I absolutely love MY Guitar Center, solely because of my fellow employees. - Sales Associate Guitar Center Employee Review

2.0
Apr 27, 2012
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Working at Guitar Center is great. I love the people I work with at my store, it makes me sad to see that some have been stuck with bad management and fellow employees...but it happens I suppose. The discount is pretty awesome, and the environment is fun to work in.

Cons

Haha where to start... First off, I don't blame anyone that is non-corporate for any of my issues. I have had my store manager go to bat for me all the way up to the president of GC. At that time I was a COA (doorperson) and had been for quite some time. I had never once received a raise!!! NOT ONE TIME! Considering the turnover rate for door-staff, you would think they would have wanted to keep me around. I was being paid minimum wage, and my hours were being cut due to corporate paycheck obligations...aka they were jipping (lol...jip) the Operations side of GC to put more money in their pockets. So my store manager convinced me to switch over to sales...saying I would make more money. I switched over to sales, and have been on the sales floor for the past 8 months. Let me tell you...the commission plan sucks. Although it makes sense in a way...it makes it extremely hard for me to ever get a good sized commission check. There is no way you could live comfortably as a sales person unless you were grossing about 40K in sales per month. The goals for AM's is absolutely ridiculous. I won't go into that though... They have changed our commission pilot about 4 times in the past 2 years. Ridiculous. I hear a lot of the other salesmen wishing that it were how it used to be back in the "old days"...because they were getting more money. I wish they would change the commission plan to something that was more fair. I've started checking my paycheck every period because I seriously think they are adding the numbers up wrong. One last thing...this PRO-COVERAGE crap pisses me off...granted, it is a good protection plan to have for your gear, but if a customer doesn't want it, so be it. They can come back in 3 months with a crack in their symbol and I can tell them "Hey...the Pro-Coverage covered accidental damage......you should have got it!" But to dock someone's pay because people don't want to buy the warranty? Bullsh*t.

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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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