Literally the worst place I’ve ever worked - Anonymous employee Guitar Center Employee Review

1.0
25 Oct 2019
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

A discount in gear. But even this isn’t worth it because a quick fake Shopify website and some clever guitar center price matching you can get anything at a low cost... ALSO all employees have 20% “friends and family” discounts they can use for you each month

Cons

Management, commission structure, pay.... and the way they treat you. DONT WAIST TOUR TIME HERE! I will start by saying I have 10 years in the music industry as a professional recording engineer. I moved and had to find a job so I took one here. Worst mistake ever! I wasn’t compensated for my knowledge and people straight out of high school with zero experience were my coworkers. Nothing against them, just they weren’t nearly as seasoned as me, and guitar center didn’t care at all that I had knowledge. My last day of work here ended with me literally walking out. My manager stole my sale, and at a job where commission matters (and managers don’t get commission) this was a huge low blow! IT GETS BETTER! The reason he stole my sale was because the customer was a Spanish speaker and I wasn’t trying hard enough to sell to him (I don’t speak fluid Spanish and tried my best with google translate). IT GETS EVEN BETTER ONCE AGAIN! The kicker is my manager DOES speak fluid Spanish! He is Hispanic!!! He just didn’t want to come out of the back room to help a customer. And because I made him, he got mad and rolled the ticket under his employee number so I got zero credit. (Not a good way to make your employees follow you). AND IT GETS EVEN BETTER! My manager once told a story how he was working at Disney world and would purposely speak only English to Spanish speakers because he was racist against them and wanted to teach them a lesson that if you’re in America you need to speak English... AND!!! FINALLY! When I told all this to HR, they thanked me and said they would handle it. Well he got promoted to another store with more pay and more employees.... DONT WORK HERE!

Explore other reviews about Guitar Center

5.0
16 Jul 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Management takes good care of you

Cons

No complaints that I can think of

1.0
21 Apr 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Plenty of capable individual contributors doing real work. - The brand and the business itself are legitimate — the problems are organizational.

Cons

- Senior leadership is politically driven rather than outcome-driven. Strategic initiatives stall out, and leaders spend more energy assigning or shifting blame than actually diagnosing and fixing problems. - Some parts of the org operate on deference to the top. Honest assessments get softened into whatever narrative leadership wants to hear, which makes real cross-functional work difficult. - Senior leaders do not consistently advocate for their own teams. When things get political, self-preservation takes precedence over backing the people underneath, and capable managers end up exposed.

2
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All