies are absolutely criminal and are designed to milk long term customers for as much money as possible. It’s disgusting. You’ll feel like a jerk upholding this companies policies as they directly take advantage of the customer. Oh and don’t forget cold calling! It’s still a thing here so be ready to not only be berated by fed up customers in person, but also over the phone. It’s insane. Managers often make less than $20/hr and are given very little authority and are constantly having to ask permission for basic things. The best managers are treated the worst as the company knows they can take advantage of these people. District Mangers also get very little resources. I’m on my 3rd DM this year and you can tell that most of them are trying but they’re being gutted by the company too. At least they get paid unlike anyone below them. This company preys on people who love music and uses that as an excuse to treat their people like trash. This is where dreams go to die. The only reason I haven’t quit yet is that I don’t want to leave my coworkers even more understaffed then they already are.
