Good days and bad most are negative - Store Manager Guitar Center Employee Review

3.0
28 Jun 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

-pay once a SM is finally competitive -coworkers are amazing -when earn bonuses it’s worth it -employee discount -open door policy -can lead a team , inspire people

Cons

-random last minute changes (EXTREME LAST MINUTE COMMUNICATION-that always results in urgent deadlines to relay the message to your team.) -HR is not helpful -they need to be available to provide more training to SM’s -literally no autonomy. Everything has to get funneled through upper management -terrible systems (extremely outdated) -extreme lag -top bonus payouts are so hard to achieve -plannograms and displays that don’t make sense for every store since they are all different with different inventory -no consistent training for policy and procedures (each store had a different way like with repairs etc) -too many unnecessary conference calls -labor cuts fall on SM bc you’re salaried -high turnaround with lower management (especially leads bc no competitive pay) -terrible pay for operations (plus have to share hours with sales and ops resulting in not enough ops hours) -further falling on management -inconsistent pay between position to position, person to person -no merit increases except for during annual reviews (meaning, if someone severely underpaid that’s doing an excellent job asks or needs more money, we don’t even consider it bc we only can do an increase one time a year , then when they quit, the next person we hire to replace them we can pay more for what that person would have been satisfied with. So we’d basically loose a good worker, pay to train someone else (who may or may not work out tbd since they are new), background check and onboarding costs. It makes no sense you’d think it took more paperwork and costs to go that route rather than do an out of cycle pay increase for a good worker.

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
29 Jun 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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